Digital Networking for School Reform The Online Grassroots Efforts of Parent and Teacher Activists

This book provides first-person accounts from parents and educators in the United States who have negotiated for a prominent role in current conversations about school reform. Heron Hruby and Landon-Hays argue that it is important to both theorize and document grassroots efforts at a time when digital networking in the Untied States allows a range of people – not just those in conventional positions of corporate or political power - to garner widespread support for education policy. In particular, the book focuses on the shifts in power that take place when teachers and parents are able to carve out successful wide-spread campaigns against high-profile policy movements, specifically the present movement towards charter school proliferation and value-added measures of teacher quality advocated by a growing number of political leaders, political action committees, and privately funded ad hoc advocacy groups.

Alison Heron Hruby is Assistant Professor of English Education at Morehead State University, USA.
 
Melanie Landon-Hays is Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Western Oregon University, USA.

1. Critical Digital Literacies and the Struggle over what's Common; George L. Boggs and Trevor Thomas Stewart
2. Getting the Attention of the White House: Using Facebook to Promote Teacher Knowledge about School Reform; Anthony Cody
3. United Opt Out National: Web Networking as a Way to Strengthen National Resistance to Standardized Testing; Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar
4. Beginning at the Blog: Moving From Kitchen-Table Plans to National Political Activism Using Digital Narratives; Dora Taylor,
5. A Community Battles Testing Madness in Charlotte, North Carolina: The Role of Local Knowledge in Spurring Online Collaboration for Change; Pamela Grundy
6. In Closing: The Import of Digital Citizenship in Effecting Grassroots Change: A Socio-historical Perspective on what it takes to Make a Difference in Education Reform; J. Spencer Clark, Alison Heron-Hruby, and Melanie Landon-Hays