New York

Now a new poll from the Alliance for Quality Education and the Center for Popular Democracy shows voters are aware of and want to fix many of the issues that plague the charter school industry, such as lack of financial transparency and student pushout.

Education organizers in New York City celebrated when then-mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio promised to create 100 new community schools to better meet the out-of-school needs of the city's children. Now, just over a year into his term as mayor, de Blasio's administration is upping that number to 200 community schools by 2017.

OTL allies held a Twitter rally last week after Eva Moskowitz, founder of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City, penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which she tried to justify the use of harsh discipline policies in schools.

After months of intense organizing in Albany and across the state, education organizers in New York got a mix of victories and setbacks in the new state budget.

Chanting "We Can't Wait!" and marching through downtown Albany, over 2,000 teachers, advocates, parents, and students rallied last Wednesday for an increase in state funding for public schools. Despite a 2006 ruling from the New York state supreme court that held that New York had failed to provide public schools with adequate educational resources under the state constitution, many schools have yet to receive the required level of funding.

A report from the Alliance for Quality Education says NY Governor Andrew Cuomo owes New York City public schools $2,667 per student, which adds up to $2.5 billion worth of resources currently being withheld from the city's students, teachers and their schools.

In the Alliance for Quality Education's State of Our Schools speech, Zakiyah Ansari takes NY Governor Andrew Cuomo to task for failing to fix persistent inequities in public school funding. Her call for fairness and opportunity in education could apply just as well to states across the country.

Hundreds of education organizers protested at the NY State Capitol this week with Rev. William Barber, the minister leading the North Carolina Moral Monday movement, who gave a fiery speech demanding full, fair funding for the New York public schools. 

With NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio putting millions of dollars into his new community schools initiative, parents with the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice are weighing in with policy guidance for expanding the program.

A new documentary chronicles how New York City organizers made education inequality the central theme of the last mayoral elections. It's a must-watch case study of how education justice organizers can get their issues on the political agenda – and win.