A Few Words from NEIFPE

Now that we have hosted our second Four State Conference and have worked together with other like minded people to strategize about how to move forward with our mission to inform, to engage, and to support public schools, perhaps it is time for us to reflect on the Facebook part of our mission.

As most of you who are regular readers of our Facebook page realize, our mission is to inform people about what is happening in and to public education. We usually post blogs from Karen Francisco, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Valerie Strauss, and other well known and well respected education bloggers. We feel as though they give us a pretty good window on what is happening in education.

We often post memes from numerous sites--some are liberal; some are conservative; some are off-the-wall. Some memes are inspirational; some are silly; some are thought provoking. We don't always agree with everything those sites (or their site names) espouse; however, if a particular meme catches our attention, we post it. We strive to inform, to enlighten, to inspire, to be ironic, and to laugh. We know that what we are facing is serious, but we also know that we don't always have to take ourselves seriously.

We are a non-partisan group. Considering that Indiana's legislature has a Super Majority of Republicans who appear to be doing the most damage to public schools, we have focused on the egregious policies they support. We are not especially happy with the Democrats either, but since they have no power now, we have not focused much of our criticism on them. We are particularly critical of No Child Left Behind (Bush) and of Race to the Top (Obama). We like to think of ourselves as equal opportunity critics. If either party creates harmful educational policies, we will let them and you know.

Since our daily Facebook reach is generally in the thousands, periodically, we are bound to offend someone about something. It is our hope that when you read our Facebook page, you will read it much as you would a newspaper. Read the posts that interest you and skip the ones that don't. If you disagree with something, please feel free to respond to that post.

Because our mission is and always has been to support educators and to help save public schools, we are happy to share the information and fact sheets that we have created on our blog. You are welcome to adapt the information to your use. We simply ask that you give us credit for our work.

For all of you who read our Facebook page or visit our blog, thank you.