Sign the Virtual Teachers' Lounge Educators' Pledge
Sign the Virtual Teachers' Lounge Educators' Pledge
The Issue
The Educators’ Pledge: Standing Strong for All Students
June 2025
As participants in America’s educational system, we are deeply concerned about the unprecedented federal government overreach and political interference now endangering early childhood through adulthood education. While we recognize the importance of reasoned, researched reform and legitimate government oversight, we are profoundly troubled by the slashing and/or eradication of wide-ranging programs and grant funding -- all of which negatively impact literally millions of students, teachers and families in our nation.
Through the federal government, there has historically been critical and significant support for our most vulnerable students and communities. Key support has existed for research on a wide range of topics to measure educational outcomes and ensure fairness, enforcement of the civil rights and liberties of students and encouragement of high school graduation and progression to, and success in, technical programs/apprenticeships and colleges/universities.
Because of these very opportunities and freedoms, American educational institutions are essential to our nation’s prosperity and serve as productive partners with government and our communities in promoting the common good, including as engines of opportunity and mobility and contributors to economic and cultural vitality. They foster knowledge, creativity and innovation and are major employers. They engage in and support research, and many provide needed academic supports as well as food and mental and physical healthcare and other essential services to students and families.
Our students and our society will pay the price for the abridgement of these freedoms and government support for education. We must allow our schools, colleges and universities to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, knowledge and well-being, teachers, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints, all without fear of retribution, censorship or deportation. Educational institutions of a fully democratic nation depend on federal funding, the Rule of Law, protection of the freedom of speech and expression, all of which are now being threatened.
We commit to work together, joining with state and local leaders, students, labor unions, associations, organizations and communities, to form the broadest possible coalition to work against the dangerous slashing of much needed funding for educational programs, especially those that support our students and families most in need across our nation. We all need to stand up and be counted now or we will be remembered as among those who impeded our nation’s educational system to the detriment of our Democracy.
/s/ Karen Gross, Carol Linscott, Sakina McGruder, Pat Neal, Elizabeth Tarner, Edward K.S. Wang
77
The Issue
The Educators’ Pledge: Standing Strong for All Students
June 2025
As participants in America’s educational system, we are deeply concerned about the unprecedented federal government overreach and political interference now endangering early childhood through adulthood education. While we recognize the importance of reasoned, researched reform and legitimate government oversight, we are profoundly troubled by the slashing and/or eradication of wide-ranging programs and grant funding -- all of which negatively impact literally millions of students, teachers and families in our nation.
Through the federal government, there has historically been critical and significant support for our most vulnerable students and communities. Key support has existed for research on a wide range of topics to measure educational outcomes and ensure fairness, enforcement of the civil rights and liberties of students and encouragement of high school graduation and progression to, and success in, technical programs/apprenticeships and colleges/universities.
Because of these very opportunities and freedoms, American educational institutions are essential to our nation’s prosperity and serve as productive partners with government and our communities in promoting the common good, including as engines of opportunity and mobility and contributors to economic and cultural vitality. They foster knowledge, creativity and innovation and are major employers. They engage in and support research, and many provide needed academic supports as well as food and mental and physical healthcare and other essential services to students and families.
Our students and our society will pay the price for the abridgement of these freedoms and government support for education. We must allow our schools, colleges and universities to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, knowledge and well-being, teachers, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints, all without fear of retribution, censorship or deportation. Educational institutions of a fully democratic nation depend on federal funding, the Rule of Law, protection of the freedom of speech and expression, all of which are now being threatened.
We commit to work together, joining with state and local leaders, students, labor unions, associations, organizations and communities, to form the broadest possible coalition to work against the dangerous slashing of much needed funding for educational programs, especially those that support our students and families most in need across our nation. We all need to stand up and be counted now or we will be remembered as among those who impeded our nation’s educational system to the detriment of our Democracy.
/s/ Karen Gross, Carol Linscott, Sakina McGruder, Pat Neal, Elizabeth Tarner, Edward K.S. Wang
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Petition created on June 6, 2025