The growing trend of education privatization threatens the accessibility and quality of education for, Black, Brown, and lower-income families. Massachusetts’s passage of the bill tying teachers’ wages to MCAS scores further deepened and perpetuated this education inequality. It is not new knowledge that standardized test scores more accurately reflect one’s socioeconomic status–and not necessarily mastery of school subjects. Again, we see lower-income families and families of color contend with a system increasingly straying from their best interests.
School privatization is an issue that Jordan Berg Powers, the Executive Director of Mass Alliance, and progressive partners have fought for years. In response, Jordan Berg Powers’ worked with allies to create a model organization that could bring together parents, students, and activists to partner with the institutional players, and the teachers’ unions to fight for a more equitable school system instead of privatization. This and other collaborative efforts evolved into the creation Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance (MEJA)–founded to advocate for education rights.