Statement on CEPS Campaign
Communities for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS) is a coalition of 35 local, state and national parent, student and community organizing groups. CEPS has launched a national campaign calling for dramatic action to improve low performing schools by emphasizing research-based education practices and parent, student and community engagement. Much of the current public debate over the Obama Administration’s Blueprint for Education Reform has focused on strategies to improve low-performing schools. CEPS provides a vehicle for low-income parents and communities to impact a public policy that will shape their children’s education and their local communities for years to come.
In February 2010, Communities for Public Education Reform (CPER), a collaboration of over fifty foundations, provided a planning grant to convene community-based organizations and provide a unified voice in federal education policy debates. Less than six months later, CEPS was formally launched with the release of a groundbreaking report on federal policies to improve—or turnaround—the nation’s lowest performing schools. The CEPS report, prepared in partnership with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, contains the only comprehensive national data base of schools targeted for intervention under the Administration’s School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. It offers a well-researched critique of the current DOE policies and proposes a positive alternative policy.
CEPS continues to work as a coalition to give parents, students and community members a voice in the development of federal policy that affect the students and schools in their communities.
