OUR MEMBERS
Office of Mayor Kevin Johnson, Sacramento, CA
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has a deep interest in public education and is committed to ensuring all children have the opportunity to attend excellent public schools. In March 2009, the Mayor hosted an Education Summit as a means to begin a community-wide dialogue about how the city’s leaders and community members can best support improvement of the public education system. A key recommendation from the Summit was to create a 501(c)3 – STAND UP for Great Schools Sacramento – a non-profit organization created to support education innovation and reform, and spearhead the development of the city’s education agenda.
STAND UP is a start-up education non-profit dedicated to ensuring every child has the opportunity to attend an excellent public school. It is their mission to inform, empower and mobilize the community to advocate for and support public schools that attain high levels of academic achievement and college completion for all children.
STAND UP has five core beliefs: Kids Come First, Great Teachers Matter, Parents Deserve Choices, Measure and Reward Results, and Invest in What Works. Nearly 2,000 concerned community members have endorsed those values and become members of STAND UP. Over the next three years, they hope to grow their membership to 5,000.
STAND UP educates and mobilizes their members around five priority areas:
- Human Capital: Improve teacher and principal quality
- Accountability: Enhance transparency around school performance and quality
- School Choice: Increase the range of school options available to parents and students
- Parent Engagement: Equip parents with the tools to advocate for their children’s success
- Effective Policy: Promote local, state and national reforms that catalyze systemic change
STAND UP’s goal is to identify and address the city’s education challenges in order to create an environment that is results-oriented and embraces innovation. The work of STAND UP focuses on increasing academic achievement to eliminate achievement gaps in student performance as well as school graduation and college completion rates. To accomplish these goals STAND UP educates the community about the state of crisis in education, provides the community with tools to engage in the education reform process, and guides the community in lending their voice to the cause of education reform. STAND UP also seeks to partner with the nation’s leading entrepreneurial education organizations to bring education reform resources to Sacramento.
To date STAND UP has:
- Established a City Schools Collaborative, which aligns efforts of the five area superintendents with city services to carry out city wide initiatives
- Launched a citywide campaign- Sacramento READS! Literacy by Third Grade Campaign, aiming to make Sacramento the first city in the country where all students are reading at grade level by third grade
- Raised the funds and created the will necessary to bring Teach for American and City Year to Sacramento
STAND UP is actively seeking to partner with the following organizations: