Laura Waters

Laura Waters is the founder and managing editor of New Jersey Education Report, formerly a senior writer/editor with brightbeam. Laura writes about New Jersey and New York education policy and politics. As the daughter of New York City educators and parent of a son with special needs, she writes frequently about the need to listen to families and ensure access to good public school options for all. She is based in New Jersey, where she and her husband have raised four children. She recently finished serving 12 years on her local school board in Lawrence, New Jersey, where she was president for nine of those years. Early in her career, she taught writing to low-income students of color at SUNY Binghamton through an Educational Opportunity Program.

Posts By Laura Waters

IEP

I Thought Vouchers Were Wrong, But Now I Realize They Helped My Son

Recently I wrote that a residency hearing with two children, Kayla and Tasha, represented to me our deeply-embedded structural inequities in education that decades of initiatives, as well as...

public schools

Khaliah Fitchett on Going From Handcuffs to Running for Congress

One afternoon in March 2010, Khaliah Fitchette, a 16-year-old student at Newark’s University High School, was riding home on a NJ Transit bus with her friends when an intoxicated man slid off his...

Politics

Think Your Vote Doesn't Matter? Then Vote Local.

National media is entirely preoccupied by Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s ongoing barroom brawl. But there are 95,000 other seats across America up for grabs in our local towns and cities; in fact,...

Charter Schools

Karega Rausch Says Charter Schools Get Better Outcomes for Kids When They Listen to Communities

With all the ruckus around charter schools, it’s easy to forget they can’t be painted with a broad brush. Each state has its own charter school law, its own educational politics, its own ways of...

Charter Schools

You Can Hate Trump and Support School Choice

Every time Donald Trump says, “school choice is the civil rights issue of our time,” I cringe. It’s hard to think of a more debauched messenger for a parent-powered social justice movement based on...

student achievement

After a Decade of Opposing Voucher Programs, I’m Wondering If I Was Wrong

I smiled at the two little girls seated across the table in the school board conference room but only six-year-old Kayla, wriggling in her pink winter jacket and kicking her feet, returned a...

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