With teacher shortages already hammering school districts, local colleges said that they don’t even have enough students who want to be teachers . . . . "The pipeline is unfortunately slowing to a trickle. . . . " [said Heather Sparks, director of teacher education at OCU and a VOICE leader].

Among some of the first issues VOICE sought to address were concerns about policies and experiences of families in our public schools.

Working with VOICE, we learned that one-quarter of the children who failed the third-grade reading test were English language learners.

We heard from parents of a third grader who had to be prescribed anti-anxiety medication because of the pressure to pass the third grade reading test.

Our most important accomplishment has been building an organization that has crossed the lines that usually separate people — race, ethnicity, religious, political, economic, educational.