Leonie Haimson

Leonie Haimson is a New York City resident and education advocate. She is the founder and executive director of Class Size Matters, a non-profit organization based in New York City that advocates for smaller classes in the city’s public schools and the nation as a whole.^[1][2] Haimson also serves as a board member of the Network for Public Education, is on the Steering Committee of New York State Allies for Education, and has appeared as a spokesperson for various education policies on many television and radio shows.^[3][4] The New York Times has called her the “city’s leading proponent of smaller classes.”^[5]

Advocacy

Haimson founded Class Size Matters, a non profit based in New York City, to advocate for class size reduction in New York City public schools as well as nation wide. The organization is dedicated to providing information on the wide-ranging benefits of smaller classes, particularly for at-risk children, to boost student learning, engagement, and graduation rates, and lower disciplinary referrals.^[1][2]

She was a co-founder of Parents Across America, and is currently a board member of the Network for Public Education.^[3][4] She is on the Steering Committee of New York State Allies for Education, a coalition of groups which led the opt-out movement across NY State, leading to 20% of children refusing the state exams in 2015.^[6]

She has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Good Day NY, WNBC News, and numerous other television and radio shows.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} Her articles and opinion pieces have been published in Education Week, the New York Times, the Nation, New York Daily News, InsideSchools, In These Times, the Washington Post Answer Sheet, Gothamschools/Chalkbeat, Schoolbook, Gotham Gazette, Huffington Post, and elsewhere.^{[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]}

inBloom and student privacy

Leonie Haimson led the nationwide fight against inBloom Inc., a corporation established by the Gates Foundation with $100 million in funding, designed to collect and share the personally identifiable data of public school students from nine states and school districts.^[22][23][24] After every district and state withdrew from inBloom because of parent protests, the corporation closed its doors in April 2014.^[25][26] In July 2014, she co-founded the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, a national organization focused on protecting the privacy and security of personally identifiable student data.^[27]

Awards and notoriety

In 2007, she received the John Dewey award from the United Federation of Teachers; she was named one of the city’s “family heroes” by NYC Family Magazine in 2008, and was honored as an “Extraordinary Advocate for our Children” by Advocates for Justice in 2012.^[28] In 2014, she received the “Parent Voice” award from Parents Across America for her work defeating inBloom Inc.^[29] In 2015, she was cited as one of the ten most influential people in education technology by Tech and Learning magazine.^[30]

Haimson writes for the NYC Public School Parent blog, where in 2012, she first revealed the existence of the absurd Pineapple passage on the Pearson-produced NY state exams, a story which quickly became viral and became emblematic of the lack of proper oversight and accountability of standardized exams.^[31][32][33] In May 2015, John Oliver did a segment on the Pineapple passage during his HBO show.^[34]

In 2015, she saved the city hundreds of millions of dollars by alerting elected officials and the media to an inflated $1.1 billion contract to be awarded to a company that had engaged in a kickback scheme just a few years before.^[35][36]

Personal life and education

Haimson is a graduate of Harvard College with a BA in Social Studies (Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.) She was a public school parent for fifteen years, and first became involved in advocating for smaller classes when her first child was in first grade, as described in a New York Times profile.^[37] She worked for the Educational Priorities Panel until she started Class Size Matters in 2000.

She is married to climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who holds the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University.^[38] They have two children, Chloe and Nathaniel.

References