Is Obama Going to Sellout Education

Barrack Obama has a huge job ahead of him.  There’s no way to express in any language how huge that job is, and part of solving the problems we’ve been left with is to bring this country back together, to find common ground and build on it.

“But, Barrack Obama, please don’t do it through our children.”

Apparently, on the short list for Secretary of Education are Joel Klein and Arne Duncan, now running the New York and Chicago school systems.  I’ve not followed either of them (though I am somewhat impressed by the fact that Arne attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools), but apparently they have both seen test-prep style education reforms as the answer to failing schools.

For a rather irreverent expression of objection to these two candidates for Secretary of Education, read this piece (Obama’s “Way-to-Go, Brownie!” Moment?) from The Huffington Post.  Be warned that this is an out of the closet Liberal online journal.  I consider myself to be liberal, but I find the liberal voice to be as irritating as that issued from conservative media outlets.

Still, we do not need a politician or a lawyer running the department of education.  We desperately need an educator.  This country needs much more than to merely reform schooling.  It needs to retool the classroom, and no one can lead this cause who has never been a teacher.

Indications are that there is a struggle going on among the transition team, one school urging a “raise the standards and increase the rigor” approach, and the other faction advocating more fundamental changes.  The “rigor” rhetoric seems to be winning out.

I urge all educator bloggers to shout at the tops of your blog editors,

Don’t sellout education, Obama!

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12 thoughts on “Is Obama Going to Sellout Education”

  1. Despite six years of the Klein administration’s misinformation to the public, there is sufficient data to prove that his reforms have been basically ineffectual and have produced no significant improvement in student achievement.

    The Klein administration claims of a 12 percent increase in Reading and a 19 percent increase in Math scores on the New York State Assessments are inflated. These results include the scores obtained in 2002-2003 well before the implementation of Klein’s reforms. Without the 6 percent increase in Reading and the 15 percent in Math in 2002 – 2003, the figures read a dismal 6.4 percent rise in Reading and only 4.2 percent in Mathematics.

    The only independent check on student achievement in New York City also shows a completely different picture from that claimed by Klein. The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress administered by the US Department of Education, considered the gold standard in testing, show that student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003 with virtually no improvements for Black, Hispanic and low income students. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/dst2007/2008455.pdf

    We need real accountability and transparency, not Klein’s version of it. Mr. Klein’s public relations team has made sure assessment information is not accurately presented to the public. The failure of Klein’s reforms become all the more evident when we consider all assessment measures – declining SAT and High Schools Advanced Placement Subject Tests, one of the worst graduation rates in the country (43rd out of 50 large US cities), a 50 percent drop in students attending gifted programs in NYC, etc.

    I am a recently retired principal of NYC schools with forty years experience and can assure you that Klein has done great damage to our schools through his unaccountable, dictatorial and ill-guided administration. We need someone with a background in education who realizes that a school is not corporate enterprise.

  2. I agree that we need a k-12 educator as our secretary of education. We have had exactly one k-12 teacher as a Secretary of Education…EVER! I realize that the Secretary of Education does need to have experience running a huge bureaucratic organization, but they also need to have a vision for what education should look like in a 21st century America. Politicians and lawyers aren’t spending every day in schools with students, fulfilling their needs and inspiring their learning. How can you lead a nation of educators if your only experience with k-12 education has been from the student side of the desk? How can you know the needs of ALL the students in the classroom if you only experienced 1/24th or 1/30 of the student needs…yours. Politicians are trying to shove children of all shapes and sizes into a cookie-cutter education. Testing and accountability have become the hammer rather than the ruler of education reform.
    I have already written my letter. Right after the election I wrote this Dear Mr. Obama open letter on my blog. Now the rest of you need to write yours?

  3. David,

    I am a supporter of President-Elect Obama and remain cautiously optimistic about education policies, but have less evidence each day tha things will be different.

    You and your readers would enhance their citizenship by considering the following articles:

    Why Australia Worries Me About Barack Obama
    http://www.stager.org/blog/2008/12/why-australia-worries-me-about-barack.html

    Why I’m Scared to Death About Obama’s Education Plan
    http://www.stager.org/blog/2008/11/why-im-scared-to-death-about-obamas.html

    Alfie Kohn has written an important article for a forthcoming issue of The Nation regarding the controversy surrounding the nomination for Secretary of Education. It should be read, widely circulated and discussed.
    http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/soe.htm

    There seems to be an unholy alliance between the higher meaner tougher standards and testing folks, the Gates Foundation, Eli Broad and Teacher for America who are mobilizing their forces and feeding the mainstream media to redefine “reform” and promote incompetence over expertise. If they succeed, terrible practices like NCLB, merit pay and “running schools like businesses” will be amplified and fortified.

    In the post-NCLB-through-the-looking-glass world of public education policy, “reform” apparently means teacher bashing, more testing, scripted curricula privatization and greater centralization of education. This is clearly on the wrong side of history. Qualified apparently means little or no knowledge of how people learn.

    I can reduce my recommendation for Obama’s education policy to one sentence. “President and First Lady Obama should pay very close attention to the education their daughters enjoy at Sidwell Friends School and copy those experiences for every child in America.” Simple!

    Oh yeah, it’s also 180 degrees from current public education policy.

  4. Agreed. I’d also like to take a moment to comment that, not only should the new Secretary of Education be an educator, but that districts also consider tech-literate educators to be their technology directors. It’s important that tech directors understand education – and who better than a tech-literate teacher at the helm of that ship.

  5. Unfortunately, my friend, the government only answer to failing strategy is: wait for it, …wait for it, … throw more money to the problem.

    We have being doing that forever and has not worked.

    Oh well, here we go again…

    (By the way, even though I am a Conservative, I know that neither party has the solution, since neither group learns from their mistakes.

    Respectfully;
    Joe

    1. …and both parties seem more focused on perpetuating their own power structure than solving real problems. It’s why I’m advocating an educator as Secretary of Education.

      As for the politics, I’m hoping that we’ll see something different in Barack Obama — and I scared to death that I’ll be disappointed.

      Thanks…

  6. All I know is I don’t think I care who is secretary, as long as they get rid of the NCLB. What is a secretary needed for anyway? But do get the special ed. kids out of the mainstream classroom. The sped kids don’t want to be there and mainsteam kids don’t want them there. How would you like to be an idiot surrounded by normal people? How would you like to be average and surrounded by college people? I hated it.
    Also, why get someone that knows everything about education who can fool everyone. I would rather have someone that is honest.

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