Live Long and Prosper...

IN NOVEMBER: DUMP DEVOS


The upcoming election gives us the chance to change the occupant of the White House, which would also, thankfully, remove the person who purchased the office of Secretary of Education.

Betsy DeVos's tenure at the US Education Department has not gone well. From her lack of educational qualifications to the "Where are the pencils" tweet to the attempt to "strip public money from public schools," she has shown, to put it mildly, a general lack of interest in public schools.

The vast majority of American students attend public schools and they will all benefit when "dead end" DeVos goes back to her Michigan mansion and her yachts.

But who should replace her? Joe Biden, should he take the Presidential 0ath of Office on January 20, 2021, will nominate someone other than DeVos for Secretary, and he has promised to nominate a teacher.

But if you've been a public school educator in the last 20 years, you know that a promise from any presidential candidate, Republican or Democratic, about public education is questionable. Before DeVos, public schools suffered through sixteen years of attack from two different administrations. Peter Greene, in Forbes, tackles the question. Read the entire article...I'll wait...

Who Should Biden Pick As Education Secretary?

Of course, he has to win first. But Joe Biden comes into the race carrying the education baggage of the Obama administration, and an announcement of a good ed secretary, even a short list, could help whip up some teacher enthusiasm. Also, it’s far more pleasant to imagine what Biden could do than to contemplate more years of Betsy DeVos in the office...

...when the campaign puts together a search committee to narrow down the field, that committee should be loaded with public school teachers as well. Start soon; teachers are going to be extra busy this fall. And teachers—if you don ‘t get the call to help out, send the campaign your picks anyway.

AN UNFORTUNATE TRADITION

It's been a tradition for American presidents – since Jimmy Carter – to nominate someone unqualified to the office of Secretary of Education. A quick glance at past Secretaries would give you enough information to understand that the position is not reserved for educators, but for political boosters and hacks.

Of the eleven past and current Secretaries of the US Education Department, only a handful have had any experience in public education or even K-12 education.

John King, the previous Secretary, taught for 3 years (yep...three whole years) and became the hated state education chief in New York. Terrell Bell, who got fired from his job as Secretary after one term because he knew too much about education, was a high school teacher and administrator. Rod Paige, who equated teachers who belonged to their teachers' union with terrorists, also had education training and earned his stripes as the Superintendent of Schools in Houston during the "Texas Miracle" which turned out to be no miracle at all.

Arne Duncan was the "CEO" of Chicago Public Schools – because "CEO" means that we're running a school system like a business so it's all good – and he got that job because...why? His mom was a tutor and he watched her (see here, here, and here).

The rest of the pack's knowledge of public education was either as a parent, such as Margaret Spellings whose web page at the U.S. ED said that she was qualified because she was a mom or because they might have been a student in a public school...once.

In other words, knowing anything about K-12 public education has rarely, if ever, been a requirement for the job of U.S. Secretary of Education.

It's time to change that!


CHOOSE A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER

Nearly any American public school teacher would make a better Secretary of Education for the United States than Betsy DeVos.

Take me for example...

Like DeVos, I have no experience at running any organization the size of the U.S. ED. And I don't have her millions of dollars to purchase politicians. On the other hand, I have more than sixty years of experience as a student, teacher, parent, and volunteer in public education compared to DeVos's zero years. I have been a teacher of students from age 4 through adult at the elementary school, community college, and university levels. In fact, I have more K-12 teaching experience than any previous Secretary of Education.

And like most American educators...

• I know the difference between growth and proficiency.

• I understand that federal laws apply to all schools receiving federal dollars.

• I believe that all children are entitled to a free, appropriate, public education.

• I believe that public education is a public responsibility which, if fully supported, benefits all citizens, and provides for a more productive society.

• I believe that if private or privately run schools accept public dollars then they should be held to the same standards and restrictions as public schools.

• I believe that all schools accepting public funds should accept and provide an appropriate education for all students no matter how expensive they are to educate.

• I don't think that grizzly bears are a sufficient reason for arming school employees.

But I'm not the only one.

Most American public school teachers know more about public education than most of the previous Secretaries of Education, and it's likely that any public school teacher in America knows more about public education than Betsy DeVos.

The nation's children would be better served with an education professional as the U.S. Secretary of Education, than with someone like Betsy DeVos, who has no understanding of teaching and learning, and whose only interest in public education is to destroy it.

Peter Greene suggests that you send the Biden campaign your suggestions for a qualified, public-school-experienced, Secretary of Education. I think that's a good idea.

Update: An earlier version of this post mistakenly stated that Luke Messer was an Indiana state legislator. He is, in fact, the U.S. Representative for Indiana's 6th district.


Has there ever been an Attorney General who didn't have a law degree?

Have we ever had a Surgeon General who wasn't a medical professional?

Why has one administration after another installed non-educators – amateurs – as their Secretary of Education?

Since Jimmy Carter first appointed Judge Shirley Hufstedler in 1979 most subsequent Secretaries of Education had never seen the inside of a K-12 classroom since their childhoods. An educator as the Secretary of Education has been the exception instead of the rule.

How is it justified? One example is Margaret Spellings (B.A. Political Science, Univ. of Houston), Secretary under George W. Bush. She claimed that she was qualified for the position because she was a mom. [Apparently North Carolina thinks that is a good enough qualification and has made her head of the University of North Carolina system.] It's the same mentality that presumes that "anyone can be a teacher" – the same mentality that has perpetrated the low status, poor pay and working conditions, and disrespect of the teaching profession for decades.

President-elect Trump is promising to continue this unfortunate tradition.


A BASKET OF AMATEURS

The people who have been rumored as candidates for the position of Secretary of Education in the new administration have all been not only unqualified, but every one of them is a "reformer". Anyone of them would be, as the President-elect of Superlatives would say, "a total disaster."

We began with Ben Carson. The fact that he's not an educator and has never been an educator isn't enough to reject him any more than it has been for any other President. However, in a moment of uncharacteristic clarity, Dr. Carson recognized his own lack of credentials for the job and removed himself from consideration. The parade of educationally challenged candidates for the most important education position in the country followed.

There's Williamson Evers, a Libertarian turned Republican, and an "education expert" at the Hoover Institution. He has a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in political science. His only experience in public education is as a political activist working against public education.

The name of Tony Bennett was mentioned, probably on a recommendation from VP-elect Pence. Bennett is an authentic educator, trained at an actual university's education school, and former head of the Education Departments in Indiana and Florida. He doesn't, however, care much about public education, preferring to get campaign contributions from private and charter school operators. Of all the candidates mentioned, Tony Bennett is, at least on paper, qualified to do the job. However, his history of incompetence and alleged criminal activity during his tenure as Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction would should disqualify him.

Luke Messer, is an Indiana congressman, who sits on the Education committee in the U.S. House. Messer formed the Congressional School Choice Caucus and has supported measures to allow federal funds to be used for "choice." Messer is an attorney, not an educator.

Following in quick succession, we heard that Trump was considering...

• Eva Moskowitz, a charter charlatan who's trying to take over New York City's schools one building at a time. She has a B.A. and a Ph.D. in History.

• Michelle Rhee, who bullied her way into, through, and out of the D.C. schools leaving a poorly investigated testing scandal in her wake, and who has been the champion of charters and the Common Core. Rhee, who taught for three years under Teach For America, has a B.A. in Government, and a Masters in Public Policy.

• Kevin Chavous, a former personal-injury lawyer turned politician who cofounded DFER and is intent on turning public schools into profit mills.

• Betsy DeVos, a right wing, anti-union, anti-public education, religious right zealot who has spent millions trying to kill public education. DeVos attended a parochial school in high school, followed by Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI where she graduated with a Bachelors degree in Business Administration and Political Science.

Two of the previous eight candidates have actual public school teaching experience (Bennett and Rhee), and only one (Bennett) has a degree in education, but all eight of them are advocates for school privatization under the guise of "choice."


HISTORICAL INTERLUDE

The latest threat for the position is Jerry Falwell Jr.

Before we talk about him, I just want to mention that his father, Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University and blamer of terrorism on abortionists, feminists and gays, once said of public schools,

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

Contrast that with Founding Father John Adams who said,

The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.

TEACHERS NOT PREACHERS

So, Jerry Falwell Jr. is the latest rumored candidate for the Secretary of Education. He, like most of the others has no experience in K-12 education, except as a student, but even that was not in public schools. Falwell Jr. went to parochial schools, then attended his father's Liberty University where he earned a B.A. in Religious Studies. He then went to law school at the University of Virginia.

Trump Considering Creationist Jerry Falwell Jr. For Position In Department Of Education

Those “passions” include teaching creationism instead of evolution, teaching that being gay is a sin, promoting the idea of taxpayer money funding religious schools via school vouchers and repealing the Johnson Amendment so that tax-exempt universities such as his, alongside houses of worship, can endorse political candidates.

...So it comes as no surprise that Trump, who bases a lot of his decisions on who’s blindly loyal to him, is likely to make Falwell Jr. a part of his administration. However, it should worry anyone who cares about the future of our public school system.

Falwell and his gang have a plan for public schools: If they can’t turn them into fundamentalist Christian academies, they’d like to drain their funding away and move to a voucher system of taxpayer-funded private schools, most of them religious in nature.

Placing Falwell, or for that matter, any of the above candidates, in the office of Secretary of Education, would be a direct attack on public schools, and public school children.

Brace yourselves...

PERSONAL ATTACKS ARE TAKEN PERSONALLY

A letter to the governor: This is what I take personally

A high school teacher, tired of being vilified by politicians who have no idea what it's like to teach in a public school, responded to the governor of Indiana.

Indiana's official test, ISTEP, has had a rough time lately. It was invalid, unreliable, poorly administered by the testing company, and then beset with problems during scoring. The test was harder than in previous years because: "rigor." Once the scoring was finally finished, the government decided that more students had to fail and raised the cut scores. Cut scores, remember, are arbitrary and don't reflect anything other than the whim of, in this case, the State Board of Education. The governor, Mike Pence, told teachers in Indiana not to take it personally when the scores were low...even though the scores are used to evaluate them, determine their pay, and grade their schools.

When attacks are so obviously aimed at teachers, their public schools, and their students, it's hard not to take it personally.

From Donna Roof...

When I see individuals with no educational or teaching experience making decisions that affect students and teachers, I take it personally.

When I see teachers not being viewed as the experts of the classroom, I take it personally. [emphasis in original]

TEACHERS KEEP WORKING

Carol Burris: New York’s Teacher Evaluation Crashes and Burns, Again

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001, America's teachers have continued to go to work every day, helping the children of the nation grow and learn. Despite the misinformation, distortions, and outright lies, teachers continue to do their job. Despite the public trashing of teachers, professional educators thicken their skin, close their eyes and ears to the noise from without, and take up the task of educating the next generation of citizens.

From Carol Burris...

Meanwhile, teachers and principals go about their daily responsibilities, trying to educate the state’s children, while the politicians continue to meddle in matters they don’t understand.

MEDDLING MEDDLERS

Gates Foundation put millions of dollars into new education focus: Teacher preparation

Bill Gates has no idea what public education is. At age 13 he started at Lakeside School, a private preparatory school in Seattle. He never studied education. He never taught in public schools. He dropped out of college and became a billionaire. Money, however, does not qualify one to make educational policy for the nation.

From Valerie Strauss...

There are already excellent working models for just about everything that Gates has funded in public education in the last 15 years — how to design and operate small schools, quality standards, fair and reliable teacher evaluation, and now, teacher prep. How many times do educators need to attempt to reinvent the wheel just because someone with deep pockets wants to try when the money could almost certainly be more usefully spent somewhere else?

NOW IT'S NOT FAIR

Selective outrage about testing

As long as the the schools which were damaged by inadequate, faulty standardized tests weren't in their systems, local superintendents were free to ignore what was going on. Now, the final attack against Indiana's public education is underway. The state is poised to claim that half of our schools are "failures" opening the door to opening more privately run charter schools and giving more money to religious groups, sucking the funds meant for real public schools.

Now local superintendents are stepping up and decrying the attack on public education. It's about time.

From Steve Hinnefeld...

Indiana schools have finally received their preliminary 2015 ISTEP test results, and school officials aren’t happy. Superintendents, especially, are pushing back hard.

In media stories and statements to the public, they have called aspects of this year’s tests “not fair,” “a complete fiasco” and “almost unfathomable.” The setting of grades, they said, was arbitrary and invalid.

On the one hand, good for them. On the other, where were they when test scores and a similarly arbitrary process were being used to label other people’s schools as failing?

STILL NOT QUALIFIED

NC: Queen of NCLB Takes Over University

Margaret Spellings, the Secretary of Education during Bush II's second term, had a big part in the NCLB law. Now, as the President of the University of North Carolina system she brings her lack of education expertise to the post secondary level.

Spellings, who has a bachelor's degree in political science, claimed that she was qualified to be the US Secretary of Education because she was a mom. It was her idea to fail third graders who "didn't pass the test." She was stuck in the false dichotomy of retention in grade or social promotion. The truth is Spellings was never qualified to be Secretary of Education. She was never qualified to do anything in the field of education. She's just one more, in a long line of political hacks, who needed a patronage job and was dumped on the nation's schools.

On Monday Spellings doubled down on NCLB...despite its widely recognized failure...despite the damage done to America's public schools by obsessive and punitive testing. She still voices the opinion that schools fail – and by "fail" she means test scores – when the truth, to anyone with the brains to see it, is that society fails. Spellings is still not qualified to pontificate about public education. She's barely qualified to erase the chalkboards...

From Peter Greene...

...the most troubling part of this is that Spellings was there in Texas and DC with Bush and Rod Paige, which means she had front row seats for the massive fiction that was the Texas Miracle. It was the Texas Miracle that was used to sell us No Child Left Behind, which means that anybody involved in that sales job ends up looking like either a fool or a liar.

"YOU COULD DO SO MUCH BETTER...

When People Say "Just Try Harder" to People with ADHD

...if you would just try harder." I heard that for most of my student years. My mother always told me that my "I will..." was less than my "I can..."

It wasn't until I was an adult and learned about ADHD that I realized that it wasn't a question of me trying harder...it was a question of me not being able to control the distractions that prevented me from learning. It took me until adulthood to realize I wasn't lazy, stupid, or crazy.

From Dana Rayburn...

The “just try harder” approach touches a nerve in me. Like most adults with ADHD, I have a long, unpleasant history with those words. My elementary school teachers wrote on my report cards, “If only Dana would try harder….” Teachers said the same thing in junior high and high school.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA

Freedom vs. Fear: Restricting Religious Liberty Isn't The Answer To Terrorism

From Rob Boston...

...when you hear someone begin a sentence with a phrase like “All Muslims,” “Islam says” or even “Muslims believe,” stop and think. The statement that will flow from that isn’t likely to be accurate. Muslims account for 1.6 billion people in the world. It’s absurd to think a body that large all would believe the same thing. The 2.2 billion Christians in the world certainly don’t.

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

For over a decade...“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

DEFIES MEASUREMENT

See "Defies Measurement"

Peter Greene at Curmudgucation dominates today's medley. First he reviews a movie which you should watch. It's online...it's free...and it's excellent. You can download it and share it with colleagues and friends.

Let me cut to the chase-- I cannot recommend enough that you watch Defies Measurement, a new film by Shannon Puckett...

...Alan Stoskopf, Alfie Kohn, Anthony Cody, David Berliner, David Kirp, Diane Ravitch, Fred Abrams, Howard Gardner, Jason France, Joan Duvall-Flynn, Jordyn Schwartz, Julian Vasquez-Heilig, Karen Klein, Karran Harper-Royal, Ken Wesson, Linda Darling-Hammond, Mark Naison, Martin Malstron, Mercedes Scneider, Robert Crease, Susan Kovalik, and Tony Wagner.

WHY DO YOU TEACH?

With Fewer New Teachers, Why Do Some Stick Around?

NPR did an article about the looming teacher shortage. Then they did a follow up with quotes from teachers who were not at all surprised. I think they may have been surprised actually...

Finally, they posted a third installment -- a piece about how there are still teachers who love to teach...

In 2012, The Gates Foundation (which supports NPR's coverage of education) surveyed more than 10,000 public school teachers—to find out what factors were important in retaining good teachers. 68 percent said that supportive leadership was "absolutely essential." Only 34 percent said the same about higher salaries.

Complete with quotes from teachers who love their jobs...

I stay because I love the kids. When I close the classroom door, and it's just the kids and me, I see in them so much potential. They need people who believe in them, people who help them become the best person they can be.

TEACHER SHORTAGES-WHO WILL TEACH THE NEXT GENERATION?

Schools Nationwide Struggle with Substitute Teacher Shortage

Fewer and fewer college students are going into education. In addition, the shortage of substitutes will complicate the problem even more.

Not every "reformer" is out to kill the teaching profession, but the "reform" movement is playing into the hands of those who are. Fewer teachers means states will lower the qualifications to be a teacher in order to fill teaching positions.

In Indiana, for example, you can become a high school teacher if you have a degree, a B average and work experience in a field. You can start teaching with no "instructional expertise" and no training in "effective classroom assessment practices, analysis of student data, recognition of exceptional learners and modification of curriculum and instruction."

This is a way to deprofessionalize the teaching profession...no more career teachers spending their lives at one school where they teach generations of students. No more messy worries about a teachers union as teacher-temps shuffle in and out every few years.

A frequent source of substitutes has been education majors looking for experience. But officials say fewer college students are choosing teaching as a career path, in part because of recent layoffs and concerns about new education standards, including efforts in some states to link teacher evaluations with student test scores.

"There have been so many stories about the quality of public education that many of us have conjectured that really impacted both students and their parents to say, `Why would I go into education and face all of that?'" said Jill Shedd, assistant dean for teacher education at Indiana University.

SHARE THE RESPONSIBILITY

The Big Error of School Accountability

When will policy makers accept their share of responsibility for public education?

The authors have shifted totally from an inconvenient conversation about fair and equitable investment in children and communities—investment that is adequate and comparable regardless of a student’s zip code or skin color—to one about holding children and communities responsible for their own outcomes. Accountability is constructed on the principle of blame and consequences as leverage to move schools and kids forward (blame and consequences, it should be noted, entirely directed at the teachers and students, with no consequence whatsoever reserved for citizens outside the schoolhouse who may or may not provide adequate fiscal supports for schools and children). At the urging of testing advocates like the authors of this essay, educational improvement via punitive test-based policies has eclipsed humane concepts of shared assistance and support for hurting American children (particularly anything resembling the investment of tax receipts) as the “civil rights issue of our time.” Educational accountability is designed as a low-cost replacement for social responsibility.

SPELLINGS THINKS TESTING IS PROGRESS

Don't Dilute the Progress That's Been Made

Margaret Spellings, who was the George W. Bush's second Secretary of Education (after Rod Paige), doubles down on No Child Left Behind. Her bio, when she was in office, suggested that she was qualified to lead the nation's education system because she was "a mom." Parents, of course, must have a voice in America's education policy, but policy ought to be developed by those who understand the field. You wouldn't hire a baker to run a legal firm simply because the baker had used legal services in the past. Education professionals ought to be in the front lines of determining education policy, but educators are rarely consulted or involved in state and federal policies.

Had Spellings ever been a K-12 public school teacher she would understand that standardized testing isn't the be-all and end-all of keeping parents informed about their students' progress.

As someone who was on the front lines of the deliberations on No Child Left Behind when it became law in 2002, I know that annual assessment data, required under the law, is critical to informing parents, teachers and the public about how all students are performing.

Spellings Remains Steadfastly Wrong

Peter Greene has a nice comeback. Just because you want something to be true doesn't make it so.

...the standardized test does not become an accurate measure of a student's entire life prospects just because you say so...

WHEN TEST SECURITY TRUMPS USEFULNESS

Pearson Proves PARCC Stinks

One last link to Peter Greene...

Testing has lost all meaning. We don't use tests for informing instruction or helping parents understand how their children are progressing. They are simply a tool to label children, teachers, schools, and states. Once the label is secure, jockeying for profit can begin through legislation, "increased rigor," and the buying and selling of schools. Test security protects investment. The true purpose of assessment has been lost.

The fact that product security trumps use of the product just raises this all to a super-kafka-esque level. It is more important that test security be maintained than it is that teachers and parents get any detailed and useful information from it.

COMMON CORE WAS DESIGNED TO CREATE FAILURE

Common Core does not work because it was never designed to work.

Simply shifting demands down by 1-2 years, with no regard for age/grade appropriateness, is producing the exact failure rates those in charge predicted. Of course in cases where the results do not meet predictions, cut scores are adjusted to guarantee the predicted rate of failure...

We are being told Common Core works from those outside the classroom walls. When do we start to listen to those that actually have to work with the lackluster standards and flawed state tests?

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

...or I agree with him...whichever. On December 27 I wrote:

2. He [Duncan] realizes that if master's degrees in education meant something then his own qualifications would be suspect. He has no educational training. He has never taught in a public school...has never worked in a public school...has never even attended a public school. It's in his best interest to imply that teachers with master's degrees don't know any more than he does with his bachelor's degree in Sociology.

Then, I read this today...

Prediction: Arne Duncan's next move

by Stephen Krashen

I predict that Arne Duncan's next move will be to declare that teachers don't need any kind of degree in education or any course work in education. In fact, he will say they are better off without it.

Guess who has no degrees or course work in education: Arne Duncan. Nor, to my knowledge, has he ever spent any time alone in a room with children or high school students.

And the same is true for many of his advisers.

Analogy: The hospital administrators whose only training is watching Dr. Oz are telling the surgeons how to operate, and are making wild statements about the quality of medical schools and how much preparation medical professionals should have.

This has to stop.

— Stephen Krashen
NCTE Members Open Forum

2010-12-28

And just for the record...Margaret Spellings, Duncan's predecessor at the US DOE had the same qualifications that Duncan has...none.

[Note: You may have noticed that I inserted an apostrophe for "master's degree." When I posted on 12/27, I left it out. I have since checked and found that most (but not all) sources say use the apostrophe. You can read that information here.]

In keeping with tradition, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of New York City, has appointed Cathie Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, to be the new New York City Public Schools Chancellor. She replaces Joel Klein who resigned because, it's "his time to leave."

Why did Bloomberg pick Ms. Black, a publisher with no education credentials?

"She is a superstar manager who has succeeded in the private sector," Bloomberg said of Black.

Asked why he didn't pick somebody with a traditional education background, the mayor said he wanted a chancellor who could build on what Klein started and prepare the city's school children for the jobs of the future.

There are those who believe that, what Klein started," was the demise of the New York City Public School System.

In any case, Bloomberg's appointment of Cathie, "Cheaper than a Hooker," Black, was not shocking. Most top education officials in the nation and in the nation's largest cities are no longer educators.

The US Department of Education was started during the Carter administration. President Carter appointed Shirley Hufstedler, an attorney, as the new Secretary of Education. President Reagan vowed to disband the new department if he was elected, but instead, bucked what was to become tradition and appointed a former high school teacher and bus driver, Terrel Bell, to the Secretary position. That was the last time a public school teacher was appointed to the position. Here's the complete list of the US Secretaries of Education, followed by the president under whom they served, and their profession, college major, or previous occupation.

US Secretaries of Education:

• Shirley Hufstedler (Carter) - Lawyer
• Terrel Bell (Reagan) - High School Teacher and bus driver
• William J Bennett (Reagan) - Lawyer
• Lauro Cavasos (Reagan/Bush I) - College/University Educator
• Lamar Alexandar (Bush I) - Lawyer, Politician, College/University Educator
• Richard Riley (Clinton) - Lawyer
• Roderick Page (Bush II) - College Coach (degree in Education, P.E), Dean, Superintendent
• Margaret Spellings (Bush II) - Poli Sci Major, Political Appointee
• Arne Duncan (Obama) - Sociology Major, Professional Athelete, Charter School Entrepreneur, Chicago Public Schools CEO, Political Appointee

In New York City, none of the last three Chancellors (with Black as the third) were educators. In Los Angeles, the current Superintendent is an educator, but he follows an attorney and a US Naval Officer. Similarly in Chicago, since Mayor Daley took over the schools, the last three CEOs have been political appointees...not one of them had any experience in public education. I haven't researched it, but my guess is that a similar pattern holds true for state superintendents and top school administrators in other large urban districts.

Why is it that educators, people who have actually spent time teaching in public schools, show up so rarely on the list of school administrators at the national and "nation's biggest school systems" level?

Here's one reason...

"Once Vander Ark and Gates shifted their focus from startup schools with proven track records to “school-within-a-school” academies in large, failing urban high schools, it was no surprise to anyone who understood the small-high-schools movement that results would be underwhelming. Vander Ark and Gates ignored the research; they ignored the advice of the successful practitioners; and they acted with arrogance and contempt toward the existing high school faculties, whom they assumed would do what they were told in the academy model." -— David Marshak, Educaton Week online, 2/19/10

...and another...

"No Child Left Behind is part of this global project to deprofessionalize teaching as an occupation. . . . The thinking is that the biggest expenditure in education is teacher salaries. And they want to cut costs. They want to diminish the amount of money that's put into public education. And that means they have to lower teacher costs. And in order to do that, they have to deprofessionalize teaching." —- Lois Weiner, Democracy Now! 9/3/2010

...and again...

"Obama has expanded the importance of standardized testing to determine how much teachers will be paid, which educators will be fired and which schools will be closed -- despite evidence that such practices are harmful." -— Dana Milbank, Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2010

...and more...

"The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them [fads and ill-considered ideas in American Education], for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?" -— Diane Ravitch, The Death & Life of the Great American School System

...and, finally...

"Almost all of Duncan's polices are indebted to the codes of a market-driven business culture, legitimated through discourses of measurement, efficiency and utility. This is a discourse that values hedge fund managers over teachers, privatization over the public good, management over leadership and training over education. Duncan's fervent support of neoliberal values are well-known and are evident in his support for high-stakes testing, charter schools, school-business alliances, merit pay, linking teacher pay to higher test scores, offering students monetary rewards for higher grades, CEO-type management, abolishing tenure, defining the purpose of schooling as largely job training, the weakening of teacher unions and blaming teachers exclusively for the failure of public schooling." -— Henry Giroux, Truthout, May 25, 2010

It's the money...the power. It's politics, not education.

(The last five quotes come from the web page, Notable Quotes, collected by Susan Ohanian.)

A great article on this topic...at the Answer Sheet.

The Secretary of Education said, when talking about firing entire school staffs, "I will tell you what doesn't work. Doing nothing."

He's correct, of course, but his ideas about what to do have been researched and found wanting.

First of all, I have to be honest and admit that in my opinion, Arne Duncan doesn't deserve the office of Secretary of Education any more than Margaret Spelling did. Search out Duncan's biography and you'll find a couple of interesting things. (Read various versions of his bio here, here, here and here.)

First, the man is not an educator. He is a tutor, turned sociology student, turned professional basketball player, turned politician. As a young man, he tutored low income students for his mother's business. He never worked in a school as a teacher. He never had his own classroom with 25 or 30 third graders, or 150 9th graders during a seven period day. He never had to deal, as a classroom teacher, with other teachers, administrators, school board members, or parents.

He worked at his mother's tutoring business. He never went to a public school. He attended the University of Chicago lab school -- his father was a professor at the University of Chicago. He went to Harvard and majored in Sociology and Basketball. After a stint playing pro basketball in Australia he returned to Chicago and ran a tutoring business with his sister...eventually landed a job with the Chicago Public Schools...and found his way to the top as CEO.

He never attended a public school. He studied sociology, not education. He never set foot in a classroom as a teacher.

Duncan claims that Charter Schools are the answer, but Charter Schools, on the whole, don't perform any better than do public schools...on the whole.

The research found that 37 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were significantly below what students would have seen if they had enrolled in local traditional public schools. And 46 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were statistically indistinguishable from the average growth among their traditional public-school companions. That means that only 17 percent of charter schools have growth in math scores that exceeds that of their traditional public-school equivalents by a significant amount.
In reading, charter students on average realized a growth that was less than their public-school counterparts but was not as statistically significant as differences in math achievement, researchers said.

Part two of the Duncan/Obama plan is paying teachers on the basis of their students' test scores...i.e. Merit Pay.

As reported by the Economic Policy Institute, Adams, Heywood and Rothstein said,

...the use of merit pay systems based on quantitative measures is fraught with perverse consequences that often thwart the larger goal of improving the quality of services and outcomes...

Merit pay schemes tend to pit people against each other, in direct contrast to the cooperation and collaborative atmosphere needed in a school setting. Making test scores the end all of education leads to corruption and "doctoring the books" as was clearly demonstrated during the administration of G.W. Bush. The "Texas Miracle" authored by Bush's first Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, turned out to be based on test cheating and pushing students out of school and onto the streets.

Indeed, "Rothstein’s work shows how even the best-intentioned attempts to create systems for measuring performance often subvert the goals and values of the firm or organization being measured."

Duncan's reliance on questionable methods for improving schools shows that he is, at best, unfamiliar with the research and at worst, purposely ignoring it. His lack of qualifications for and dangerous policies as the Secretary of Education calls into question the motives and judgment of President Obama who appointed him.

"I continue to believe that everyone who opines about education should first be required to spend several months in a public school classroom...Only that way can their writing have authenticity. It's called walking around in the other person's shoes." -- Walt Gardner

Other sources:

Texas Merit-Pay Pilot Failed to Boost Student Scores, Study Says

Nine Myths about Public Schools

Top Ten Reasons Why Merit Pay for Teachers is a Terrible Idea

Merit Pay Could Ruin Teacher Teamwork

The Folly of Merit Pay

Kids are tested to death...and we teachers know it. The only ones who don't seem to know this are the ones who mandate the testing.

It comes from the state houses and from the Governors' offices, from the US Congress and from the Oval Office. Why on Earth we allow someone without any training in Education, without experience in teaching - in essence, without any education credentials - to be the US Secretary of Education is beyond me. But we've done it twice in the last 5 years Margaret Spellings (B.A. Political Science) claimed that she was qualified because she was a mom and Duncan (B.S. Sociology) never even attended a public school...

The politicians and business folks (Bill Gates, Harvard drop-out, for example) who claim to know so much about education simply because they went to school, are very hot on Scientifically-Based or Research-Based education. None of them, however, can tell you the scientific basis, or the research basis for using standardized tests to decide whether students should graduate from high school...or should be promoted to the next grade or be retained in their current grade. You know why? Because there is none.

The glut of standardized testing in the US has not improved learning one drop. It has, on the other hand, frustrated teachers, increased student drop out rates, and lessened the time we can teach.

I'd love to change places with Arne Duncan for just one week...let him work with the students I work with...help them in their struggles (without the benefit of my 30+ years of experiences and training) and see how much standardized tests help him. I, on the other hand, would spend the entire week gutting No Child Left Behind (aka No Child Left Undamaged), Race to the Top (aka Race to the Edge), and doing everything I could to return a little sanity to public education in the US.

"Not everything that counts can be measured. Not everything that can be measured counts." -- Albert Einstein

Teaching has it's drawbacks...politicians who have too much power over public education and too little understanding of what education is, poor teachers ignored by administrators, angry parents, paperwork, administrators who have forgotten what it's like being in a classroom, ignorant newspeople, US Secretaries of education who have no education credentials (the last two, for example)...

For the last 34 years I've searched for ways to improve my teaching and for ways to reach hard to reach students. The challenge is always there and what we as teachers do affects the lives of children in ways we can't imagine. It's frustrating that the people who control what goes on in the public schools of America (in the form of standardized tests, funding, etc) don't have a clue. Am I self-righteous about my quest to improve my teaching? Yes...of course I am. I have worked hard to learn what I have learned about education and children. To have a basketball player with a degree in Sociology, who NEVER ATTENDED OR WORKED IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL and who is NOT a teacher, lead the nation's public schools is, dare I say it, irresponsible on the part of the federal government.

Not that just any old teacher would make a good secretary of education...Rod Paige comes to mind...

Only another teacher understands what it's like...and we need to be the voices heard the loudest in the national discussion about education.

One of my favorite "voices" is a blogger...Mrs. Mimi, the author of "It's Not All Flowers and Sausages", a second grade teacher in New York City (currently on leave to work on her Ph.D. dissertation).

Mrs. Mimi shares the essentials of teaching. No, not pedagogy, although she sometimes touches on that...and not knowledge of subject matter, though that's obvious in her writing as well. What she shares is an understanding of children, a sense of humor tempered by love for her students, an appreciation of the human growth process and most of all, a sense of wonder at the delightful things that our students bring to us every day. She writes as "every teacher" giving us examples of the good things we are lucky enough to see in our classrooms. She writes about experiences that are universal to teachers everywhere.

Her profile says that she has to "make it funny so I don't routinely poke myself in the eye" and she does just that. Her insight into the workings of schools, the hearts of teachers and the lives of children provides a bridge that reaches across cyberspace to inspire and entertain her readers (and it also impresses me that her favorite books include "anything Jonathan Kozol").

In the short time that I have been reading her blog (and her book) I have gained a new appreciation for what we do every day. Teachers have the challenging task of growing citizens. It's up to us to prepare the next generation of cooks, doctors, writers and truck drivers (and yes, basketball players and sociologists). We're charged with leading children into their future.

Mrs. Mimi provides pain relief for the frustrations heaped upon us by the state legislatures, the US DOE and the media. I look forward to each day's post (she's promised to give us one every day in January and so far has come through) for my dose of understanding, insight, and humor.

CEOs, Businessmen, Politicians...they are the so-called "school reformers." Where are the educators?

From Schools Matter:

While many of us were out busting our humps to gather up a few dollars and votes for the change we thought we could believe in, the Harvard boys were cutting backroom deals with the multi-billionaire oligarchs to fully engage their plan to corporatize American public education, beginning with the urban schools.

There is no wonder that Spellings and Paige were running around breathless and wild-eyed, even as it became clear that McCain was going down. The insiders knew the Bush charter plan would not only go forward under Obama, but it would be slammed into overdrive by the clan of vulture capitalists and tax credit leeches who paid plenty to play the high stakes game for control of American schooling.

The plan is still Merit Pay, Charter Schools, Privatization, Free Market Competition...

From the Nation, quoted in Schools Matter:

. . . the single-mindedness--some would say obsessiveness--of the reformers' focus on these specific policy levers ["free market competition"] puts off more traditional Democratic education experts and unionists. As they see it, with the vast majority of poor children educated in traditional public schools, education reform must focus on improving the management of the public system and the quality of its services--not just on supporting charter schools. What's more, social science has long been clear on the fact that poverty and segregation influence students' academic outcomes at least as much as do teachers and schools.

Let's try this instead...

A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education:

More than a half century of research has documented a powerful association between social and economic disadvantage and low student achievement. Weakening that association is the fundamental challenge facing America's education policymakers...

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Framework Cannot by Itself Meet the Challenge...

Continue to pursue school improvement efforts. Research support is strongest for the benefits of small class sizes in the early grades for disadvantaged children, and for attracting and retaining high-quality teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools...

Increase investment in developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school, and kindergarten education. Every American child should arrive at the starting line of first grade ready and able to learn...

Increase investment in health services. Research supports the provision of prenatal care for all pregnant women and preventive and routine pediatric, dental, and optometric care for all infants, toddlers, and schoolchildren, in order to minimize the extent to which health problems become obstacles to success in school...

Pay more attention to the time students spend out of school. A body of research has shown that much of the achievement gap is rooted in what occurs outside of formal schooling...

No Child Left Behind is leaving thousands of children behind!
Dismantle NCLB!
Sign the petition by clicking HERE.
Nearly 35,000 signatures so far...

Guess what the education bloggers are talking about? Right...the President's comments on Charter Schools, Incentives for Teachers (Merit pay?), and all the things that make Arne Duncan happy. Maybe the new version of No Child Left Behind won't be as punitive as it has been under the Bush administration...and that's good...if it turns out that way. Still, Margaret Spelling (Bush's Secretary of Education) is a big fan of Arne Duncan (which in itself is enough to make me sick), and with good reason. He spews the same pro-charter, pro-testing, pro-standards, pro-business roundtable, anti-child-centered-education drivel that has brought public education in the US to the brink of disaster.

This is definitely not change we can believe in.

Time to tell him what we think...Email the President at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

If you're interested here are some good articles among those critical of the President's speech from Tuesday night...in my order of importance...Click on the title to read the whole thing...or just read the blurb I cut.

by Diane Ravitch
February 24, 2009
Is Arne Duncan Really Margaret Spellings in Drag?
"...Everything I have seen and learned since Duncan came to office has supported Secretary Spellings' admiring comments about Secretary Duncan. It turns out that Duncan, like the Bush administration, adores testing, charter schools, merit pay, and entrepreneurs. Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay. Another part of the stimulus plan will support charters and entrepreneurs..."

by Jim Horn
February 24, 2009
Roosevelt Economics, Reagan Education Policy
"...The President reminded us tonight that we are going to offer hundreds of billions more to bail out the banks AGAIN, but if the overpaid and lazy teachers expect a raise, they are going to have to prove they can wring out higher test scores for a couple of thousand dollars a year. And as the President reminds us, "from the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age," we are now ready to sacrifice that system for a ragged collection of cheap corporate charter schools without public governance..."

by Gerald Bracey
February 25, 2009
On Education, Obama Blows it
"I have not the expertise to address the merits of President Obama's speech to Congress on the issues of the economy. I do claim some expertise on education. He blew it.

"He accepted the same garbage that the propagandists, fear mongers such as Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates, Roy Romer, Bob Wise, Craig Barrett and many others--God help us, Arne Duncan?--have been spewing for years..."

by Norm Scott
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Did Obama Fail His Ed Test?
"So what exactly did Obama say in his speech tonight about reforming education? You see, it's not just about getting resources for schools but about, you know, reform. Like incentives for teachers - you know - merit pay. And charters. And early childhood ed. Well. 1 out of 3 ain't zero.

"But as you drill down it gets worse. Shame on you if you don't graduate from not only high school, but college. Does he know that an overwhelming number of jobs over the next decade - if there are any – will not require a college education? I mean, he is telling us his stimulus plan will stimulate infrastructure jobs - mostly vocational-like skills that do not come from a college education. Then in the next breath he makes it look like you are a failure and unpatriotic if you don't go to college. If anything, he should have talked about NOT going to college and learning how to do the kinds of work with your hands that is so missing in this society..."

by Terry
February 25, 2009
Obama, Charter Schools, and the Pearl
"Nancy Pelosi was a veritable jack(ie)-in-the-box during Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress, leaping to her feet to lead an ovation anytime Obama said something inspiring. There was one notable exception, however. When Obama raised the issue of charter schools--

'We'll invest ... in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools.'

"--Pelosi remained seated. In fact, the mention of charter schools was perhaps the weakest applause line of the evening..."
No Child Left Behind is leaving thousands of children behind!
Dismantle NCLB!
Sign the petition by clicking HERE.
More than 34,000 signatures so far...

When NCLB passed in 2002 one of its provisions was supposed to prevent academically disabled children from "falling behind." Since that time about 90% of all special education students have been required to pass standardized high-stakes tests at the same rate that other students. Millions of special education students have suffered the humiliation of repeated failures over the last 5 years. Nothing in the law provides the help or strategies needed to make it possible for these students to pass "the test."

Recently, Margaret Spellings, the US DOE Secretary of Education, has finally acknowledged how insane this is by reducing the number of special education students who will have to pass the high-stakes tests to 70%.

So, instead of most of 90% of students who are enrolled in special education programs across the country failing once again, we will have most of 70% of students who are enrolled in special education programs across the country failing again.

What seems to be missing from the NCLB formula is that students are in special education for a reason. If a 6th grade child is reading at a 2nd grade level does it make sense to test him on a 6th grade reading test? If the child is a special education student the tests have already been done and the child has been placed in a program where he can achieve at his own level at his own pace. The standardized high-stakes tests will do nothing more than affirm that he is, indeed, learning disabled.

It's time to take back the IEPs. Instead of writing education plans which call for a futile attempt to get kids to pass a test, let's write IEPs which identify a student's weaknesses, instruct that child at a level at which he can learn, and measure his growth.

Screw the tests...