A group of educators asked me to post this petition. You may recall that Linda Darling-Hammond was President Obama’s education spokesman when he ran for office in 2008.
Dear Concerned Educators,
The Coalition for Justice in Education (CJE) has started the petition “President Barack Obama: Replace Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, with Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond” and needs your help to get it off the ground. CJE believes it’s time that we let President Obama know how we feel about the education policies he and Mr. Duncan are enacting.
Will you take 30 seconds to sign it right now? Here’s the link:
http://www.change.org/petitions/president-barack-obama-replace-secretary-of-education-arne-duncan-with-dr-linda-darling-hammond?utm_source=guides&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=petition_created
Here’s why it’s important:
The Obama/Duncan education policies have been totally unsuccessful in terms of creating significant, positive changes to help students become proficient citizens and scholars.
You can sign CJE’s petition by clicking here.
Thanks!
Dan Drmacich, Chairman
Coalition for Justice in Education
ps: Please help with this effort by sending it to friends & organizations who might sign it as well. Thanks for your help!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
LDH is the lead researcher of the Smarter Balanced consortium, the epic manisfestation of Common Core representing all that is wrong with Ed policy in this country. We don’t need an “if you can’t beat ’em join ’em” leader. We need a stop the train, blow it up, define the purpose of public ed leader. Have another name on the short list?
She was unmasked. Another mole or mole wanna be like Randi Weingarten.
Linda Darling-Hammond is the darling of Oregon’s Governor Kitzhaber.
http://www.oregon.gov/gov/docs/OEIB/1Hammond.pdf‘
Supporting Educator Quality in Oregon
Provide consistent, high-leverage resources for professional learning by creating incentives for schools to establish time for collaborative planning and learning within the teaching day and dedicating a consistent share of the state education budget to professional learning investments, like the 2% that Missouri commits each year.
LEVERAGE = DEBT
THAT’S HOW THE BILLIONAIRE BOYS MAKE THEIR BILLIONS!
Let’s see… We don’t get more revenue and Kitzhaber’s budget includes $250,000,000 of pet projects! Presumably because of the ESEA waiver’s “Transferability of Funds” flexibility.
B-19. How does this flexibility affect the ability of SEAs and LEAs to transfer funds from one eligible program to another?
ESEA section 6123(a) authorizes an SEA to transfer up to 50 percent of the non-administrative funds available for State-level activities in a given fiscal year under the following (currently operating) programs:
· Improving Teacher Quality State Grants (ESEA section 2113(a)(3)).
· Educational Technology State Grants (ESEA 2412(a)(1)).
· 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) (ESEA section 5112(b)).
Obama isn’t going to run for re-election again, and he doesn’t care what teachers and others think about his ruinous education policies. He cares only about his Wall Street buddies and billionaires like Bill Gates. The time to have gone after Obama was the 2008 Democratic Party primaries. He was quite open about his attitude regarding public education and teachers. He hated both, and I never had any use for the man ever since.
But where were teachers? Doing nothing, as usual, about this dire situation.
It’s almost too late to reverse course.
It may be too late to dissuade Obama, but we can still work on ourvsenators and representatives. Many of them will be around long after Obama.
I agree with that. We also need to take the Democratic Party back from the crooks and hucksters out to kill the party from within. I am referring to the neo-liberals.
And for some perverse reason, it seems that many are staying the course. Only 400+ letters were written back in October. To say I was underwhelmed and disappointed ….. I bailed on change.org when they changed their business model. I can’t sign their petitions since my email has been blocked.
I would suggest the following place for a petition:
Petition the White House with We the People
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/22/petition-white-house-we-people
Senators should be educated for purposes of confirming US Ed nominees. When has an appointee to US Ed ever been asked to elaborate on the “true mission of public education—to imbue a clear and compelling sense of purpose for the ideals of our American democracy?”
Eric,
Moving it to here.
I agree with your question in the sense that the hearings are basically Kabuki theatre. Most of the senators have no clue whatsoever about public education as very few have ever been a teacher. But then again most teachers have no clue as to the fundamental purpose of public education as I have asked many and most don’t even know where to find that out.
But the fundamental purpose of education is defined by each state’s constitution, so that, in essence, we have 50 different fundamental purposes (even allowing for the fact that many of those purposes overlap). So to me, the federal D of E really has no fundamental purpose other than ensuring that the states follow constitutional mandates. What the Funk Duncan has done completely oversteps the bounds of what the feds should be doing.
I am interested in what you have been writing about the various court decisions and how the states/feds have not been complying. Do you have any links to further explore this issue?
Thanks,
Duane
See below. It’s all I can take time for at this moment.
Ohio is an interesting case, since its ed clause (thorough and efficient) shows up in MD, PA, WV, NJ, and MN. Ohio, NJ, and WV litigated it; PA litigation didn’t go far. In OH administrative code, Ohio elaborates “thorough and efficient” using the Education Criteria for Performance Excellence (Baldrige), which captures the constitutional debates proposition that public schools should match the most rapid progress of any sector of society.
Other constitutional provisions don’t seem especially strong. I noted in a reply to Ken that WA appears weak, but some editorializing suggests that “provide” (If I recall the magic word) could be read to mean more than fund. The KY Rose decision sketches components of an adequate education that I’ve seen cited in other states–literacy, numeracy, citizenship, arts, etc.
Massachusetts is the state that best leveraged reform to address litigation. NJ had some local victories (by the nature of Abbott) but not statewide.
I’m reading Cremin’s selections from Horace Mann’s work–it’s the right timeframe (e.g. 1848 for Mann, 1851 for the Ohio Constitution) I think teacher preparation programs create problems for the profession when they prefer Dewey (or Counts or Kilpatrick) to Mann. Horace Mann matters to the common school movement; the other commentary is irrelevant to what the law asks of public schools.
Regarding this sort of history, the most I could wish would be for Dr. Ravitch to contribute in a manner that speaks to the history underlying the legal responsibilities for common schools–the reciprocal duties to the people and of the people. the NEA (e.g. Chanin) to Mann, one wonders
Educators don’t like to hear “if I ran my business this way I’d be bankrupt,” but there’s something to that. Maybe it would be more credible for a hospital chief medical officer to add that if they lost focus from their reason for existence they would kill patients.
At this point, public schools are losing credibility with mainstream legal professionals. It’s not hard to envision a ruling that supports vouchers to allow parents to opt into better civics education outside traditional public schools. (Horace Mann would not be pleased.)
U.S. Ed is a disaster. If they were competent stewards, they would be the first to review state litigation and push policy to serve public purposes of public education. A Senate boycott of all Ed nominees would be a good first step in fixing them.
Litigation takes a (long) life of its own and is uncertain. That’s why I look at what has already been done, with an eye toward capturing lessons to mistakes aren’t repeated. The lessons thus learned contribute mostly to union reform. I’m not sure collective bargaining would survive a constitutional challenge (Florida is not litigating a related matter).
Many groups would prefer to advance political agendas at the expense schoolchildren and public education. The middle needs to rebuild support for public education–Bill Ayers citing John Dewey is not the middle!
Former HEW Sec Mathews Reclaiming Public Education By Reclaiming Our Democracy, along with the related National Issues Forum work provides a path consistent with Mann’s vision as does Hirsch Making Americans.
Instead of building support for public education, NEA does things like partnering with MoveOn.org and ACORN for education house parties. Did the staffers study Horace Mann or Saul Alinsky?
This is a mess. There is no viable alternative to excellent public schools. And yet the public education doomsday clock advances toward midnight.
Two Baldrige districts are Montgomery County MD (cited as a model for teacher evaluation) and West Carrollton, OH, which declined RttT after submitting a model scope of work. Instead learning lessons from the Baldrige experiences, US Ed has pursued unproven education policies.
Duane,
Hope this helped. One last look and I noticed a post “Michelle Rhee Advising Governor Kasich in Ohio about Funding.” Given the status I’ve outlined above, one could make the case that Rhee is a legal liability–what does she know about Ohio’s education adequacy litigation?
In the first place, the fact that this is a change.org petition should make one leery to sign it. Do signers become members of Students First?