This is a good article about Lily Eskelsen Garcia, who assumes the presidency of the NEA in September 1. She taught for many years in Utah, ran unsuccessfully for Congress, and was Utah’s Teacher of the Year.
Read her interview with Valerie Strauss. She knows how stupid VAM is, and she has a few choice words for Campbell Brown. She thinks Arne Duncan is a nice man who is “wrong, wrong, wrong.” Lily is passionate about the testing mania that is warping American education. She says that educators should do what’s right for kids and forget the reformers (easier said than done when the “reformers” control the legislature and hold the governorship and pass laws that are bad for kids.)
She has the potential to be a great voice for teachers, and early indications suggest that she won’t sell her soul or her members to get “a seat at the table.” The question is whether she is prepared to fight that nice man who is Secretary of Education and who demands more testing and more firings based on test scores.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I dare say it would be a lot easier to fight if the AFT/UFT joined the fight.
I’m excited to see a courageous leader taking her place at the table!
Lily on the Common Core State Standards and aligned testing:
“We have something with incredible promise, like the Common Core.”
“Stop the stupid. And I’ll try really hard to make that diplomatic.”
These two statements are incompatible.
I am so hopeful ..She needs to stay strong strong and fight our fight .Lily needs all our support. Stay healthy Diane..
Ekselen is fine with gates’ buying his views on public education. She is also sold on Common Core.
And, thinks Arne is a nice man.
Four days ago EdWeek or Politico reported that the new NEA president had endorsed a rating scheme for CCSS instructional materials funded by the Gates, Helmsley, and Hewlett Packard foundations. The first round of these Consumer Reports is planned for math K-8.
I would not be surprised if these ratings, in competition from Achieve (or possibly coordinated with Achieve’ rating system) will be treated as superior to real field trials and even experimental research that would bolster claims about their efficacy.
Nineteen teachers are on board to do the ratings, which begins to look like about two raters per grade. The intellectual prestige for the project comes from the President of Harvey Mudd College, who is a broad member for Microsoft, has worked as an advisor to teacher groups on STEM, and has multiple honorary doctorates. Harvey Mudd is often called MIT west.
Now imagine these privately funded ratings published in US News and World Report as was true for ratings of teacher education programs. Those ratings were done on the cheap. They were designed to do damage.
Now shift the context. The PR that such ratings will offer to some publishers and not others is obvious and with big bucks at stake in the perception of being the best.
Now remember that Gates has poured a lot of money into the development of math curriculum materials with Scholastic and Illustrated Mathematics major recipients. Is it likely that these resources will get poor ratings? I also know that such ratings are tedious if done conscientiously and usually produced mixed results based on strengths in some features and weaknesses in others. I don’t know how this procedure will work but I know that calling these Consumer Report ratings is brilliant PR and that these ratings are intended to preempt local and statewide ratings.
I have looked at the Achieve rating scheme. it is an enactment of the anal compulsive verbatim rule for the CCSS with the first and second rating rubrics stated as “Non-negotiable One: Focus…followed by something like no content shall be introduced before it is called for in the CCSS. This is a “meets” or “doesn’t meet” decision. Everything in the rating system is a matter of checking for ALIGNMENT with the CCSS, not requiring judgments about the likely efficacy of the materials in real classrooms.
Now to the connection with Lily. She is quoted as an endorser of the Consumer Reports project. That bothers me. Better to look the gift horse in the mouth before feeding it a carrot.
I look for some big lawsuits from this effort. If Consumer Reports.org is not really involved, then this is likely to be one source of a legal challenge to the brand and reputation of an organization with well-established protocols for its ratings. Then ther are the millions of dollars placed at risk from publishers.
Will the criteria for rating be published in a form that will permit independent reviews of the merit of these as well as independent checks of the reliability? Lots of unanswered questions.
“I know that calling these Consumer Report ratings is brilliant PR. . . ”
Hopefully the Consumers Union sues them to stop using their “brand”.
As with Weingarten, don’t (just) listen to what she says, but watch what she does.
“The intellectual prestige for the project comes from the President of Harvey Mudd College, who is a broad member for Microsoft…”
Laura, did you mean Broad member? Wouldn’t be a surprise!
Diane,
I am a NEA member and a Kindergarten Teacher. Both NEA and AFT say they like CC. They say read them. Did they read ALL of them? Early childhood ones are not developmentally correct and if everything has been pushed down are any of them?
Why do they support them if they aren’t good for kids.
Thank you.
I have more faith in this woman than I have had in our organization for quite some time. This is a voice that will be heard. The militancy of BADASS needs to fade, and we need to get behind a true organization that represents teachers’ voices. Let’s help this woman build our Union better.
Great information, Laura? The entire “consumer reports” rating scheme reminds me of a warning Bob Shepherd issued a while ago related to copyright of CCSS. The Brookings Institute apparently has suggested enforcement of the copyright to determine which CCSS materials are “truly” aligned. Will that happen through his rating scheme with all the concerns you have outlined? not only will this disenfranchise publishers, but it will also determine which materials schools will be forced to use. I would like to see David sir oat or someone like him investigate this new hydra. That Lily would support this suggests ignorance or complicity, both dangerous.
Auto correct is so much fun, he Nimbus!
David Sir Oat, he he!
eh not he Nimbus
Obviously no “?” after first sentence. Sentence 4 should read “this” not “his.” And we wonder why iPads are terrible for test-taking and measuring accurate results.
I am i padding this am. It took forever and still has glitches. The Achieve rating scheme is off the charts ridiculous but consistent with the my way or the highway ethic of the CCSS. Politico reports growing disenchantment with the CCSS among teachers. Wonder if Lily is paying attention.
The NEA has a history of of supporting politics over education. In Massachusetts the union strongly supported teacher evaluation tied to state testing. It’s president promptly was selected to the State Board of Higher Education.
Fortunately, in Massachusetts we now have Barbara Madeloni, who was burned by her opposition to allowing Pearson to take over assessment of student teachers through edTPA.
I honor Diane’s view of Lily, and we do need her in our court in theory and in practice. But the reality is, she does not seem so far to be really on the side of pushback as much as we need her to be.
Still, I view her vigilantly and with caution. I cannot label her as completely no good, but I can’t do the opposite either. I definitely cannot say she’s mostly okay for us teachers because none of really have seen what she will yet do or how she will yet behave.
Is her embrace of Weingarten political theater? As well as her choice of words for Arne. He is not a nice man, and he is wrong, wrong, wrong. Try that Lily.
Maybe it’s a little theattrical of Lily, but am I to think, “So what?”
Until I see more leadership like Karen Lewis, Julie Kavanaugh, Brian Jones, Carol Burris, and Francesco Portelos in our larger union leaders, I view the unions with great caution and wariness.
One does not have a choice yet to do otherwise in this instance.
Still – and I know this does not seem like a very scientific statement – I see more and more shifts in people’s motivation to at least learn about what’s going on and even joining in activism against so many bad aspects of this reform movement and the bullies tat come with it . . . That can’t be a bad thing.
Even Charlie Rose (not a liberal!), some other young journalist, and Jane Paulie on CBS basically questioned Ms. Idiot Campbell Brown about the effects of poverty and inequality upon children and that tenure was a peripheral factor, as opposed to poverty, a dominant factor. Even those three bought and paid for journalists, with their choice fo words and body language, were not going to stand for anything less than intense scrutiny and accountable talk on Ms. Brown’s dumb-ass behalf. They nailed her, and good for them. At least Michelle Rhee did not put on airs about how mean and vile she is. Brown, however, is a smiley face Barbie doll, vapid, stupid, and very dangerous because she has access to power. . . .
I think there shifts. . .. . let’s not stop now . . . .
Excellent comments, Robert. Having been a teacher in Utah while Lily was UEA president, I am reticent to really endorse her. She really had a tendency to back off when fight was needed. I hope that Lily truly will fight for us, but I want to see proof.
Time tells all . . . .
“Acknowledging that sometimes it is hard for her to be diplomatic, García says she wants to shake things up: “The revolution I want is ‘proceed until apprehended.’” Translation: Teachers, administrators and everybody else involved should ignore bad school reform policy and do “the right thing” for kids. “Don’t you dare,” she said, ” let someone tell you not to do that Shakespeare play because it’s not on the achievement tests. Whether they [reformers] have sinister motives or misguided honest motives, we should say, ‘We are not going to listen to you anymore. We are going to do what’s right.’””
That is pretty much the position I’ve come around to: non-cooperation with corporate education reforms. Call it “education satyagraha.”
I don’t think Garcia has met the real Arne Duncan. In public, he is probably a soft spoken friendly guy who comes across as really likeable—a devil in disguise.
But in his office making decisions to destroy the public schools—for a comparison we have Hitler’s “Final Solution”. The “Final Solution” was implemented in stages just like the manufactured crises in public education.
Please note that it wasn’t until the Nazi’s had total political power through elections that they built the actual death camps—-sounds familiar to what’s happening politically in the United States.
The huge amount of money being spent by a small number of billionaires to get candidates elected that support their fake education reform movement.
Does anyone else see the similarities between the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, and the behind closed doors, secret planning sessions of billionaires who are funding the fake education reform moment and the implementation of the Common Core?
There is nothing democratic about the way this fake education reform movement is being funded and managed.
I want to have faith. It’s been a long, long time since Lily has been in the classroom. All those limo rides and power lunches tend to take the fight out of even the best activists.
Angie, you just explained why I keep fighting. No limo rides, no power lunches. Usually no lunch at all.
Forgot to add the the Consumer Reports project also by-passes the review process of the Instuture of Education Science and its What Works clearning house–not that this is great operation to begin with but at least the criteria for judgments and the experimental evidence for claims of efficacy are public.