A math teacher in Nevada sent me a copy of Governor Sandoval’s executive order creating an “education policy reform roundtable.”
The following industries are represented: Casinos; Agriculture; Tourism; Healthcare; Mining; Defense; Merchants.
“After the ceremony [his swearing-in], Sandoval signed two executive orders, one establishing the Governor’s Business Roundtable for Education Policy Reform, and the other naming the old state Senate Chamber in the Capitol as “Battle Born Hall” to serve as the permanent home of the state’s 150th anniversary celebration.
“Sandoval spoke briefly about the orders in his office, saying the roundtable will help him in his commitment to improving public education over the next four years. He did not provide any details of his plans to improve public education, which will come when he presents his budget on Jan. 15.
“The roundtable will develop policy recommendations, including more efficient allocations of public funding, and identifying areas in need of improved curriculum to meet the highest achievement standards for all Nevada students.
“We are bringing representatives from all our specific sectors throughout our economy to come together to talk about how we can improve our schools, provide that curriculum of the future so that as we develop this new Nevada economy we will have that workforce,” he said.”
Who is NOT on the committee: Educators. No teachers, principals, district superintendents, or other school personnel.
Well, there will be one representative of education: Dale Erquiaga, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who was appointed in 2013 by the Governor.
He doesn’t have teaching experience, but he is in charge of education for the state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Media Matters recently did a piece outlining how when discussing education the big three cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox had on sixteen actual educators and 169 non-educators, that’s roughly a ratio of ten to one against professional educators when discussing education issues. Pretty outrageous right.
Well unfortunately that and Nevada just mirrors what Florida has done with the sate board of education where you won’t find one true educator. There is the chair Gary Chartrand who is a grocer by trade and who has close ties to charter schools; John Padget the owner of a private equity investment firm, Ada Gonzalez, a healthcare executive, John Colon, a banker, Andy Tuck, a citrus grower and evolution denier, Marva Johnson a cable TV executive and finally Rebecca Fishman Lipsey currently a social impact director (a direct quote from the FLDOE website) who is a recent transplant from New York where she taught for two years as a Teach for America Teacher. And there you have it the entire board has two years of public education teaching experience and that happened a decade ago in New York City.
Can you imagine running a police department without law enforcement personnel or a hospital without doctors, or a newspaper without editors? Well that is basically what we have done here in Florida by putting completely unqualified people for the job on the board. Now they might have great business acumen, though I am not sure what a social impact director does but shouldn’t we have more professional educators than Rick Scott campaign donors on the board? The job of leading our education system should be done by professionals not by donors and friends of the governor.
Florida’s schools will never reach their potential as long as we marginalize, neglect and ignore professional educators. Contrary to the governors opinion not just anybody can do the job.
More casino skills. What are those atavists doing with actual playing cards? All games must me played on tablets, didn’t they get the memo from the tech-lords?
There are so few state superintendents on our side.
I broke my arm, quick call a plumber!
This is as logical as trying to fix education without any educators participating
That’s the beauty of ed reform, though. It demands absolutely nothing of anyone besides teachers. We can have a “world class” education system with no increased public or private investment and without anyone in the public changing or sacrificing anything. That’s the pitch. No wonder it’s so popular.
These business leaders can get together and submit an order for X number of “career-ready” employees and it’s up to you-all to deliver.
Thanks in advance! I KNOW you can do it! 🙂
These representatives should all be forced to spend, at the very least, one full day alone in a classroom with students, before they are allowed to comment on anything having to do with education and schools.
One day sounds good, but I think a whole week, right before a long break such as Thanksgiving, Christmas or Spring break would give them a whole new perspective.
Please, no! We should not allow the students to be abused by having their ilk in a classroom.
I dunno, maybe not younger students. But I have great faith that any teenager worthy of the name could eat any politician for lunch, with room left over.
If this were just as simple as being just about education, then it might be manageable. The crux of the issue is that education is only one part of the problem. The politicians know that they are creating an incendiary environment, but who are they beholding to? It’s certainly not the voters
The money machine, the political stakes, the bloated egos of the reformist-fascists, the technocrats and an ever-more amused to death general population has turned this “debate” into a toxic, vitriolic cesspool that is going to be very, very difficult to clean-up.
It’s really all about the disparity between the 1% and everybody else.
Let’s make a deal! We promise to not tell you how to run a casino or dig and mine, if you stay out of education!. We have lost sight of the fact that education is for the development and benefit of the learner, not about what best for the local businesses. While we have to be aware that we want to enable learners to be productive citizens, we must understand that people are more than cogs in the wheel of the economy. For this reason, students deserve a comprehensive education, not just economic programming.
“. . . not about what best for the local businesses.”
But, but, but we (these business folks) all those taxes, we should have a say as to how schools are run.
we pay
We citizens pay taxes too. A employee with a well rounded education is an asset to his community and his employer.
Actually, they dodge all those taxes in Nevada and do not pay….they should at least have to pay to play. Once again, it’s roulette and we in the schools lose.
We’ll know we’ve turned a corner when a teacher is placed on a business roundtable… that day will come when the army needs to hold a bake sale to buy weapons
OMG, GROSS! Guess whose pockets are being lined and by whom?
The funny thing is that (as far as I know) there’s no corporate business tax in NV. They get to run the schools now even though they’re not funding them. ”
“For the first time since 1929, the GOP has control of the governor’s office and the majorities of both houses of the Legislature.” (from RGJ)
And where can overworked teachers get the energy to fight this nonsense?