We have all been guessing about what President-Elect Joe Biden will do in education. Will he keep his campaign promises and set federal policy on a new direction, away from No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, ESSA, high-stakes testing, and school choice, or will he stick with the stale and destructive status quo?
No one knows for sure but many have tried to divine his intentions by the composition of his transition team for education. At first glance, it is worrisome that so many of its members come from the Race to the Top era. But Valerie Strauss offers a different perspective on the transition team’s purpose and significance.
She writes:
Now that President-elect Joe Biden has named a 20-person education transition team, the education world is trying to glean insight from its makeup as to what the next president will do to try to improve America’s public schools.
Some progressives are worried that the list of members is heavy with former members of the Obama administration, whose controversial education policies ultimately alienated teachers’ unions, parents and members of Congress from both major political parties. Some conservatives are concerned that four of the team’s members come from national teachers’ unions. And others wonder what it means that Biden chose Linda Darling-Hammond — the first Black woman to serve as president of the California Board of Education and an expert on educational equity and teacher quality — to lead the team.
When it comes to policy, such concerns are probably misplaced. This transition team is not charged with writing big policy papers or selecting a new education secretary. The campaign set Biden’s education agenda, and there is a separate, smaller committee working on domestic policy.
The transition team’s charge is largely about reimagining the Education Department, which has been run for nearly four years by Betsy DeVos, whose top priority was pushing alternatives to public school districts and encouraging states to use public money to fund private and religious school education. She also focused on reversing a number of Obama administration initiatives in civil rights and other areas.
Biden has promised to focus on the public schools that educate the vast majority of America’s schoolchildren and to take steps to address the inequity that has long existed in the education system — and his proposals speak to a divergence from the Obama agenda.
Subgroups on the transition team are tackling different areas, including K-12, higher education and a covid-19 response that would allow schools to safely reopen — an urgent priority for Biden. Step No. 1, according to one person familiar with the process (who spoke on the condition of anonymity) is to “figure out what damage she [DeVos] did and then stand up a department.”
The selection of the transition team does speak to some basic Biden priorities. He picked people who have expertise in their field; most of the 20 on the transition team were involved in the Education Department in either the Obama or Clinton administration. He won’t, for example, hire a neurosurgeon to run a department that deals with housing, like Trump did with Ben Carson. Biden promised to hire a teacher as education secretary, not someone who never went to a public school, like DeVos.
As Kevin Welner, the director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said, the “obvious reason” there are so many former Obama administration education officials on the Biden team is that they are working “on crafting remedies for the Trump-DeVos reversals — to restore guidances and executive orders that the current administration changed or eliminated.” The inclusion of four union leaders — three from the American Federation of Teachers and one from the National Education Association — underscores Biden’s long connections with the labor movement and shows he is not expecting to break those ties.
In fact, two of the names reported to be under consideration for Biden’s education secretary are Lily Eskelsen García, former president of the National Education Association, which is the largest union in the country; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. (The appointment of one of these women raises some questions: Would a Republican-led Senate confirm a labor leader? Would Biden appoint one as acting if it won’t?)
The Biden team has been floating a number of names for education secretary, a job that many thought would go to Darling-Hammond before she said recently that she didn’t want it.
She is as highly regarded in the education world as just about anyone; among other things, she is the founder of the Stanford University Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, founder of the California-based Learning Policy Institute think tank, founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and a former president of the American Educational Research Association.
Darling-Hammond was also Obama’s education transition chief after his 2008 presidential win. It was a time when serious flaws with the K-12 No Child Left Behind law had emerged, including an unhealthy emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing and mandates that were unachievable.
Obama had said during the 2008 campaign he thought kids took too many standardized tests, telling the American Federation of Teachers, “Creativity has been drained from classrooms as too many teachers are forced to teach fill-in-the-bubble tests.” And many public school advocates believed he would support their agenda of de-emphasizing the tests that had become routine under No Child Left Behind.
But Obama had quietly embraced a group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) — started by some New York hedge-fund managers — who wanted to reform schools along business principles and who were antagonistic toward the teachers’ unions. Columns began appearing in numerous publications accusing Darling-Hammond of being too close to the unions.
Obama wound up tapping Arne Duncan, a reformer in the DFER mold, as education secretary. Duncan, the former chief of Chicago schools, pushed the evaluation of teachers by student standardized test scores, the adoption by states of Common Core State Standards and the expansion of charter schools. The result was that students took many more standardized tests and some states created cockamamie evaluation systems that saw teachers evaluated by the test scores of students they didn’t have. The Common Core, which started with bipartisan support, saw a rushed implementation that helped lead to opposition to it.
By 2014, the National Education Association called for Duncan’s resignation and the AFT said he should change policy or resign. Congress eventually rewrote the No Child Left Behind law, taking away some of the federal power that Duncan had exercised in education policy and giving it to the states.
The 2008 education transition team that Darling-Hammond headed included some progressive thinkers in education who wrote deep policy papers that focused on educational equity and other transformative issues. Duncan ignored them, going his own way. In 2008, the makeup of the presidential transition team had no effect on policy.
Through his tenure as vice president, though, Biden did not publicly discuss the Obama-Duncan education changes. It appears that he was not a big supporter; his wife, Jill Biden, a community college educator, is a longtime member of the NEA, and the AFT’s Weingarten has said when the AFT was not getting along with the Obama administration, Biden was “our north star” and our “go-to guy who always listened to us.”
Biden sought out Darling-Hammond to run his transition team because of her expertise in education and in part as a signal about what he hopes to prioritize in education, according to people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Biden and his team made a number of promises about education during the campaign, including increasing federal funds for the poorest students as well as for students with special needs, raising the salaries of teachers, making community college free and implementing college debt forgiveness. His proposals would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to implement; meeting his promise to “fully fund” the federal law protecting students with special needs alone could cost $40 billion or more.
It is more than highly unlikely that there will be federal funding available to do everything he promised, but public education advocates say they are hopeful that he will stick to his promise to concentrate on publicly funded school districts and not school choice, like DeVos, or standardized testing, like Duncan.
All the signs at the moment indicate that Biden’s education agenda will be significantly different from Duncan’s (and certainly DeVos’s) and start to address the issue of educational equity in ways that Darling-Hammond has always thought were important, including how public schools are funded. Stay tuned.
“The transition team’s charge is largely about reimagining the Education Department”
Can only assume that Strauss does not appreciate the irony implied by that terminology, given Cuomo’s recent use of the terminology to describe his collaboration with billionaires like Gates.
Reimagining Education
Reimagining Duncan
Reimagining Gates
Reimagining dunkin
Reimagining fates
Reimagining everything
That happened in the past
Never imagining any thing
That hasn’t come to pass
Geez. The same old austerity tropes have already started: “It is more than highly unlikely that there will be federal funding available to do everything he promised”. They make this claim & think we’ll buy it again. When, in fact, a bipartisan Congress & Senate gave the banks $3.3 trillion in March for COVID relief in just 2 days. PayGo matters not for Pelosie and Mitch when the banks need public money.
Rest assured, the Republicans, CAP Democrats, CNBC, Fox, etc will start hand wringing about how education budgets will bankrupt the country. Put aside the fact that the US cannot go bankrupt, no one should believe that excuse.
Gordon Lafer explained in “The One Percent Solution” idea that budget cutting is a slow way to reduce people’s expectations for what government can do. If we want to impact public education we know what to do- smaller classes, more well-prepared teachers, an Education New Deal. We already know that Race to the Top & privatization was a huge boondoggle.
Exactly. The jargon is the giveaway. #StillNervous
Thank you to Valerie Straus for this brief but informative history of education in the Obama-Biden era and to Diane for posting it. We can’t read everything, so such synopses are really helpful. I always thought Obama got “compromised-politicized out” of what was probably a healthy way of viewing education.
After the election, I was reminded of how people felt, cheering in the streets, when WWII was finally over. I know it’s not the same, but I shared that feeling of great relief. CBK
The problemS–plural, for there are many, and they are deep and serious–with the Common [sic] Core [sic] aren’t all about “rushed implementation.” Yes, the country gave Gates his national standards bullet list without any actual vetting. Some states adopted them sight unseen. Coleman and his wrecking crew hacked together this list based upon the lowest-common-denominator existing state “standards,” which were almost exclusively a list of skills. In other words, they were almost entirely content free, which is deeply, tragically ironic given Coleman’s call, in ELA, for a great return to the reading of substantive, classic texts, which was itself ironic given that English teachers were all, already, almost to a person, using a hardbound literature anthology chock full of precisely such texts, which Coleman would have known if he actually had any experience appropriate to the task he was given and paid so handsomely to toss together. Of course, from the Gates POV, it didn’t matter that he did his job so sloppily. He just wanted a single national bullet list to key software to so that it could be sold “at scale,” following the monopolistic model that he’s championed all his working life.
I can’t believe any still actually believes the “rushed implementation ” excuse.
That was obvious nonsense from the start.
Yes, it was.
Many states are still using Common Core. State Depts of Ed simply changed the names.
jgrim. precisely
And that was by design. The Common [sic] Core [sic] was so unpopular that the name became toxic. So, the oh-so-reverend Mike Huckabee (Huckster-bee?) when to the annual ghoulls’ convention called CPAC and told them all to go back home and keep the Gates/Coleman bullet list but CHANGE HE NAME to something state-specific (You know, like, The New, Improved, Florida Greater Gator Standards). In other words, go back home and change the name so that you can pretend that they actually are state standards.
The Common [Sic. They didn’t reflect a common concensus] Core [Sic. They left out almost all actual content] State [Sic. They were the result of federal arm-twisting and weren’t originated by the states] Standards [Sic. The term properly applies to measurement specifications, which these are not].
Though trained, academically, in philosophy, Coleman didn’t do what a philosopher is supposed to do: step back and interrogate his (and everyone else’s unexamined terminology and assumptions, including such assumptions as whether the notion that standards should be a skills bullet list applicable to SEPARATE content made sense (it doesn’t) or what would be the consequences of creating high-stakes assessments based on a single, almost content-free bullet list (what happened was a dramatic devolution of ELA pedagogy and curricula that turned it into random, incoherent skills practice). The “architect” of these “standards” slopped them together unthinkingly. Here’s why that matters: In the past, when states or even separate big school districts had separate, competing standards in ELA, publishers put together coherently organized, knowledge-filled ELA textbook programs and then went through a sham marketing exercise of correlating each program with every set of standards. Because the supposed “standards” weren’t running the show, determining all the development decisions, publishers were free to base these on habits of the tribe of English teachers (the tried and true) and on innovations by researchers and scholars. But once there was a national bullet list with high stakes attached to it, the list itself became the blueprint and, ironically, tragically, this undercut the very goal that Coleman claimed he wanted to achieve–having kids read substantive, classic texts. Instead, they now read random snippets of random drek for the sole purpose of practicing Common [sic] Core [sic] skills for the all-important test.
Unintended, disastrous consequences.
Another assumption that Coleman didn’t examine was the notion that a single set of “standards,” rather than competing, evolving lists of topics, say, was a good idea. It isn’t a good idea. Real continuous improvement comes from the bottom up, not the top down, as a result of practitioners working in inherited, tried-and-true ways but modifying these in light of their students’ particular needs and new, valuable ideas that they’ve come up with on their own or picked up from the ONGOING work of hundreds of thousands of researchers and subject-matter experts.
Bob Yes, the value of slow and thoughtful change . . . a point that RGB understood well also on the level of law and the culture. Or in mathematics as analogy, students cannot understand addition until they have grasped what 1 and 2 mean. CBK
Something similar works, as you know, CBK, in the law. Common law based on precedent–the tried and true–and statutory law to address changing situations, circumstances, needs.
Uh Oh: WAPO
“By James Hohmann
November 13, 2020 at 9:23 a.m. PST
with Mariana Alfaro
“Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch expressed hope that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will roll back President Trump’s tariffs, restore protections for “Dreamers” and enact policing reform that addresses systemic racism.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/13/daily-202-charles-koch-congratulates-biden-says-he-wants-work-together-many-issues-possible/?utm_campaign=wp_the_daily_202&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_daily202
One big issue, I think, that edupundits get wrong is their notions about what a skill actually involves. As is often the case with these general terms, the term “skill” includes apples and oranges, or, as I like to say, shoelaces and platypuses. Some skills are behaviors that are acquired largely unconsciously and automatically, based on brain mechanisms dedicated to such acquisition. Others, if you scratch them, properly involved learned procedures–procedural knowledge. Consider the skill of planing a piece of wood. You have to learn what a plane is and how it works, what the alternatives are, such as scrapers, to work in the direction of the wood grain, to use successively more precise instruments, and so on. One horror that has resulted from the Coring of U.S. ELA curricula is the proliferation of “skills” exercises that in practice involve mere practicing (repeating) of error. One looks at the lesson, and the student walks away with no concrete procedure for carrying out the activity (using the “skill”). Consider, for example, developing a melodious speaking voice. One can practice this over and over and over and never get anywhere. However, if one learns a procedure–identify the midpoint of your pitch range. Then lower that midpoint and practice varying your pitch around that new vocal pitch midpoint–one can actually make progress. One can literally review thousands of Core-y exercises on “inferencing skills” and encounter no teaching of any practical procedure for doing any type of inference.
Bob . . . and we think computers are complex. . . CBK
CBK. The most complex object in the universe, that we know anything about at this point, is the 3 lbs of meat between our ears. The big surprise to the computer scientists who pioneered this stuff in the 1960s and 1960s turned out to be that, as Herbert Simon wrote about at length, the stuff that appeared to be really simple, like language, turned out to be very, very complicated, while the stuff that we thought was very complicated, like chess, turned out to be relatively simple.
Bob On that, this might interest you from AEON . . . explores the links between biology, agency, and purpose which, to me, signals a kind of at-least partial breakthrough in the thinking in the world of natural science. FYI only: CBK
https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=db891bcd36-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_09_04_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-db891bcd36-70395829
A fascinating piece, CBK. Something to read in connection with it: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/three-meanings-of-meaning/
Even people like Strauss who have been very good at seeing through the BS are nonetheless sometimes held captive by the terminology, which was concocted at an ad agency.
The “bipartisan support” that Common Core supposedly enjoyed was limited almost exclusively to handpicked people on Gates ‘ s standards committee and even that was nowhere near unanimous. And lots of people objected to Common Core for quite legitimate reasons, not simply rushed implementation, which was actually by design, not by accident, at any rate.
Valerie Strauss has consistently been an independent, courageous voice of sanity in education for decades. I would hate to be taken utterly to task for every misbegotten phrase I’ve generated over the years. I like to think that this was just a moment on autopilot.
I’m sorry to have picked on this TINY bit of Ms. Strauss’s overall piece, which is so smart and thoughtful and reassuring in general. Ms. Strauss is, without doubt, the greatest education journalist I know. No one else is even close.
I have become convinced that many if not most of the problems we face as a country are a direct result of the purposeful corruption of our language.
When some people quite purposefully distort the language to achieve their goals, there is no way you can ever have any sort of meaningful dialog with them.
So called school “reform” is the poster child for such corruption.
SomeDAM Ah, yes . . .unfortunately, Orwellian insights are in need of reviving once again. CBK
Gates-level money buys a LOT of “support.” He bought off the teacher’s unions. He created many, many, many fake, astroturf organizations to promote the bullet list. He practically owned the Duncan Education Department.
I think it’s important that you did highlight that, Bob.
Because it demonstrates how even someone like Strauss who is very careful can get caught up in the false terminology.
Even Reimagining education” is something that was clearly “imagined” by a bunch of wankers at a Think Tank to put a lovely shinr on a turd.
“seeing through the BS” is something the Biden transition team may have a problem doing given all of the people he resurrected from the reigns of error by Arne Duncan, John King & Betsy DeVos (thanks Diane, that’s such an apt phrase).
None of the corporate people on the transition team can see through “the BS” because they drank the choice koolaid. None have ever admitted that testing, charters vouchers came straight out of Jim Crow. The Democrats’ entire education project is, by design, repackaged racist school policy. It’s time they admit that.
I am reminded of the only words Reagan’s speechwriters wrote that resonates with me today, “Trust, but verify.” Plus, I love it when writers have the opportunity to use the word cockamamie.
“NO DFER, please. The DFERS are so WRONG.” This is my “mantra” when I complete questionnaires re: any DEM survey.
I will repeat it again: “NO MORE DFERS. The DFERS are WRONG.”
They are in-DFER-ent tp public education . . .
Whatever Biden can do for public education will be better than what Obama and Trump did to public education. Biden recognizes that public education reflects democratic beliefs translated into action. What can be accomplished depends on access to public funds and the ideology guiding the decisions. Biden will likely not impose any “cockamamie evaluation systems” on teachers.
We will have to wait and see who leads the DOE. It has to be better than DeVos. I remain cautiously optimistic. I do think that with more than half of public school students being poor and minority, it would be wise to select someone that will fight for equity and integration.
“Biden recognizes that public education reflects democratic beliefs translated into action. ”
Gee, so maybe social studies and history as well real English classes will be not only allowed but encouraged and supported,
speduktr . . . what a concept. CBK
Cautiously optimistic that the education policies and department will, at the least, be a bit better than NCLB and RTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. Please?
That’s such a low bar! Even a flea could clear it with space to spare. 🤣
The Fleasbury Flop
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Fosbury
The only flop in history that wasn’t a flop.
You two are too flippin’ funny.
That’s floppin’, o before i, except after…damn, can’t complete this silliness.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
I’ll take being the loyal and constructive opposition to some of Biden’s eventual education policies ANY DAY over being tear gassed in the streets for protesting the actions of the Trump environment, health, and democracy wrecking crew.
Amen to that 1,000%! Thanks.
Exactly!
And truly, Trump is already looking for friendly judges who will agree to ignore the state votes and turn it over to whatever Trump-friendly politicians are available to decide.
^^We will be lucky to get a chance to be the loyal and constructive opposition at all. Very perilous times until Jan. 2021.
NYC Fortunately for the country, Mitch McConnell couldn’t provide Trump with as many judges as he would have liked . . . the ones that we already had were lifetime appointments. Too, too bad for Mitch and Trump. That said, we have really come way too close to a horrible turning point. CBK
These lawsuits are all bogus. Most of those states where the GOPers have kicked up a ruckus are actually run by Repubs. One interesting facet of this is that the officials on the ground are pissed off and not willing to admit that they did anything wrong. (Not that they wouldn’t pass laws to make voting harder later.) But this whole thing is just an epic mess; simply because Trump is too big a damned baby to admit he lost.
Excellent article, I am in full agreement, Obama pushed aside all advice, appointed Duncan, a close friend, and gave him a long lease. and stuffed proposals down educator throats… Duncan tarnished Obama’s legacy. Biden must turn the education ship around. This will require Republican allies, Lamar Alexander was a Republican ally, who will replace him?
Turning around a ship takes time, I am optimistic… step one is Secty of Ed choice …someone was political creds who can navigate Congress is essential
I’m glad the Obama ed people won’t be setting policy.
The most damning thing about them, to me, was how they came in with a hard set of ideas and plans and nothing changed or was modified over 8 years in response to concerns and complaints. They learned nothing, made it clear they weren’t interested in learning anything, and dismissed every complaint and concern as “self interested” or “the status quo”. No complaint was even possibly justified or valid. All complaints were instead validation of just how RIGHT they were. A brick wall.
For people who are education experts to exclude even the possibility that they might be wrong or might have to modify or change course seems to me to be anti-education. All this clap trap about “learning by doing” and they learned nothing by doing.
Chiara . . . a great irony . . . when teachers are closed-minded. CBK
Re “learning by doing”
Again, edupundits have a tendency to impose, from the top down, some single theory or solution, some Procrustean bed. Procrustes, you will remember, was the ogre from Greek mythology who would waylay travelers and cut them to size to fit his bed. Some things we ARE built to learn by doing. Walking for example, or riding a bike. If you try to teach either via charts and diagrams and step-by-step procedures, you will fail. Some things we must learn procedures for and then do them a LOT–planing or polishing wood or baking, for example. Some things can be learned in collaboration with others. Some things are best discovered or, at any rate, won’t actually be internalized until people discover them for themselves. Other things are best communicated through direct instruction.
There’s no one magic elixir, and, all teacher evaluation systems to the contrary, there is no one way to be a good teacher.
Education people have a REALLY bad habit of using terms that describe vastly different things that work in vastly different ways, and if they are powerful people, the unexamined assumptions baked into their terminology end up having disastrous consequences when made into universal, mandated policy.
Bob One of the first things teachers are prone to forget is how hard it is, and how long it took, for us to get to where we are. CBK
Amen to that, CBK. A lot of the job is learned on the job and from other teachers, in community. That said, I DO believe in teacher preparation. See my recommendations for English teacher preparation programs, here: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/what-should-be-taught-in-an-english-teacher-preparation-program/
These are recommendations for getting people to the point where they are ready TO BEGIN learning how to do the job.
Bob Hats off also to the “hidden curriculum.” Much of what goes on in K-6 has more to do with the authentic goodness of well-meaning, even loving teachers who “just love to teach” than with specialist-identified persons and personalities. The psychological/social/ cultural background of similarly “hidden” contexts of learning make all the difference in the world to young children.
I’m the LAST person to knock continued and collaborative learning of teaching staff where we are continually made aware of changes at the specialist-theoretical level.
The two are far from mutually exclusive; but rather, together, give ground for better pay, professional respect, and community awareness of the importance of the well-rounded educator in a free and open culture. Students themselves understand the subtleties of diminishing teacher respect and authority in the classroom. <–this diminishment in the eyes of students also occurs when we test the heart out of K-12 education. CBK
Students themselves understand this very well.
Bob Yes! Students are well equipped with GREAT RADAR for such things. CBK
In Germany, 300,000 school children are quarantined at home.
BERLIN — More than 300,000 school-aged children in Germany are currently quarantined at home because of the coronavirus, according to an estimate by the German teacher’s federation. The news, first reported by the tabloid Bild, comes as some states are considering extending winter breaks to slow infections at schools.
“Our politicians are relying on the health authorities and not the school system itself to protect pupils from infections,” said Heinz-Peter Meidinger, the president of the German Teachers’ Association.
Mr. Meidinger estimates that between 2.5 percent and 3 percent of all students across the country are quarantining either because they are infected with or have been exposed to the virus. Germany’s second nationwide lockdown, which began early this month, does not include schools and day-care centers, which can be shut down individually by health authorities if they are hit by an outbreak.
In its second week of the lockdown, Germany has shown a marked reduction in its reproduction number, meaning that while the number of new infections reported daily remains high (on Tuesday health authorities registered 18,487 new cases) the daily increase rate appears to have leveled off…
I have looked into the biographies of Biden’s 20 experts in education– entries from LinkedIn, their current organizations, and less often Wikipedia. The result of that research is sobering.
–Of these 20 experts,
15 have no documented Pre-k to12 teaching experience. Only five do.
14 held positions in Obama’s administration with nine of these in the US Department of Education (USDE). Two worked at USDE before Obama. These “experts” could be favoring a version of Obama’s prior policies because they are familiar and they have a greater vested interest in defending them than dumping them.
10 are lawyers.
7 have supported charter schools in one way or another
Also lurking in the list of experts and their current jobs are legacy non-profits favored by and supported by billionaires.
Thank you so much for this, I just did a cursory check on three and that alone got my stomach churning. You confirmed why my queasiness was justified.
I am in awe of your sleuthing skills.
If only you were being employed by Biden as a weed whacker.
Laura Sobering indeed . . . making all the more important: who heads the Department of Education. Someone should send your analysis to Jill Biden. CBK
ED Hirsch for Secretary of Education! Or Bob Shepard!
Thank-you so much for this succinct analyses of this team. From my quick, eyeball assessment I presumed the few individuals with real education backgrounds are there as a “sop to a faction who would have no influence”
You might recall this same trick gave us Arne Duncan:
https://www.epi.org/publication/grading_the_education_reformers/ “The reformers’ arrogance is best on display when Brill gloats about the charade of appointing anti-reformer Linda Darling-Hammond to lead Obama’s official post-election education planning, while DFER, with funds from Eli Broad, wrote a secret memo for the “informal yet real education transition team.”
Laura Chapman:
Thank you for this timely research. It gives us a sense of the behind-the-scenes wiring. The transition team members were obviously drafted before the election. Apparently much Obama influence.
Jill Biden’s devotion to education and to teachers gives me some optimism. I hope her advocacy turns out to be stronger than gauze when education’s profiteers and bagmen start making their demands.
I know I am a broken record. But still. 65 or so comments here, and I see only one comment that even mentions the pandemic and school closures. And not one about a plan to ensure students are back in school as soon as possible.
How is that not the highest priority for any education agenda right now?
Millions of children have not seen the inside of a classroom since March and don’t know when they’ll see one again. And we’re talking about the Common Core, for God’s sake?
I know, “no good choices,” etc. But can people at least humor me?
Making a roadmap for reopening schools with funding of safety measures is not controversial among the various groups of Democrats. There is agreement about it.
Where there is needed discussion about, and what we here fear, is another hostile, corporate takeover of the Department of Education. Still can’t believe so many lives were ruined because DFER secretly had the ear of a president elect and convinced him to put Arne Duncan in charge, so that they could play basketball together in the White House. That cannot be allowed to happen again.
So there’s no mention of it here because it’s not controversial. But there’s a ton of discussion about the Common Core because . . . the Common Core is a controversial topic here?
Yes, indeed. Common Core is more than controversial; it’s scandalous.
“The best laid plans of mice and men…” My K-8 district has been operating a hybrid program fairly successfully, but I suspect it will go all remote as we approach the holidays and the urge to mingle grows. Even now, there are parents who feel the need to stretch the guidelines in ways that endanger what they claim to want–their kids in school. And, as we watch the number of cases skyrocket, it is obvious that many people have either relaxed their observance of the protocols or never followed them religiously to begin with. I live in a wealthy suburban community with the resources to provide a relatively safe environment in schools. Discussions of safe plans? We have one if everyone who influences it in any way would follow it.
I am comfortable with the direction in which Biden is headed regarding COVID: science and funding. I’m nervous about high stakes data collection: junk science and wasted funding.
I share your uneasiness.
Flerp Also, I really love Nancy Pelosi, and she thanked everyone for their patience . . . teachers, first responders, essential workers, etc., . . . everyone BUT PARENTS. I know she would understand, but I was sorry no one thought of it, at least in that speech. CBK
How can going back to school is more important than what kids go back for. Do we want them to rush back and continue swallowing CC?
It would certainly be better than suspending school until the Common Core is abolished from school curricula.
And a lot of teachers ( and administrators) have figured out ways to pay lip service to the core while providing worthwhile instruction. If they had a good system before the core, they are more likely to have figured out how to retain what made it good. And, believe it or not, kids do learn in spite of poor instruction.
Is “a lot” the same as “the majority”? Should we do an analysis to see what’s been more damaging to kids, the 6 months of “learning loss” due to the pandemic or a decade of CC and two decades of NCLB?
But, again, is loss of learning a good reason for going back to school before the Pandemic is managed?
Honestly, I have no idea what “a lot” means, but if your child’s school has been doing a good job or has done a good job in the past, you are probably more likely to lobby for some in-school time. Unfortunately, the ones who suffer most from lack of face-to-face schooling are probably the ones who go to the schools least prepared to provide a safe, quality experience. The six, K-8 schools in my community are still operating a hybrid program successfully but are making plans for a hiatus after Christmas and have already put in place new restrictions for those families who choose to gather for Thanksgiving. Several surrounding communities have gone back to full remote as cases of COVID have increased in their communities. We still have had few if any cases traceable to schools. I can hardly wait for biden to take office. At least we will have an adult leading whether he gets it “right” all the time or not.
I do not understand at all. Is there really an urgency to go back to school before COVID is over, risking kids,’ teachers’ and parents’ lives?
Yeah, there is urgency in managing COVID but why tie it to going back schools? There is a clear priority here, isn’t there?
I have downloaded the written Biden plan for education.The plan does not mention Covid-19 or any virus, perhaps because of uncertainties about this menace at the time the written version was prepared.
There are 20 mentions of the need for health care services for students, six of these are focused specifically on mental health. Several sections related to funding for health care seem to assume that the Affordable Care Act will not be overturned so that, for example, parents of young children can receive home visits from health and child development specialists.
Biden’s Education Department Will Move Fast to Reverse Betsy DeVos’s Policies
NYT
Nov. 13, 2020
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has presented an education agenda that is starkly different from the Trump era, beginning with a far more cautious approach to school reopenings…
The incoming first lady, Jill Biden, is a community college professor and member of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. The Biden administration has promised to drastically increase resources for public schools, expand civil rights advocacy for marginalized students and reassert department leadership in policymaking.
On the most pressing issue facing education, reopening schools during the pandemic, the Biden administration has signaled a sharply different approach.
With a likely Republican Senate and a narrow Democratic majority in the House, Mr. Biden will struggle to accomplish some of his loftiest policy goals. He has promised to bolster funding for special education, institute universal prekindergarten and triple funding for a federal program that helps schools serving high concentrations of students from low-income families, devoting some of that funding to teacher salaries. In higher education, he has promised free public college, expanding federal financial aid and canceling some student debt.
Stef Feldman, the Biden campaign’s policy director, told reporters last month that Mr. Biden would “be able to get some big, bold education legislation passed and certainly immediate relief for our schools and our educators, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not also going to take executive action within existing authority.”
Mr. Biden has promised to appoint a secretary with teaching experience and a deep knowledge of the challenges schools and students face.
In his victory speech on Nov. 7, the president-elect referred to Dr. Biden as he declared: “For America’s educators, this is a great day. You’re going to have one of your own in the White House.”…
The Biden administration plans to restore Obama-era civil rights guidance — rescinded by Ms. DeVos — that allowed transgender students to choose their school bathrooms, addressed the disproportionate disciplining of Black students and pressed for diversity in colleges and K-12 classrooms. The restoration of those guidance documents can be done immediately because they were not put through the regulatory process or enacted into law…As vice president, Mr. Biden had personally helped introduce the Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual misconduct that Ms. DeVos reversed through formal rule-making.
The administration is likely to prioritize the immense backlog of loan forgiveness claims that the Trump administration let pile up, and the denials of assistance the department has issued to students who claim they were cheated by their colleges, according to officials familiar with the plans. Among the thousands of students awaiting relief are those who attended Corinthian Colleges, a now defunct for-profit college chain that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris sued as attorney general of California.
“There’s a lot of work to be done, but it will be nice to know there’s an education secretary who’s thinking about how to protect students from predatory schools instead of the other way around,” said Aaron Ament, the president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, which has sued the department for its rollbacks of loan forgiveness and consumer protection rules.
The team Mr. Biden has named to help the Education Department through the transition signaled the direction he intends to take.
Leading the team is Linda Darling-Hammond, the president of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Learning Policy Institute, who also oversaw the education transition for Mr. Obama in 2008. Ms. Darling-Hammond, a veteran researcher and policymaker in arenas like desegregation, school finance and teacher preparation, was considered a contender for Mr. Biden’s secretary of education, but took herself out of the running, saying she was committed to her work in California.
Teachers’ unions have curried favor by fighting Ms. DeVos at every turn, but Mr. Biden’s alliance with them has raised concerns.
“If it looks like the teachers’ unions are now calling the shots, and not the people schools are supposed to be serving, the pendulum will swing the other way,” said Neal McCluskey, the director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
Mr. Biden has echoed union concerns that the country needs to get the coronavirus under control to safely reopen schools, and that it will take a large infusion of cash to meet safety guidelines and the needs of students who have suffered academic and social setbacks.
“Schools, they need a lot of money to open,” Mr. Biden said during the last presidential debate, citing the need for better ventilation systems, smaller class sizes and more teachers.
The transition team’s strong representation from former Obama-era officials and teachers’ unions has been met with mixed reactions.
Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union, which represents low-income parents and parents of color, said the composition of the team made her worried that the Biden administration might stack the government with people who are “interested in fortifying the status quo that has been failing so many of our kids.”
“This is the biggest table right now,” she said of the transition team, “and I don’t see parent groups, family groups, community groups present.” She added, “It seems we’re back to the same old, ‘We’re going to do things to you, not with you.’”
While Mr. Trump has emphasized low infection rates among children, Mr. Biden has also stressed concerns for educators. During one of the debates, after Mr. Trump accused him of wanting to keep the country locked down, Mr. Biden mocked the president: “All you teachers out there, not that many of you are going to die, so don’t worry about it.”
Becky Pringle, the National Education Association’s president, said Mr. Biden understood that “no school system budget has a line item that says, ‘coronavirus.’”
Ms. Pringle noted that Mr. Biden had always been a strong supporter of the labor movement and said she was proud that he had also “leaned in” to the association’s playbook.
“He’ll take the slings and arrows for being ‘too close’ to us, and he’ll be able to say, ‘Not only did they help me get elected, they help me lead in a bold way,’” she said.
Union leaders top speculative short lists of contenders to be the next education secretary and will undoubtedly influence Mr. Biden’s choice. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lily Eskelsen García, a past president of the National Education Association, are among the names mentioned.
Other names include superintendents of districts like Baltimore and Seattle, and Representative Jahana Hayes, Democrat of Connecticut and a former National Teacher of the Year.
Ms. Weingarten said that she was honored by the mention, but that she would be “really happy to work with the Biden administration as the president of the A.F.T.”
“The Biden-Harris administration has the potential to enable a renaissance in public education,” she said.
A belated thank you to Laura Chapman for her usual dogged research. What I knew in my bones, she confirmed. &–you gotta know it’s gonna be Lily (still taking bets). Randi doesn’t have enough teaching experience, isn’t a “close friend” of Jill’s & isn’t a person of color, so she doesn’t fit the bill, & I don’t think we have to worry about her.
BTW–Rahm Emanuel’s name has come up (just as we figured) for Sec. of Transportation.
There is a petition against this appointment (AOC has already spoken out against this)–go to 33rd Ward Working Families on Twitter or Facebook or workingfamilies33.org–to sign the petition. Also, you may Twitter Biden: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden. Here are links to some articles:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-chicago-rahm-emanuel-biden-cabinet-20201114-k3sdltxozjbmjeby6mkoeic67u-story.html
https://inthesetimes.com/article/rahm-emanuel-joe-biden-cabinet-aoc-administration-2020
Please, no Rahm. Chicago gave him the boot. No need to bounce him up onto the national stage again. He will push his neoliberal policies far beyond the domain of transportation. Rahm believes only he and his fellow Wall Streeters have the answers to what’s ailing America.
As with every team formed by administrators regarding education, the parents are excluded. And the parents of disabled students even more so. It will NOT be equitable unless leadership from parent advocacy/disability background can bring their voices to the table. Especially during this pandemic, we need to be involved as parents are at home with the students trying to make everything work right now. There has never been proper parent training or support in education, especially regarding disability rights and responsibilities.
This needs to change and we’re in a remarkable situation to make great progressive change for the good of the children and teachers. However, with so many from the corporate reform/test industry culture still involved, I doubt if we’ll see much of that.