D.C.-based The Hill says that Lily Eskelsen Garcia, ex-president of the National Education Assiciation, is the leading candidate for U.S. Secretary of Education.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) endorsed Eskelsen García for the job earlier this month, as did several Latino advocacy groups. The 11 female members of the CHC wrote to Biden earlier this week urging him to nominate at least two Latinas to his Cabinet. Biden has yet to name a Latina to a Cabinet role...
Eskelsen García began her career in education as a cafeteria worker. She went on to work as an elementary school teacher in Utah, earning teacher of the year honors in the state in 1989.
More recently, she led the NEA, the country’s largest union, which boasts more than 3 million members. The group backed Biden in the Democratic primary and the general election. Incoming first lady Jill Biden is also a longtime member of the NEA.
Biden is expected to name all the members of his Cabinet before Christmas, and the guessing game will end.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The best choice for Ed. Secretary would be Diane Ravitch.
🙂
The California Association for Parent-Child Advocacy sees Lily Eskelsen Garcia as harmful to disabled students and those who teach them. Here is their response to the Biden Education Transition Team. https://twitter.com/capcacal/status/1338662401919619072?s=21
I read the letter on Twitter. I hate that platform for conducting any serious advocacy, but never mind. The group does not want to see Linda Darling Hammond or Lily Eskelsen Garcia in the Biden administration.
This letter refers to a YouTube featuring Lily Eskelsen Garcia. This group found her references to special students offensive.
The group also wants specific components in teaching reading. They believe these are best for special education. They also seem to think such instruction is not routinely provided. https://youtu.be/2zMbspRhqJc
She sings and plays the guitar, both of which I have heard when she gave speeches at the AFT Convention; she is also very funny. A good sense of humor should certainly be a benefit if she does become the Sec of Ed.
If the Democrats do not win both of Georgia’s Senate seats on January 5, 2021, Moscow Mitch McConnel might block her confirmation in the Senate.
And then in 2022 during that midterm election across the country, the Democrats will have to fight hard to hold on to the majority in both Houses. The battle for seats up for re-election in the House and the Senate will be record-breaking expensive and brutal.
No matter what Biden does as president, no matter what he promised during the campaign, or who he appoints to his cabinet, without a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, it will not be easy for Biden to accomplish much if Moscow Mitch decides to block him.
I also do not think Biden is going to win over and gain much support from Trump’s hardcore deplorable supporters. From what I have read, that is almost 80% of registered Republicans. Trump is a vicious vindictive loser and as long as he is alive with access to Twitter and other social media sites, and not in prison, he will continue to be a divisive source stirring up his base to cause as much trouble as possible for Biden and the United States.
Unless Trump is dragged into endless court battles and loses most of them costing him tons of money, he will use most of his awake time when he isn’t cheating at golf, being the wrecking ball he loves to be.
I have an aching gut feeling that even with Trump out of the White House, we are not going to get rid of that toxic monster.
Has anyone else read the recent, breaking news about Trump and his administration plotting to do whatever they could to spread COVID-19 and achieve herd immunity no matter how many died or suffered?
“We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal
“Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408
“We Want Them All Infected”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/12/16/we-want-them-all-infected-trump-appointee-repeatedly-pushed-for-herd-immunity-while-at-hhs/?sh=4ac72ad17a05
“Who Cares”: A Trump Administration Official Wanted to Purposely Infect “Infants, Kids,” and the “Middle Aged” With COVID-19
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/trump-administration-herd-immunity-paul-alexander
The preposterous nature of the herd immunity idea was brought home to me the other day. I went to give Covid Plasma at the Red Cross in town. There I learned from a delightful staff member who has been engaged in getting this plasma from people that her experience suggests that the outside limit of Covid antibodies being in the blood is 4 months. My cousin from Brooklyn, NY, who got it in March in the first wave, never had any antibodies at all.
I think we have a long way to go with this virus, vaccination and all. It has obviously been too short a time to see how the vaccination reacts over a period of time. It now appears to be a fairly invasive vaccination, much like the present shingles vaccine. Will it be necessary to repeat this coming year every year like we do with the flu?
Trump’s Chumps obviously assumed this was going to be like the measels. Guess not.
Isn’t it amusing that Trump supporters are flooded with appeals for money to help out a billionaire?
Please, Trump ally, send $5 to help The Donald win the presidency despite the popular votes and the Electoral College.
Your point is so well taken, Diane!
It would be amusing if it were not such a ringing indictment of my beloved place of natural origin. What do you do when you love the people around you, but they seem so deep in intellectual apostasy.
Undoubtedly, there’d trouble in River City (read, Senate). However, after having read in the NYT yesterday that itch “pleaded”* for recognition that Biden won, I smell something afoot (not “someone’s foot,” something afoot). Someone has been nosing around the KY Senate elections in itch’s district, & it ain’t lookin’ good.
LOTS of “funny” %ages, numbers. Also, someone brilliantly mentioned to me that Elaine Chao’s activities while Sec. of Transportation may be revealing some mischief. *Why “pleaded?”
Normally, itch could give a darn.
Also–& I noticed speduktr’s comment on my comment yesterday–where’d lindsay graham? Seems to be laying low.
In terms of the GA elections, let’s not count our chickens by short shrifting There’s enough to have headaches about w/o the moaning & groaning confirmations will be blocked.
Hopefully, someone’s got the bads (well, they aren’t good) on them.
Stay tuned…
Let us not get bogged down by a “progressive purity” test. All three of the potential candidates mentioned here today would be head and shoulders superior to “mother superior to the children of the corn,” Betsy DeVos. All three have first hand experience in public schools, and they understand the issues. After the past four years, I am just happy to see Biden’s transition team present such excellent candidates.
You’ve given us a standardized test score; it tells me an inch deep of this ocean called education. — Lily Eskelsen Garcia
And yes, more guitarists in the cabinet!
We should only accept a guitarist who can play Salt Creek like Doc Watson.
Well, Roy, that probably eliminates everyone but you and Bob Shepherd!
By me as well. I did have the privelege of knowing the guy who taught Doc Watson his first guitar chord
Or Deep River Blues! I’ve heard him do that a couple times in person! Or Guajiras de Lucía like 14-year-old Catalina Pires
Wow! I would have to meet someone at the crossroads to play like that
LOL, Roy! Worked for Robert J! Btw, I play his “Come into My Kitchen” and his “32-20 Blues.” We are so blessed that someone caught him in a couple sessions of recording! The guitarists I most admire: Paco de Lucia, Jim Hall and Pat Metheny and Joe Pass, Yngwie Malmsteen, my revered teachers Jon Damian and Javier Calderon, and the astonishing Julian Bream, whose tone was that a bells.
I just took my spaceship back to earth and landed there. Let’s hope Lily’s governance will be the right thing for public education. I don’t care if she plays guitar and Julie Andrews her way up a mountain. I like that she has a nexus to public education, unlike the hideous monster we have now. And I’m glad Randi was not considered.
I sincerely hope that being the member and leader of the NEA is not used as a qualifier to be our next US Secretary of Education. Just because Mrs. Biden was a member of NEW and because the NEA backed Joe Biden should not be considered as qualifiers for the position. How does playing a guitar qualify a person to be a leader of anything? That is a “so what” in my books.
The two other candidates mentioned earlier on this blog seemed to have a better balance when it comes to providing a direction this nation needs to go with educating all our children — including all children with learning disabilities.
I served on a Board of Education for eight years in a school district that has NEA. I had many, many conversations with Board members across the state. It became evident in far too many cases actions between the Boards of Ed and NEA were many times far too adversarial. Yes, Boards of Ed were many times at fault but often times when an important topic came up affecting teachers the NEA almost always took an adversarial position.
The guitar stuff was a joke. We need someone who has experience advocating for teachers! Scranton Joe Biden has promised to revitalize the union movement in this country. That is SORELY needed. I hope he will fulfill his promise there.
As I said, I do not have a problem with unions. But, it should NOT be the overriding factor that determines who gets appointed as the US Secretary of Education.
The union-busting has been so successful in the United States that now only about 11 percent of workers in the country are unionized. This is a major reason why we have such insane wealth and income inequity and so many part-time and gig workers without benefits and so many states with minimum wages that are far below a living wage. I just read a story this morning that 18 percent of renters in the US are now behind on their rent and in danger of eviction. This in one of the richest countries in the history of the world.
Again, being a member/leader of the NEA the overriding factor for appointing a person to the the Secretary of Education.
I noted Sonja Luchini pointed out that Ms. Garcia was harmful to disabled students. I have noted that other than Ms.Luchini’s comments that this information has not even been touched in this blog. This is not something to consider for discussion or just waived as as it has been so many, many times.
From what I can tell looking online, the opposition to Ms. Garcia is being led by the Ed Deform organization The 74, and most of their opposition is based on wanting children with disabilities to be tested to death like other students, something the NEA has opposed. See the monstrously stupid arguments against Ms. Garcia posed here: https://www.the74million.org/disability-rights-groups-send-letter-to-biden-transition-team-opposing-education-secretary-contender-eskelsen-garcia-say-former-nea-chief-failed-to-steer-union-toward-equity-and-access-for-s/
This is hardly advocacy for children with disabilities. It is the precise opposite.
The guitar was indeed tongue in cheek, but the need for diversity of interests is more than a metaphor. Our specialists are invaluable, but we need a leadership than can stand back and evaluate policy against the backdrop of reality.
One of the reasons CC is still flopping as a curriculum is that it was developed by the myopia of specialization. Sure we need that ability to zero in in a field, but leadership needs to think globally, especially in education.
I have not always been happy with the NEA, but my discontent with that organization pales by comparison to the loathing I feel for the idea of doing away with public education.
The rightwing will do anything to keep former union leaders from gaining political power.
And it has extremely well-funded meretricians to carry out this program of slander and lies.
Yikes, Roy. I forgot to mention, among favorite guitarists the breathtaking arranger and player Roxane Elfasci!!! Check out her Debussy Clair de lune and Arabesque on Youtube.
Bob, I agree with you about the need for unions big time and why we are where we are.
Actually, I would really like to hear from Threatened Out West as to this choice. I seem to recall T.O.T. writing about Lily. Can you fill us in, here, T.O.T.?
I just wrote a comment about this (but on the wrong post). T.O.T. actually made 3 comments on a Mercedes Schneider post on this blog on November 8, 2020, so there’s some reference there.
The cabinet so far is not progressive enough. The sec of ed should be a supporter of public schools, not of well-heeled edupreneurs.
Good evening Diane and everyone,
This is off topic but I thought it might be an interesting topic for Diane to blog at some point. I just spent a wonderful snow day at home. Of course, we did get 30 inches of snow here in upstate NY. Anyway, some schools are keeping the snow day tradition alive even though online teaching is ubiquitous. Some schools are telling students and teachers that they must go to school online and there’s no snow day! It’s funny because there are snow days built into the school calendar. We have 4 days we can take for snow days where I live. So, the question is…do the readers of the blog think we should keep those good old snow days or should teachers and students have to hop on the computer for more screen time??? We might also keep in mind that even though my husband and I (both teachers) are fortunate to have a garage, our snow plow fellow got stuck in our driveway at 5:00 am and it took him hours to get out and my husband spent most of the day dealing with snow issues. I’m sure many teachers and students aren’t as fortunate as we are and may have had to deal with snow issues all day. So, what do readers think?
Funny this comes up, Mamie. I’m on the board of the Learning Disabilities Assn. of IL, & we just had a Zoom (we usually present these sessions at our conferences), “I Have a Kid…” whereby parents & teachers w/sped. kids can ask questions of our panel/board members, who are teachers, parents of sp.ed. students, professors (yes, w/doctorates! Not me.), psychologists, a nurse, a librarian w/ADHD, speech therapist, p.t., social worker, etc. (Funny–no adminimals, Duane!).
It was very well-attended (we’re going to be doing these once a month) & helpful, & many ??? came up about remote learning & computer time driving the kids, parents (parent-teachers, these days!) & teachers absolutely bonkers. So–one of the things we talked about was getting the kids as much outdoor time as possible.
IMO, & in the vein of that discussion yesterday, I’m in favor of the snow day: building snowmen, sledding, sliding, snowball fights (friendly, of course!), skiing…whatever your area offers!
Use it or lose it! (we haven’t yet had substantial snow in the Chicago area, but it IS winter, so one of these days…)
Anyway, when Mother Nature talks, we need to listen to her!!!
Mamie,
See the last post about the letter from the superintendent in West Virginia for an answer to your question.
I’m confused about who is on Biden’s short list for Sec of Ed. Mike Klonsky says the 2 finalists are:
“His people just dropped the names of two short-listed candidates to the Washington Post — Howard University emeritus Ed School Dean Leslie Fenwick and Miguel Cardona, the commissioner of schools in Connecticut.
I don’t know much about either one. So I’ll go by WaPo’s description of each:
http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/
No one knows for sure. No leaks. Lots of speculation. We will know in the next few days.
Let’s hope Jill Biden can push Biden to resist a CAP and DFER “compromise” candidate. Approval from any wing of the corporate reform camp is not acceptable. The Federal Dept of Ed needs a public school advocate with the administrative skills to undo the systemic damage left by DeVOS and Arne Duncan.
I have mixed-feelings a teachers’-union leader as US Sec’y of Ed. Our NEA & AFT leaders both stood by for years with s—-eating grins as one admin after another waled on publicschs w/a combo of “accountability systems” for pubschs plus pushing charter alternatives via fed grants, then voucher schools via bully pulpit, as alternatives for micromgd, underfunded, “failing” [by govt’s own privatization-serving definition] pubschs. Despite growing clamor within the ranks against these policies. Culminating in the premature backing of HRC against Sanders w/o polling rank & file.
One would like to think they learned something from the subsequent nationwide wildcat strikes. One would like to think their classroom experience gives them a leg up on BDeVos but that’s a mighty low bar. Neither of them was in the classroom during the years NCLB, RTTT, & Common Core-aligned high-stakes tests de-professionalized teaching. Nor was either likely in their relatively short ‘80’s – early ‘90’s classroom tenure to experience what happens in a pubsch district when charterschs & voucherschs cream off the enrollment, leaving larger-proportion of SpEd, ESL, & poorest to get along on a smaller budget. Nor do either of them appear to have listened much to rank&file about these issues. [Randi perhaps some, but Lily is the one under consideration].
So, the one thing I like about L Eskelson-Garcia as Sec’y of Ed is that she would likely stand up for teachers’ unions… for what that’s worth.
I would feel much better about someone like Diane Ravitch or Carol Burris.
“I have mixed-feelings a teachers’-union leader as US Sec’y of Ed. Our NEA & AFT leaders both stood by for years with s—-eating grins as one admin after another waled on publicschs w/a combo of “accountability systems” for pubschs plus pushing charter alternatives via fed grants, then voucher schools via bully pulpit, as alternatives for micromgd, underfunded, “failing” [by govt’s own privatization-serving definition] pubschs.”
I still can’t erase the cozy image of Randy on that whistle stop train ride during Obama’s 2nd POTUS campaign. There’s Randy smiling & waving next to the contemptible, destructive Arne Duncan as if he was teachers’ & public schools greatest champion.
NEA/AFT don’t know how to (or refuse to) leverage their power to hold Democrats or Republicans accountable for harming public ed. They need to take a lesson from Sarah Nelson, president of the Flight Attendants Union. https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/how-i-get-it-done-flight-attendant-union-leader-sara-nelson.html
When Randy exposes CAP as one of the billionaires’ tools to increase the wealth of the 1%, it would be a measure of progress.
Lily led the NEA in a more progressive direction than any other NEA President I witnessed in my 20-plus years as an elected delegate to the annual meeting of the NEA’s policy making body, the NEA Representative Assembly.
She has the leadership skills, as having been the leader of the largest union in America, to restore the Secretary of Education Office to promoting public schools and to reverse the Education Department’s policies promoting the privatization of America’s public education systems.
It would be terrific if Lilly is selected President Bldens’ Secretary of Education.