President-Elect Joe Biden will soon announce his choice for Secretary of Education. He promised to choose a person with experience as a teacher. He said he wants a Secretary who is committed to public education. Here is my choice.
I can’t think of anyone better qualified to be Secretary of Education than Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick, other than Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, who is chair of the Biden education transition team and has taken herself out of the running.
Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick is Dean Emeritus of the School of Education at Howard University.
She has been a teacher, a teacher educator, a scholar, and a dean. She taught middle school science in Toledo, her hometown.
She understands the most important needs of American education: adequate and equitable funding; experienced teachers; and a commitment to equity and inclusion.
I have watched her lectures online, and I was blown away by her wisdom, her articulateness, and her deep understanding of the needs of children, teachers, and schools.
Leslie Fenwick is steeped in knowledge of teaching and learning, and she knows the details of federal policy.
She is the perfect person to clean up the mess that Betsy DeVos created, to reverse four years of an administration that sought to demolish civil rights protections, to defund public schools, to fund private and religious schools, and to impose financial burdens on college students who are deep in debt or were defrauded by for-profit institutions.
After twenty years of failed federal policies of high-stakes testing and punishment for schools and teachers, American education needs bold and forceful leadership, not incremental change.
Leslie Fenwick knows that public schools are an essential element of American democracy. They are community institutions that belong to the public, not to entrepreneurs or corporate chains.
She will support schools instead of closing them. She will support teachers instead of threatening them.
She is a strong and clear-thinking leader.
She respects educators.
She is an inspiring speaker.
She would be the ideal Secretary of Education for the Biden administration.
If you want to show your support for Dr. Fenwick, please sign the NPE Action petition and tweet your support:
Here is the petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/dr-leslie-fenwick-for-us-secretary-of-education
For twitter: contact @joebiden @DrBiden @Transition46
Something for sec. Of Ed to consider
https://commercialfreechildhood.org/a-teachers-take-on-computerized-reading-tests/?fbclid=IwAR0N29lQ0jj2ht6U0YxSgCJ96Ojr9AxzxOU2z3-ADENt3JkwS2UIGDEQu7g
A friend sent me this link suggesting the choice has been made. Miguel Cardona:
https://www.axios.com/miguel-cardona-biden-education-secretary-4b05f071-8b96-4141-8f11-b695d48648aa.html
What is the feeling about him? I don’t know much except he has encouraged re-opening schools.
I really don’t know much about him, but I’m glad he’s at least seen life from the side of public education. (But after Duncan, I’m always suspicious…)
Here is a nugget from from the Connecticut Mirror.
“Charter school advocates and public school officials say they see him as even-keeled when it comes to school choice.
“’ haven’t found him to be pro-charter or anti-charter. It doesn’t seem like he’s focused on governance and structure. What he is focused on are great schools for kids. And I think just more broadly, I haven’t found him to be driven by ideology and politics,’” said Dacia Toll, the chief executive officer of Achievement First, which operates the largest network of charter schools in Connecticut and also has schools in Rhode Island and New York. “’He is more focused on making sure every kid gets an excellent education than the type of school they go to.’”
Thanks for this heads up. Unfortunately, I think this description puts him in a position to be the first choice. I hope I am WRONG. The announcement is supposed to be tomorrow.
The choice has not been made until it is announced. I don’t know Mr. Cardonas. He might be fine. I’m very impressed by Dr. Fenwick.
Not good. Cardona has been opposing teachers unions about reopening and has spent years focusing on test scores and so-called achievement gaps. He does not seem like a friend of public education. He is from Connecticut, and I recall talk from the standardized testing advocates on Biden’s campaign committee praising Connecticut’s corporate-developed, standardized assessment heavy, competency-based mastery learning program. Biden needs to nominate Fenwick — not Cordova — or we are likely doomed to double down on the doubling down of NCLB high stakes madness and losing elections to Republicans by enraging teachers unions and the rest of the Democratic base.
Reopening (and possibly reclosing) of schools should be done on case by case basis depending on factors like virus prevalence in the local community and vaccination of teachers and other school staff.
It would simply be foolish to mandate school openings from a federal level. Not even sure how the US Department Of Ed could do such a thing without extortion: threatening to withdraw federal funds to states.
The latter would be precisely the tack that Betsy DeVos or Arne Duncan would have taken.
Am I sonehow stating a “radical” view here?
Or have we completely thrown out common sense as a country?
It would seem like a really stupid move to me. Show total contempt for teachers out the door.
No, it’s not a radical view to propose that the Department of Education is not empowered to reopen schools. That is common sense. But billionaires don’t care about laws or common sense when they tell our government what to do.
Regardless of who gets the position. Perhaps one of other excellent candidates could serve as Assistant Commissioner of Education.
Dr. Fenwick is a great choice to lead the DOE. She has been a elementary teacher and administrator. She has worked in higher education as an instructor, dean and researcher. She understands the issues. She is an expert on equity. She will work to ensure that children of color get fair treatment, and she is no friend to the charter lobby. She will have practical insights into the student loan crisis in this country. I sincerely hope she will lead education out of the morass of the past twenty years.
I certainly respect your opinion but greatly prefer Lily Eskelsen Garcia who was not only a classroom teacher but ran for Congress and has run the immense National Education Association for the last half dozen years. Lily had to run nation-wide to win the presidency of the NEA and has navigated both the internal NEA politics and the external politics of Washington, D.C. as NEA President. She knows the political and educational culture of every state, rural as well as urban and suburban school communities, and is both knowledgeable of and sensitive to the multiple ethnic, racial, and cultural constituencies she needed to gain election.
The new Secretary of Education needs not only K-12 experience but political know-how and expertise. It helps immensely if she has a nation-wide constituency of her own to help propel change. Eskelsen Garcia all those components. None of the other candidates for Secretary of Education do. I’ve encouraged Joe Biden to select her, and hope you’ll reconsider and support her too.
I would be thrilled to see the job go to Lily or Randi.
Randi lied to your face in front of the entire 2015 NPE Conference.
I don’t hold grudges.
Ms. Garcia would also be a great choice.
Signed and shared
I signed the petition and wrote a comment supporting Dr. Leslie Fenwick. How great it would be to have a Secretary of Education who understands what happens inside the classroom.
Both union presidents allowed gates funding and Randi in particular supports a corporate take over of our Public schools.
So I signed this hoping Dr Fenwick gets the job.
Watch her videos. She criticizes the “reforms” of the past 20 years.
Amen!
Amen to that!
I signed the petition.
Diane Ravitch would be an excellent selection for the position.
Until class sizes are reduced to be closer to their private school counterparts, savage inequalities will exist. None of Biden’s candidates are facing this reality.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Here is the person that should be the next Secretary of Education. She knows how to clean up the mess left behind by Betsy the Brutal-Beast DeVos and Traitor and Serial Liar Donald Trump.
I signed the petition. She seems like the ideal candidate without the baggage of some of the other candidates.
She’s been flying under the radar, but in a good scholarly way.
Looks like it’s Cardona:
https://ctmirror.org/2020/12/21/biden-selects-cts-miguel-cardona-to-lead-the-u-s-department-of-education/
The unions in Connecticut seem to support him, even if they don’t always agree. I think Fenwick sounded much better choice and I would have preferred, but Cardona sounds more like Biden himself, someone who isn’t an ideologue or huge change agent, but who can be convinced to move the department in a more progressive way.
He does seem very focused on reopening schools and the achievement gap, but that isn’t necessarily bad. I feel as if issues like the achievement gap have been used by unethical people to push their privatization agenda, but that is because of their own lack of scruples, and there are others who actually care about the achievement gap because it is an important issue, and Cardona seems to be more of the 2nd type.
It’s how he identifies the achievement gap. Does it mean a continued emphasis on high stakes testing around Common Crud? Or, does it mean the development of community schools designed to meet the needs of the surrounding community as well?
This will be a test to determine if NPE is worth a damn. I hope it is.
We were unable to push her across the finish line. We succeeded in blocking all the DFER recommendations. Read Cardonas Twitter feed and you will see he is a nice guy. No controversy. Supports students and teachers. Fenwick would have reversed course.
After decades of failed “Rheeforms,” one would think the time to have reversed course was long overdue.
I can’t help but think that DFER’s approve of the Cardona nomination.
Color me cynical.
According to WashingtonPost article, the DFERs got behind Cardonas to block Fenwick.
We may be late to the conversation.
SIgned.
I cannot believe Kamala Harris is real happy with this choice.
Biden to Pick Latino Chief of Connecticut Schools as Education Secretary
Dr. Miguel A. Cardona will fulfill Mr. Biden’s promise to appoint a diverse cabinet with an education secretary with public school experience.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to nominate Miguel A. Cardona, Connecticut’s education commissioner, to serve as his education secretary, tapping a Latino to be the nation’s highest education policymaker, according to two officials familiar with his plans.
Dr. Cardona, if confirmed by the Senate, would be tasked with bringing the elementary, secondary and higher education systems back from the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic and repairing the considerable damage done. School districts, colleges and universities have hemorrhaged money as they struggled with distance learning, retrofitted buildings to make them somewhat safer, and lost students, especially foreign university students who had been paying full tuition.
The pandemic has also widened the achievement gap between affluent students and poorer pupils who fell behind as they suffered through deficient internet access and difficult home-learning conditions…
Dr. Cardona was appointed Connecticut’s first Latino commissioner of education in 2019 after two decades of experience as a public school educator, starting in a Meriden, Conn., elementary school classroom, according to his official biography. He also served as a principal for a decade, among the youngest in the state, and as assistant superintendent and adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut…
Dr. Cardona emerged as a front-runner for the position in recent days, beating out teachers union leaders, higher education academics, and superintendents of large, urban school districts. He garnered the endorsements of important stakeholders in the Biden campaign, including congressional leaders, teachers unions, community groups and one of Mr. Biden’s early preferred candidates, Linda Darling-Hammond, who headed the campaign’s education transition team but took herself out of the running.
In interviews, Dr. Cardona has emphasized his parents’ Puerto Rican roots and his upbringing in Meridien’s public housing and education system as experiences that have anchored his career.
“It’s not lost on me, the significance of being the grandson of a tobacco farmer who came here for a better life, who despite having a second grade education was able to raise his family and create that upward mobility cycle,” he said in a 2019 Connecticut Mirrorprofile.
While serving as a principal of an elementary school in Meriden, he was named principal of the year in 2012, and he was co-chair of the Connecticut Legislative Achievement Gap Task Force. In the task force’s 2014 report, he wrote that “addressing the achievement disparities in Connecticut is more than just our moral obligation. It makes fiscal sense,” citing that the costs of remediation and incarceration were greater than the cost of educating students.
“In order to address the conditions that perpetuate underachievement, we must confront poverty and systemic barriers while constantly improving upon our practices in all state agencies,” he wrote…