The Biden-Harris administration announced the selection of Cindy Marten, superintendent of schools in San Diego for the past seven years, as its choice for Deputy Secretary of Education. I have known her for 15 years. I first met her when she was the new principal of Central Elementary School. This will be the first time in the history of the U.S. Department of Education that the top two jobs were held by people with experience as teachers and principals.
This 2018 article is a good portrayal of who she is.
Read her memo to the transition team here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cindy Marten is GREAT!
Encouraging. “The good thing is she’s been a teacher,” said Myriam Pedersen, who retired this month after 30 years of teaching in the district. “It makes a huge difference when they talk about, ‘here’s our goals, here’s what we will do,’ if they’ve been a teacher.”
and it feels so much more respectful to those who teach
Do you think it is worth addressing the falling behind in scholastic achievement now being experienced by boys? The Boy Crisis, by Warren Farrell and The War On Boys by Christine Hoff Summers are just two books which demonstrate this. As an anti feminist, and men’s rights guy, I would like to hope so.
Dean Hedges I worry that the preservation of “men’s rights” is not the problem, but rather men’s experience of losing centuries of hegemony? It must be painful. CBK
It’s about freaking time. But we still have a long, long way to go. To date, only 58 women have served in the United States Senate, with 26 serving at this time, out of 100.
Addendum to Dean Hedges:
I promise you this:
No one will automatically expect you to take a seat at the back of the bus because you are a white man nor, God forbid, will you worry about being lynched or shot while the police look on; though you may experience some “womansplaining” here and there (ahem) and maybe even some real unfairness once in awhile, and for awhile.
To that I say to you: JOIN THE CLUB. Some of us will welcome you. CBK
I think this is the sort of issue Dean is talking about:https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info-Brief-2014-12.pdf
Girls have been outscoring boys on reading for decades, while boys usually outperform girls in math.
Girls have higher graduation rates from high school and college.
Boys are likelier to be disciplined more than girls.
These are not recent developments, except for the graduation rates.
But men still earn significantly more than women, and far outpace women in CEO positions.
“As an anti feminist”
Well, that puts you and me on opposite sides of this issue, Mr. Hedges. However, that there is an issue with boys seems pretty clear. Here, I presented some pretty alarming statistics, with sources for each:
Or perhaps more likely this article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-boys-are-more-at-risk-of-falling-behind-during-remote-school-11606222801
Interestingly, the WSJ article draws on a couple of recent studies that show girls also outperform boys grade-wise in STEM subjects.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06292-0
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24773502/
The studies note genetic gender variance accounts for that difference, and say incentives to encourage girls into math and science achievement have largely succeeded. The researchers explore social reasons for why girls nevertheless are grossly under-represented in STEM fields, and how the self-selection aspect of that might be influenced through schooling.
Unfortunately I can’t get at the whole WSJ article [paywall]. All I learned was that the risk of boys falling behind during covid is speculation [by experts] based on remote learning requiring more “conscientiousness.” I wonder why conscientiousness would be any less important to achieving good grades in in-person instruction? Perhaps some of you have WSJ subscriptions, or background on this issue, & can tell me.
Bethree5,
Girls, on average, get higher grades in K-12 than boys in all subjects, including mathematics. When Dr. Ravitch says that boys outperform girls in math she must not be referring to teacher assigned grades.Girls do not, however, score higher in standardized exams in all subjects.
How you view this depends, I think, on how you view teacher assigned grades and standardized exam score. If you think teacher assigned grades are the correct measure, standardized exams are biased against girls. If you think the standardized exams are the correct measure, the grades are biased against boys.
Must Reads
How blacklisting silenced progressive, lesbian, bisexual, and ethnic minority women artists and intellectuals in mid-20th-century television, film, and theatre; portrayed an ideal of white, cisgendered, straight male dominance, female subservience, and the father-led, upwardly mobile nuclear suburban family; and stopped social and political progress cold, via brainwashing of a largely uneducated American public, for 50+ years.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dawn-television-promised-diversity-heres-why-we-got-leave-it-beaver-instead-180970548/
So funny/ sad, those shows created instant nostalgia for something that never was. Akin to the mini-foibles of the fabulously wealthy that pervaded ‘30’s movies sold to the struggling masses for a quarter a pop. My memory of ‘50’s rural families is hilariously divergent. Sure, little racial diversity, but there were pockets of extreme poverty, mental illness, wife-beating, incest, adultery, smallbiz fraud, in a village context spanning everything from arty beatniks and professors to backyard pigpens and bible-thumpers. Floating fear of polio/ nuclear holocaust/ communist takeover, the screaming Army-McCarthy hearings on the airwaves. Homosexuality in the deep freeze.
I guess folks figured the Cleavers lived downstate in NYC suburbs… but the stories being pumped out back then in the New Yorker suggest otherwise.
The Biden-Harris administration is going to appoint to high level positions some people who are good and some who support more conservative positions. Sure, we’d like a “perfect” cabinet, but I can already see that the Biden administration is going to be different than the Obama administration. Because this is a different time and the democrats do respond to changing times. (It’s hard to fathom now that Obama strongly opposed gay marriage during his early presidency!)
I’m just happy to know there will be some good selections in the Education Department. To my knowledge, Obama and Trump had none.
Not sure if this impacted Ms. Marten, but I specifically remember watching a C-SPAN interview of an administrator from San Diego not too long after the passage of No Child Left Behind (maybe 2 or 3 years after)…who was at a “failing school” due to not meeting AYP requirements with the sub-group of students who were ESL. Hopefully Ms. Marten understands the absurdity and counterproductiveness of high-stakes testing.
San Diego was the first “reform” takeover. A lawyer was superintendent of the district. The experiments were funded by Gates, Broad, etc.
She replaced 75% of principals to get principals who hold teachers “accountable”. Well, I guess since she didn’t fire any of them on national television like Michelle Rhee did, that’s a step in the right direction? Oy vey.
It is great that Ms. Marten is an experienced practicioner and administrator in a large urban school district. She wants to hold teachers accountable for their work. I wonder if she is only looking at test scores or other ways to demonstrate performance. I also wonder if she believes it was necessary to fire seventy-five percent of the district’s principals when she became superintendent. Perhaps she felt these leaders were responsible for setting the wrong culture in their buildings. I wonder what criteria she used to fire so many of them. The article made me wonder lots of unknowns about Ms. Marten. If she has been able to turn the San Diego schools around, she likely has lots of relevant experience.
San Diego Unified has certainly placed less emphasis on test scores than Los Angeles Unified.
Cindy Marten came in after a sustained period of “reform” funded by Broad, Gates, and the usual cabal. She may have felt it necessary to replace their drones with actual educators.
Read about the first “reform” experiment–a disaster–in San Diego in my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Our Schools.
Thank you. I forgot about that. It’s been a while since I read Death and Life…
Cindy Marten’s appointment gives me a lot more confidence in the direction the Biden administration will take on education. She took over a great district that suffering serious harm from Gates and Broad financed education reform. It was so bad that the superintendent right before Marten quit after one year. Under Marten, the district is once again the top performing urban school district in America. She is a progressive educator who believes in public education. Probably not a perfect being but I believe she is the real deal.
My first teaching job was in San Diego Unified a couple years after former prosecutor Allen Bersin was foisted on the district. Although my physics classes in a 100% free and reduced lunch school were among the top scoring in the district, I was fired for life for failing to move my students toward achieving standards. It seems at the time a certain percentage of new teachers had to fired and since I was 50-years-old the administration decided they would rather lose me than one of their younger new hires.
I was really happy to see Marten take over that train wreck of a district and put it back on a winning path.
Thank you, Tom. I have gotten to know her, and I think she is the real deal.
That is absolutely wonderful news!
I know this isn’t about Cindy Marten, but CNN is posting about the College Board changing the test requirements yet again due to Covid restrictions AND parents complaints about the test. It’s the highlight of my day today! This is one company that I would love to see dismantled and thrown into the rubbish bin.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/us/college-board-essay-subject-tests-trnd/index.html
But, but, but, it pays David Coleman, architect of the Common Core, $1 million a year!
I would love for David Coleman to have to stand in the unemployment line….I wouldn’t give a Sh_t how he thinks or feels.
Saw him on the evening news tonight. He sure doesn’t look like someone pulling in that much plus expenses!
In Missouri…..I tore into whoever at the democrats is ignoring education…..(I am one of 37 from my home town)They probably should not have offered me “other”. I warned them not to bring arne duncan and bill gates into the picture…
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Which issues do you think Democrats in Congress should prioritize in 2021? (Check all that apply)
Forming a national strategy to defeat COVID-19
Providing more economic relief to Americans
Creating more jobs
Boosting the economy
Expanding affordable access to healthcare
Protecting Social Security and Medicare
Fighting Climate Change
Protecting Women’s Rights
Ensuring Reproductive Justice
Protecting LGBTQ+ Rights
Addressing Racial Inequality
Passing comprehensive immigration reform
All of the above
Other
If anyone else gets this notice about your home town……I hope you reply.
We want to know what you’d like Democrats in Congress to accomplish in 2021.
Your responses will help us complete our 2021 Democratic Strategy.
Joe, I do exactly the same thing, when I get a survey.
I am glad to hear that….but this survey, which I thought ignored the importance of public education, seems to be going to democrats nationwide, in their own communities…….If you received this one, I hope, since your voice is louder than ours…..that you noted the omission of public education for them.