Tom Ultican has written extensively about the insidious goals of “reformers,” who move forward despite multiple failures because of their billionaire funding.
In this post, he reviews the Biden education team, which is not yet fleshed out. He wrote this post before the announcement that Cindy Marten, the Superintendent of Schools in San Diego, was selected to be Deputy Secretary. This will be the first time in history that the top two jobs in the Department of Education were held by people who were actual educators with classroom experience. He added a comment about Superintendent Marten.
Tom Ultican defines the unanswered questions:
Joe Biden has chosen a person with an education background to lead the department of education but his experience running large organizations is almost non-existent. He was assistant superintendent of a school district with less than 9,000 students from 2013 to 2019. He then became Education Commissioner of Connecticut. That system serves less than 530,000 students. His primary strength seems to be he has not engaged with the controversial education issues of the day like “school choice” and testing accountability.
Which begs the question, will the Biden-Harris administration support and revitalize public schools or will they bow to big moneyed interests who make campaign contributions? Will Biden-Harris continue the neoliberal ideology of “school choice” or will they revitalize public schools? Will they continue wasting money on standardized testing that only accurately correlates with family economic conditions or will they reign in this wasteful practice?…
Tom Ultican added:
Update added 1/19/2021: Today, Cindy Marten was 
nominated by Joe Biden to be Deputy Secretary of Education. I have met Marten a few times and believe she is a special kind of leader committed to public education. This gives me great hope. For the first time, we have two educators with deep k-12 experience running the Department of Education. This article from the San Diego Union gives a good synopsis of her education career. In his announcement Biden noted, “Superintendent, principal, vice principal and literacy specialist are all job titles Marten has held in her 32-year career as an educator.” The appointment makes me think the Biden administration may become the best friend public education has had in Washington DC since the Department of Education was created. Of course, Marten does not walk on water but from my perspective she is the real deal.
– tom
Praise from Mr. Ultican. This is good news.
🙂 yes
Wow. I have a feeling we’ll be coming back to Tom’s thorough summary for quite some time to come. Have it bookmarked in my files.
Not that anyone asked, but I would like to see the US Department of Education just do one or two or three practical, large scale supports for public schools and actually complete them.
They could upgrade the physical plants – the buildings – or accomplish 100% internet access or provide qualified, fairly compensated tutors for any school that needs them.
Just do a couple of things but do them well and completely. That to me seems like a smarter federal role than 10000 low quality “initiatives” or “experiments” or whatever.
Go back to basics. I think practical, national assistance to public schools would go a long way towards restoring their credibility and increase public support.
A brief anecdote. In the fall of 2017, I was at an event held in an Oakland, California High School attended by Cindy Marten. A San Diego Unified School district teacher who was car pooling with me confronted Marten when we were exiting. I do not know what they were saying but you could tell the teacher was angry and Maten was not backing down in the least.
When the Marten appointment was announced, I saw a Facebook comment about the negative view this person had of the Biden education team. That same teacher that was angry at Martin responded, “You don’t have to worry with my Superintendent there.”
Hopefully, Dr. Cardona and Ms. Marten will be able to work together for the benefit of the nation’s public schools. Each comes with experience and skills that will allow them to better understand the issues facing public education. Biden has made it clear that he intends to invest in public education, and we need to hold him to his word.
retired I think we are suffering from taking public education for granted for so long; and the funded, bells-and-whistles reformers took us all by surprise . . . a 50-year surprise, but a surprise nevertheless, at least to some. I remember feeling like the rug was being pulled out from under me, little by little while I taught, but could do nothing about it.
A good and sustained public information campaign would help? Others here have said this before: If you took the money away from the reformers, they’d all disappear and public education would be left, or at least what’s “left” of it. (Pun intended.) CBK
One wonders how much of our past and present problems can be laid at the door of the Koch family and others like him. CBK
This is such a bittersweet day. After reading extensively about Miguel Cardona the last few days, I fear I will never hear the end of test score “growth” targets, and so I will never be able to teach using rich, whole literature instead of vapid, district-mandated test-prep software. Apparently, the VAM zombie will forever stalk me from the shadows. Common Core will never die the death it deserved a long time ago. I am only a few years older than Cardona and I fear that, even if I live a long life, I will not live to see the end of annual high-stakes testing mandates. Real estate values will always be inextricably tied to meaningless test scores. Websites like greatschools will forever use test scores to push public education into being another Uber app, with privatization lurking to scoop up more customers. What I fear most of all is complicit complacency, that teachers unions will lay down and go along to get along with yet another neoliberal Democratic administration, weakening themselves and public schools. Bittersweet.
It is bittersweet, but it’s a surmountable task, albeit one that will take a lot of effort, perhaps with few steps back before we take more forward.
For me, it’s just nice to have sane president. Much easier to focus on an issue when we don’t have to worry about every issue under the sun and the existence of governing.
I must admit I watched CSPAN replays of the proceedings for hours before bed last night. There was something deeply satisfying about watching all the soldiers at attention while President Biden prepared to go to Arlington, not moving, not speaking, for hours. Just being there out of duty and honor.
And there is something else today to celebrate without reservation. His new title is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Marten does not walk on water”
Given the experience of recent decades, we should view as a positive someone who can walk on mercury.
The billionaire boys’ and girls’ clubs have so much power, they manage to derail any effort to flush the reform movement down the toilet of history. A recent example of the billionaire power to influence the wrong direction in education: (CNN)Tesla CEO Elon Musk has donated $5 million to the online learning organization Khan Academy.
In a YouTube video posted Monday, Khan Academy founder Salman Khan thanked Musk for the donation, which the Tesla CEO made through his Musk Foundation. end quote
The actual real pubic schools are forgotten, orphaned and spurned by the billionaire class.
Just imagine what two such as Cardona and Marten [and Biden, and Congress] could do for public education if there were no billionaire/multibillionaire class to tap-dance around. Whittling them down to multi-millionaires/ single-billionaires by spreading the wealth would go a long way toward fixing a lot of things.
Did anyone else see that Biden’s Oval Office now has a bust of Cesar Chavez on the table alongside his family photos?
I know actions speak louder than words — or busts — but I still like that he would recognize a labor leader that way. I think Biden could end up being bolder in his actions than Obama.
Also, for a good laugh, the Bernie Sanders memes (based on him sitting with his coat and mittens at the inauguration) are hilarious. Love him.
Obama used Race to the Top and Dear Colleague Letters to coerce states, Biden should not repeat the error, the feds should not attempt to bypass states, there is no reason for “one size fits all,” on a national level.
The best decisions are made by the folks closest to classrooms.
State plans within fed guidelines.. planning that includes teacher unions and parent organizations…
Biden can exclude “choice” and for profit charters, can ask for local school integration plans, plans for increasing numbers of teachers of color, not mandating ..
You cannot both demand large increases in Title 1 dollars and ignore accountability.. need more nuanced accountability tools.
Twisting arms is bad policy.. remember – participation reduces resistance and one size fits no one
Thank you for reminding us that the purpose of high stakes testing is accountability, not helping target resources for students who need support. As Bush said when he unveiled the NCLB, “You can’t have accountability without consequences.” The consequences are privatization and deprofessionalization. Some people think we cannot increase support for public schools without consequences that decrease support for public schools. It’s the wrong approach to governance. Schools don’t work to show the government they deserve to be funded; the government exists to support the schools.
State electeds fund schools and expect metrics, are the funds impactful? Arguing against accountability tools, is the path to vouchers and charters.
Teacher unions must have a voice in the creation of the tool.
We can’t say, “just give us the $$ and leave us alone, we know what to do” the public tax dollars must be used in a manner to improve learning ….they are public dollars, we have to say give us a voice, a seat at the table, we can design effective education programs.
The misuse of testing paves the way for the absurd rhetoric of “failing schools.”
Wherever there is concentrated poverty, high numbers of English learners, high proportions of kids with disabilities, test scores are low.
Pseudo-reformers use those scores to demand charters and vouchers.
Teachers can write their own tests.
They don’t need standardized tests whose results are returned six months later to find out how their students are doing.
The standardized tests have no diagnostic value.
We really should be able to tell our government we need support without strings attached. But really, we shouldn’t have to even say it. Black people should never have had to pass a test to have voting rights. Likewise, no one should have to take a test to have fully funded public schools. It is the responsibility of government to invest the money. Period. Standardizing education is merely an excuse to shirk that responsibility.
We are a racist country. It’s not just one political party being racist as can be, either. Public school accountability is “the soft bigotry of low expectations” — for power brokers.
I suppose that one day, if we keep going in the accountability direction, someone is going to propose a xenophobic bill requiring parents to show their driver’s licenses to get school funding.
That’s right, Diane, the tests are not at all useful — if one is not a fan of Jim Crow.
Be that as it may… Why were we even testing in schools with average-to-excellent achievement? How did an NAACP-initiatiated movement whose goal was to improve schooling for poor/minorities morph overnight into an all-test&punish all the time all public schools?
The culprits aren’t hard to find. Donkey-like economist-driven bureaucrats insist on gathering national stats from all students every year in order to figure out which public schools are in trouble. As if they didn’t have the stats at their fingertips already. [How did they ever figure out where to send Title I funds?] Egged on by everyone w/an agenda. ‘Nation at Risk’ Cassandras [all US pubschs are ‘failing’] who are busy promoting shiny-object college-for-all to divert attention from govt failure to deal with automation/ global labor market calamity. Standards-testing movement looking to build a publicly-funded industry. Neoliberals for publicly-funded private school alternatives [charters]. Libertarians for publicly-funded school choice [vouchers].
You pinpoint Obama-era efforts to coerce/ bypass states, but that horse was out of the barn in 2001. My only thought is to pare the Dept of Ed back to its age-old job of collecting periodic stats (say, NAEP), plus their more recent mission of promoting equal access to quality education through extra funding for low-income districts & handicapped students—restricted to exactly that, no more.
Oops my intro para is missing:
“There is no reason for “one size fits all,” on a national level.”
One of the biggest issues I have with public school policy of the last 45 years is that solutions designed to improve schools in poor areas are imposed on all public schools. There were many problems with the “solutions,” the biggest of which was the Bush implementation of the Bush-Kennedy NCLB proposition, which eliminated the funding to make it work as intended. Schools revealed by accountability measures to be lacking were supposed to get funding/ targeted improvements/ monitoring. Instead we got test&punish. Hence state takeovers/ closures/ offer publicly-funded private alternatives.
This is going to be very interesting.