Obama's Education Secretary Must Be a Real Reformer
With the elections behind us and the transition moving forward, the most important decision affecting the future of our public schools is President-Elect Obama's selection to succeed Margaret Spellings as Secretary of Education.
Speculation over the post - and attention to the issue of education - has only increased in recent days, fueled by major coverage in Time, the New York Times and the Associated Press.
During the campaign, candidate Obama went further on education reform than anyone expected - defying the status quo by supporting merit pay and charter schools, among other reform-minded proposals. Obama's speeches showed him to be committed to doing whatever it takes to fix our schools.
Now is the time for Obama to turn rhetoric into action by nominating for Education Secretary someone committed to carrying out real reform that extends from the Department of Education down to every classroom in America - reforms that demand the best from our students and our teachers. He can best do that by nominating someone who has a real record of reform, putting the interests of our students ahead of special interests and knows that schools exist to prepare our students for college and life, not to act as a tool of social experimentation.
David Brooks of the New York Times has it exactly right:
"The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It's not only Rhee and Klein -- the celebrities -- but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform."
Brooks spells out the two camps in education: The reformers, and the defenders of the status quo. The reformers realize that schools do not have the capacity to solve every problem in a child's life. They also realize that the core mission of schools is to teach children how to read, write, count, and think. Obama should nominate a reformer to be his Secretary of Education to ensure that this mission is carried out in every classroom in America.
President-elect Obama has made clear the connection between school construction and jobs. There's no doubt that the condition of a school building -- its facade -- is important to creating the proper conditions for learning. What's more important, however, is creating those conditions within in the classroom. That doesn't start with bricks and mortar; it starts with teachers. If we are going to devote precious resources to rebuilding and repairing school buildings, we must repair what's broken in our schoolrooms. Improving learning in our schools -- putting quality teachers in the classroom and raising expectations -- will have a far longer impact on economic growth than a series of construction projects.
Barack Obama has a tremendous amount of goodwill and political capital with which he can make education a civil right for every student in America.
Let's hope he has the courage of his convictions to do so.
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Linda Darling-Hammond is the only of the four that Obama is considering, who is an actual reformer! All of the others are top-down "I Know What's Right" types, who, unlike Darling-Hammond, do not know how to even listen to various opinions (one of Obama's great emphases as an agent of change). Unlike her, the others all impose prescriptive, elitist teaching standards such as the dismal NCLB, rote learning, corporate values, and other ways to continue to make teacher's and students lives more and more miserable. Republicans have now co-opted the word "reformer" to mean more options for making schools better for the richest Americans, at the expense of middle America that actually voted for, worked for, and gave money to Mr. Obama. Let's hope that he at least gets this one right for the future of our kids and the teaching profession in this country, not to mention our place in the world with students who actually enjoy learning. Otherwise we will be creating rightfully disaffected youth who only want to spend time buying things, playing on the computer, and finding new distractions and addictions. A generation with no desire to learn, help others, be curious, or be motivated to create new ways of coping with our changing world. That would be a disaster for our country! But students would be hard-put to be any other way in such unattractive, dead, non-lively learning environments. Go to gov.change and suggest Darling-Hammond!
Whomever the new Secretary of Education, he/she will orchestrate profound change. The types of reforms and the reformers at the table, however, will depend on who the President-Elect selects. Obama's understanding of the importance of educator involvement in the creation and implementation of progressive educational reforms represents a pleasant departure from the bureaucratic punditry that dropped a dysfunctional No Child Left Behind onto the laps of American teachers. See the full editorial at Educator Compensation Institute, www.edcomp.org.
I completely disagree. Any reform of schools led from a desk in Washington will do more harm to classrooms than good. School reform is best carried out by local education officials. I think this constant refrain that if something needs to be done it needs to be done by the federal government is due to intellectual laziness.
This ignores the fact that not all municipalities generate the same amount of tax dollars with which to fund schooling.
This will always be the case, and the Feds will always have to provide a leveling mechanism especially for underfunded urban municipalities.
Social Darwinism does not belong in the Education forum.
Kids don't have a say in their parents ability to fund their education, just as is realized that they cannot be responsible for their healthcare.
The rationale is the same, and just as pertinent.
I'm so tired of the politicians messing with the education system. Why is it that every other profession and reform is shaped by the very people of that profession, yet everyone wants some say in how schools are run? I've been to the hospital a few times, but I don't think that this makes me qualified to refrom or run the AMA. The Bar is run by lawyers. Yet schools must constantly dealt with people from all backgrounds telling us how to teach, what to teach. Children are more than test scores. Yet teachers are being forced to teach to the test. We are no longer offering arts in schools. Why must my pay be linked solely to test scores? Let's apply this to every profession. Police should be paid based on the number of cases they close. Doctors, based on patient survival rates. Lawyers, on cases won. Everyone in the prison system, on the residivism rates. The Airlines, on timely flights and customer satisfaction! Let's stop all this"reform" and let teachers get back to teaching.
I hope that who ever is chosen has a background in education, like a former teacher, not another politician!!!
As a longtime American Indian educator at the college level, we are having this very conversation. Consider, elementary schools were started (grammar schools) to educate Indians on English grammar so to translate the bible into Indian languages on the East coast. Out of that origin, came the idea of giving a rudimentary education to farm children. Colleges in America were originally started to educate Indians (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth) and then morphed into producing preachers following the European model. There has not been real reform from those original ideas in nearly four hundred years. That all said, I love this website, but even here in this liberal bastion there is not a single native blogger addressing this and other relevant issues. As native people we have something to say for the future of America. As long as our educational system is producing children who think my people, the First Americans, were wandering the woods using "hunting magic" to find a deer, you will not see real reform. We are the canary in the mine of American education.
Public education (schools) is and was a great idea. We can not abandon public schools just because we have made a mess of it. Fix it, don't quit on it.
Vouchers are worth nothing if there are no schools to use those vouchers for. Private schools are great if you can afford them, or get your child into one.
Some ideas are worth fighting for. So lets not just give into the financial realities, the mistakes of our leaders, or dismissing the original principals/philosophy behind public education.
If we have to eliminate classes to make it work financially, then get back to basics. But don't dismiss the importance of exposing children to all kinds of learning. The next Glenn Miller might be out there if we can get a horn into their mouths. The next Ansel Adams might be out there if we can provide the first step. The next Spencer Tracy might be out them if we can get them on a stage.
Lampkin's reference to "real reformers" provides no clarity as to what that means. Are those who support the "status quo" those who believe in strong teacher unions? Are real reformers those who support vouchers, a proliferation of charter schools, teaching to the test? I am unable to determine from the post what the distinction is between "real reformers" and "status quo." From my vantage point, a number of "real reforms" are needed--smaller classrooms, teachers who understand not only how to teach but how to forge strong relationships with both students and their families, administrators who create collegial working environments where teachers feel valued and supported, creative techniques to engage students in learning with all learning styles, a focus on the arts to complement the subjects that are the traditional core subjects, welcoming school climates that parents, students and staff want to be part of, and funding that is equalized so that every student has access to the same resources regardless of where they live or family income. That is just the beginning of "real reform." Vouchers and charter schools are bandaid fixes which do not address the systemic problems that disproportionately disadvantage students of color and the poor.
"Measurable results" as framed in your argument means better test results, not better education. Though the two things are not mutually exclusive, what we've ended up with is schools turning into boot camps that are more oriented to kids getting better test scores at the cost, I believe, of a better education.
Teachers are more geared to churning out higher scores by drilling answers into kids who learn by rote, and not by expanding their minds with broad-based educational curricula, as their jobs depend on it. Thus we end up having kids crammed full of trivia, without the ability to discern and discriminate for themselves.
I agree with TopProf. The education system is in need of a thorough overhaul with smaller class sizes, more emphasis on the liberal arts and comprehensive educational structures from pre-school to post-grad put in place.
There is no reform without the ability to measure outcomes. While I agree that reform based on testing has many flaws I have yet to see a better way.
Agreed.
But currently this is inexorably linked to teachers performance and, as a result of No Child Left Behind fiasco, government funding whereby wealthier municipalities always have better staffed/equipped schools.
FURTHERMORE, research shows what reforms really work to increase achievement: small class size and preschool education. Not accountability. Not vouchers. Not even charters. This is the result of legitimate research and has nothing to do with "unions." So everyone has the right to opinions about education, and nearly everyone has them. But you can't just make up facts.
THIS WRITER IS ALL WRONG. The neocons like Brooks have framed the debate this way: the only reformers are those who favor vouchers. Yet vouchers have a horrible record. There is not a single study that shows they work better than comparable neighborhood schools. Not a single study, that is, that wasn't done by a neocon or neoliberal hired gun. Vouchers sound good but they are like Blackwater. A means to rob the public treasury and deny the public good, while lining the pockets of those who need it least.
THIS IS A BIG CON JOB.
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