Although rumors abound about Obama's choice for Secretary of Education, it's all speculation until at least after Thanksgiving.
That said, we do know that John Podesta heads Obama's transition team. And Gerald Bracey says that Podesta "knows s...t" about education.
In a ceremony introducing a report --Leaders and Laggards-- produced jointly by the Center for American Progress and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Podesta repeated almost verbatim the misinformation school critics regularly trot out to discredit public education:
“It is unconscionable to me that there is not a single state in the country where a majority of 4th and 8th graders are proficient in math and reading.”
Bracey, in his latest Kappan report on the state of public education, says it's true that most American 4th and 8th graders are not "proficient" in reading and math. BUT the same is true of just about every other country in the world, including those with the best international test scores. In fact, by applying the same standards of proficiency, namely the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Podesta would discover that there's
"...not a single country in the entire world where more than one-third of the students are proficient in reading, there are only six nations where a small majority of students are proficient in mathematics, and there are just one or two nations where a majority are proficient in science."
The problem, says Bracey, is that Podesta doesn't understand "proficiency". Neither do the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, or current Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. (Spellings has no background in education, let alone testing and measurement.) Yet these are the people and organizations leading the charge for alternatives to public schools.
If they don't understand the data they use, why should anyone take them seriously? More importantly, why should Barack Obama?
"We are not in good hands," says Bracey, "when it comes to the selection of the new secretary of education if Podesta has anything to say about it."
We can only hope that he doesn't.
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The best thing Obama can do if he truly supports public schools is to follow the example of Jimmy Carter and Mrs. Pritchard (the ficitional British Prime Minister in Masterpiece Theater's The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard). Both enrolled their daughters in local public schools, NOT the hoity-toity Georgetown Day or Sidwell Friends or whatever the London equivalent might be.
On the other hand, DC Public Schools are run by the intolerable Michelle Rhee. Rhee herself has been mentioned as a possible choice for Sec. of Ed.
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