Obama education pick sparks conflict

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iT--F725ypsNTaNrulnuCGd8vt0QD94ULED00

By LIBBY QUAID

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama has not signaled what he will do to fix the country's failing schools, but his choice of education secretary will say a lot about the policies he may pursue.

Debate is simmering among Democrats over whom Obama should name.

Teachers' unions, an influential segment of the party base, want an advocate for their members, someone like Obama adviser Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor, or Inez Tenenbaum, the former state schools chief in South Carolina.

Reform advocates want someone like New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who wants teachers and schools held accountable for the performance of students.

Thus far Obama has avoided taking sides, saying things that reassure the competing factions. Obama has said, for instance, that teacher pay should be tied to student achievement, which reformers like, but not solely based on test scores, which teachers like.

Unions, by the way, dislike the "reformer" label, pointing out they want reform, too. And the reform group says it cares about good teachers; it just wants bad ones out of the classroom.

FULL story at link.

[Sanity Claws]

1. What about Ayers?

I'm only half joking. I don't want someone who is concerned with the teachers. I want someone to look at the fundamental issues, such as the purpose of public education in the 21st Century, how to achieve these goals/purposes for everyone.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. He would be a hell of a lot better than Joel Klein!!!

Klein has NO background in education. He is a corporate hack and tries to run the board of ed like it is a corporation...disgusting.
He is universally hated within the teaching world.

[steelworkers]

9. my thought too What about Ayers

[BrklynLiberal]

2. NOT Joel Klein!!!

The school should not be run like a corporation, which is what that idiot has done. He is a corporate hack and sends out hundreds of emails daily and expects people to come to a ridiculous number of "meetings" instead of doing their jobs. He still thinks he is dealing with corporate underlings instead of teachers and educators who have better things to do.
His prime concern is NOT to help the children.
Nothing that he has done has improved the NYC schools, and all the teachers I know despise him and his policies.


He has NO background in education!! from Wikipedia..

Prior to his appointment to Chancellor in 2002 <2> by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Klein was Counsel to Bertelsmann and served as United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In this capacity, he was the lead prosecutor in the antitrust case United States v. Microsoft. Before heading the Antitrust Division, Klein was the deputy to Anne Bingaman (the wife of Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico) in that office, and worked in the White House Counsel's office. He was in private practice for many years, specializing in appellate cases. Klein received his B.A. from Columbia and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He served as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. Klein is married to Nicole Seligman, General Counsel to Howard Stringer of Sony Corp. Seligman represented former President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings in the United States Senate. Klein is rumored to aspire to succeed Bloomberg as Mayor of the City of New York.

In 1998, before Klein became Chancellor, the New York City Board of Education transferred responsibility for school safety to the New York City Police Department.<7> Klein has been criticized for not seeking to alter this arrangement or to curb the conduct of the Police Department's school safety agents in the face of allegations of abuse.<8><7> Klein has praised the work of the school safety agents in contributing to a decrease in crime in the public schools.<9>

Joel Klein fired Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi from the NYC teacher training program, because of Khalidi's political views<10>. Controversy erupted over Klein's decision to limit academic freedom and fire a renowned middle east scholar on the basis he was not pro-Israel. After the controversial decision, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger spoke out on Khalidi's behalf, writing: "The department's decision to dismiss Professor Khalidi from the program was wrong and violates First Amendment principles... The decision was based solely on his purported political views and was made without any consultation and apparently without any review of the facts."<10> The program's creator Mark Willner stated that (Khalidi) "He spoke on geography and demography," and that "There was nothing controversial, nothing political."<10>

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. until government recognizes the role of PARENTS

in the education of their children, we'll have a problem. There should be programs to teach parents how to prepare their children for school, to teach socially acceptable behavior, and to value education. Until that happens, a LOT of kids will enter school far behind and will be hard pressed to catch up.

[hendo]

5. exactly

even the best teacher will have problems if the parents aren't involved in ther child's education.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. When I taught school,

I remember having a kid with problems--he had zero self esteem and was a poor, inattentive scholar. Then I met his mother. She was more interested in her little dog than her son--every word she said to the child, every look, screamed "You're nothing but garbage!" (She never used those words; it was in her tone of voice, though.) I as shocked, but as she was not "abusing" the child (except psychologically) there was nothing I could do.

[hendo]

7. thats too bad

Poor kid couldn't have turned out very well. Hopefully he was able to turn his life around though.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. He moved away and I don't know what happened

but from then on I tried to be more aware of ways I could raise a child's self esteem so that he wouldn't be defeated and give up on life before he reached the age of 10. I found ways that worked, and was told about them when I left the town where I had taught for 17 years to move to another state. It was quite humbling to find out that a few words I had said had changed a child's life.