Schooling the Secretary of Education
New York City educator and writer Brian Jones was part of a roundtable with the new Secretary of Education John King. Here's what he and other teachers had to say
Teachers meet with Education Secretary John King (center, with glasses) for a roundtable discussion (Department of Education)
LAST WEEK, I had the opportunity to join a small group of teachers at acting U.S. Secretary of Education John King's very first "Tea with Teachers" conversation during his first week on the job.
The topic was teacher retention. Roughly a dozen teachers and educators from around the country sat around a large conference table with King Behind us along the walls sat perhaps two dozen department staffers, many of whom, I learned later, are former educators appointed by King.
King opened the meeting by explaining that he has roughly 13 months in office before the next administration moves in. The new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reduces the power of his agency to enforce standards, testing and curriculum, thus overturning crucial elements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)--though it leaves the overall edifice of standardized testing untouched, as even some supporters of the new law have commented.
King said his first concern is to figure out how to make sure states promote racial and economic equity in education, in keeping with the spirit of the 1965 law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, that ESSA reauthorizes. King vowed to focus on students who are "most vulnerable"--including students of color, immigrant students and low-income students. He reminded us that he is the child of teachers and that he worked as both a teacher and as a principal himself. More recently, he was New York Commissioner of Education.
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BEFORE MAKING the trip, I asked several colleagues, on social media and in person, what I should say to John King about teacher retention.
Several of the responses can't be repeated in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say, King made some enemies during his time as New York's education commissioner. He Schooling the Secretary of Education | SocialistWorker.org:
