Hanna Skandera, Undersecretary of Education??
The New Mexico Senate took four years to confirm Skandera, and it was a close vote: 22-19. Skandera has never taught, an issue that arguably violates the New Mexico constitution, which requires the state’s ed secretary to be a “qualified, experienced educator.”
However, in the world of ed reform, it’s who you know, and if you can get your non-teaching foot in the door and hold it there as ed sec “designee” for years, then it is indeed possible to be tagged as an “educator” by a state senate majority.
But let’s turn our attention to Common Core.
If Trump is supposedly against Common Core, one wonders why he would choose a woman who is currently the chair for one of the two federal-fund-established Common Core testing consortia, PARCC.
Politico Pro states that Skandera “took over as head of the governing board for the PARCC test” in January 2016. However, when Skandera “took over,” PARCC decided not to announce it. It turns out that I announced it in this January 19, 2016, postwhen I realized that the PARCC website slyly changed the identity of the PARCC chair from Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester to Skandera.
Under Skandera, PARCC is in the process of having an identity crisis and trying to remake itself.
Skandera has been a member (and once head) of Jeb-Bush-created Chiefs for Change. Interestingly, her position as chair of PARCC has been excluded from the site’s bio:
It’s as though PARCC (and Skandera’s involvement in it) simply do not exist:
In December of 2010, Governor Susana Martinez nominated Hanna Skandera to lead New Mexico’s public education system of over 830 schools and moreHanna Skandera, Undersecretary of Education?? | deutsch29: