Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama?

A few years ago, someone coined the term “zombie policies” to describe policies that fail again and again, yet never go away. One such zombie is “merit pay,” which has never succeeded yet never dies an ignominious death or loss of reputation.

I mention this because our current education system is hampered by at least 20 years of zombie policies, beginning with No Child Left Behind, then Race to the Top, then Trump’s fervent support for privatization.

In 2010, when my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing abd Choice are Undermining Education” was published, I participated in a debate with Carmel Martin, one of the key strategists of the Obama Department of Education. She defended every aspect of the Bush-Obama approach: high-stakes testing, closing low-performing schools, charter schools, evaluating teachers by student test scores, and so on.

A year or so later, I was invited to the White House Executive Offices to meet Obama’s top education team: Melody Barnes, chief of the White House domestic policy CONTINUE READING: Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises? | janresseger

Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises? | janresseger

Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises?

At the end of his first hundred days, President Joe Biden deserves credit for taking important steps to help public schools serving children living in communities where family poverty is concentrated.

First, the President promised during the campaign to triple funding for Title I schools, and the federal budget he has proposed for FY22 would accomplish two-thirds of that promise by doubling the federal investment in Title I, whose funding has lagged for decades behind what is needed for equity.

Second, in the American Rescue Plan federal stimulus passed in March, the President expanded and made fully refundable the Child Tax Credit. In his new American Family Plan he has proposed to extend these urgently needed changes in the Child Tax Credit until 2025.  The expansion of the Child Tax Credit will make it possible for America’s poorest families with children to qualify for this program for the first time. We know that poverty is an overwhelming impediment for children, and ameliorating child poverty is an important step toward helping America’s poorest children thrive at school.

During the campaign, Biden also promised to move public school policy away from two decades of standardized testing.  That is a promise he has, at least until now, entirely broken.

In a letter, dated February 22, 2021, Acting Assistant Secretary of Education, Ian Rosenblum informed states they must test students this year on the mandated annual high-stakes CONTINUE READING: Will Staff Returning from Obama/Duncan Years Compromise Biden’s Public Education Promises? | janresseger

Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education

During the Obama administration, Roberto Rodriguez was the White House advisor on education. He vigorously supported the Race to the Top program, the Common Core standards, and high-stakes testing. All of these initiatives failed to improve student test scores and wasted billions of dollars.

Andrew Ujifusa wrote in Education Week (April 28) about the return of Rodriguez. He joins former Obama official Carmel Martin, another zealous advocate of those failed policies. Basically, they are switching places, with Rodriguez taking the job that Martin held, and Martin moving into the slot previously occupied by Martin. There is no indication that either has modified their support for the Bush-Obama bipartisan agenda.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he plans to nominate Roberto Rodriguez, one of former President Barack Obama’s top education advisers, to lead one of the most important divisions of the U.S. Department of Education.

Biden wants Rodriguez to lead the Education Department’s office of planning, evaluation and policy CONTINUE READING: Biden Chooses Ex-Obama Official for Key Position in Department of Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden breaks the Obama mold on teachers union strife - POLITICO

Biden breaks the Obama mold on teachers union strife - POLITICO

Biden breaks the Obama mold on teachers union strife

Biden’s rhetoric and policies suggest the president-elect is still listening closely to teachers unions in a way Obama often did not.

When teachers were upset about the stringent accountability measures Barack Obama imposed on them as president, their union boss turned to Joe Biden for some empathy.

“He listened,” recalls Randi Weingarten, who heads the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers. Obama’s vice president may not have agreed with her during those conversations, Weingarten said in an interview this week, but Biden became her “go-to” when things got tense amid the regime of education reform

Now the good cop has to call the shots — and Biden’s rhetoric and policies suggest the president-elect is still listening closely to teachers unions in a way Obama often did not, including as Biden’s team considers potential nominees for Education secretary.

Obama was questioned about possible signs of daylight between the two men on education policy in a recent interview with New York magazine. When asked whether Biden seemed intent on rolling back his “education-reform legacy,” Obama demurred, “Ah, we’ll see.” CONTINUE READING: Biden breaks the Obama mold on teachers union strife - POLITICO

The telling things Barack Obama wrote -- and didn’t mention -- about his education policies in new memoir - The Washington Post

The telling things Barack Obama wrote -- and didn’t mention -- about his education policies in new memoir - The Washington Post

The telling things Barack Obama wrote — and didn’t mention — about his education policies in new memoir

In his best-selling new book, “A Promised Land,” Barack Obama writes compellingly about his road to the White House and key moments and policies of his first term as president. There’s the Affordable Care Act. The crisis he inherited in the U.S. financial system and his successful efforts to save it. The Afghan War. The Arab-Israeli conflict and the Arab Spring. China and Iran. Climate change. The raid he ordered to kill Osama bin Laden.

But on one important issue that proved to be a flash point — education policy — he doesn’t have much to say. The memoir’s index shows references to education policies on only four of 701 narrative pages — and none are more than a few sentences. What he doesn’t address says at least as much as what he does.

Meanwhile, his vice president, Joe Biden, will become president of the United States on Jan. 20, and the Biden education agenda will be compared not only to that of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did but also to Obama’s.

Biden has so far laid out an education overhaul agenda that does not resemble Trump’s or Obama’s, and he has promised to be a friend to public educators — but many are waiting to see what he actually does after they were disappointed by Obama.

Obama’s education agenda surprised many of his supporters, who had expected him to address inequity in public schools and to de-emphasize high-stakes standardized testing, which had become the key metric to hold schools accountable under the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind law.

But Obama did not. Instead, he allowed Education Secretary Arne Duncan to push a strident education overhaul program that made standardized testing even more important than NCLB had, and that became highly controversial across the political spectrum for different reasons. Critics called it “corporate reform” because it used methods more common in business than in civic institutions, such as using big data, closing schools that underperformed, and eliminating or weakening of teacher tenure and seniority rights. CONTINUE READING: The telling things Barack Obama wrote -- and didn’t mention -- about his education policies in new memoir - The Washington Post

Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too | Common Dreams News

Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too | Common Dreams News

Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too

"50.8 million children who attend real public schools need a secretary of education who will be their advocate, not an advocate for privatization."

Demanding an end to the failed policies that have dominated the United States for more than two decades, a coalition of public education advocates has put forth what they consider to be the top five guiding principles the incoming Biden administration should adopt if the president-elect wants to fulfill his "promised commitment to our nation's public schools."

"We need a public education champion who rejects efforts to privatize public schools, whether those efforts be via private school vouchers or charter schools."
—Network for Public Education

"50.8 million children who attend real public schools need a secretary of education who will be their advocate, not an advocate for privatization," tweeted Carol Burris, a retired teacher and the executive director of the Network for Public Education (NPE), which led the effort to demand pro-public leadership in Biden's Department of Education. 

In order to build a stronger and more just public education system, NPE penned a letter—which readers may sign—urging the Biden administration to pursue the following objectives:

• Rebuild our nation's public schools, which have been battered by the pandemic, two decades of failed federal policy, and years of financial neglect;
• Reject efforts to privatize public schools, whether those efforts be via vouchers or charter schools;
• End the era of high-stakes standardized testing—in both the immediate future and beyond;
• Promote diversity, desegregation (both among and within schools), and commit to eliminating institutional racism in school policy and practices; and
• Promote educational practices that are child-centered, inquiry-based, intellectually challenging, culturally responsive, and respectful of all students' innate capacities and potential to thrive.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic consequences, state CONTINUE READING: Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too | Common Dreams News