Just A Gut Feeling, But I Think Duncan's Time In This Administration will Be Short

I do have faith that President Obama will come to his senses. The only question is, when???

as a retired teacher---don't like him very much...

From what I understand, Obama thinks Duncan is a golden boy -



Who Will Obama Pick as Secretary of Education?

But many here know that already.

help the system, sadly that means diminishing it to the point of oblivion.

...http://www.edgovblogs.org/duncan/2009/09/town-hall-with-teachers-join-the-discussion/


Teachers have to do this...no one else will.

That's because President Obama supports the same ideas as Duncan.

i`m afraid we are stuck with him for a long time. i feel sorry for the kids in school today...

2 million dollars worth of computers were stolen and that does`t include the normal theft that occurred. the new school chief said that he will make sure the computers are tagged. it seems arne could`t figure out that the computers needed to be tagged so they could be accounted for and recovered from pawn shops around chicagoland. i guess he was to busy dumping the "bad" kids into hostile schools,firing the union teachers,and claiming he was doing a great job by showing off the cream of the crop as his great achievement. of course there was a dark side of this reform...

Just so you know I hate Duncan just as much as you guys, though probably for different reasons. Anyone who cuts the special education budget by 26.5 million while hiring more administrators... yea... I don't care for him much either. But like I said Obama knew who he was before he hired him...

Not only do they have the same "numbers don't lie" cookie-cutter view of education, they also have that male-bonding basketball connection. Obama would never choose teachers over his basketball buddy.

Obama is head-over-heels in love with Arne's education agenda.

Who would YOU want to have the job instead of Duncan?

I dislike it when people complain about the status quo but are at a loss of words for a solution. I've read some threads on this forum accusing Duncan of misanthropy (such as cutting special ed budgets while hiring more admin) and opposition to his overt focus on charter schools rather than reforming the public school system. If you were the Education Secretary and you were facing the crisis of the achievement gap and us falling behind other countries, what would you do if you disapproved of Duncan?

Personally, I agree with his wanting longer school days. The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted him:


CNN also reported that Duncan favors a longer school year.

And regarding charter schools, a CBS News summary of his Face the Nation appearance reported:

...because I think Obama wants to do this right, AND (unlike GWB) he listens and is open to what he learns by listening. As to the question of when, that is harder to predict. There is a HUGE NY/DC Education Reform group that has his ear as well.

>>>>there is a HUGE NY/DC Education Reform group that has his ear as well.>>>>

http://smellington.wordpress.com/

...Alan Bersin, and a few others that escape me at the moment...all involved in the NYC school reform movement. They've expanded to DC (Michelle Rhee) , Chicago, and Bersin tried the same process in San Diego. EVERY TIME the results were horrendous.

These folks are LOUD, and very anti-union/anti-teacher. They disguise it as being 'for the children'...and who can disagree with that. But since when were teachers AGAINST children? Never, that I'm aware of.

when he was running. The worthless Unions didn't hold Obama's feet to the fire then, when it mattered. If they had, we might not have to deal with the terrible policy that's sliding our way soon.

We tried, and I tried on DU. Nobody wanted to listen. Educators, unions, and labor are now paying the price. We might have been shouted down and ignored, but when that happens, people need to remember that we vote. Once, shame on you, twice, shame on me.

As a person who is a NEA delegate and who went to the convention when Obama was voted on as the candidate to recommend to members, I would like to fill in some of the blanks.

Here is some background that you may not know:

In 2007, the candidates came to speak at convention. The Democratic field was full of candidates and many states had not held primaries, therefore, the NEA did not want to jump gun" and recommend a candidate too early.

NEA meets yearly during July 1-7 and it is the delegates who vote to recommend the presidential candidate based on NEA Screen and Recommendation committee input.

McCain chose not to meet with the NEA screening and recommendation committee. It is very hard to recommend a candidate who does not want to talk with you.

As a delegate, I voted to recommend Obama to my members. Looking at the politics of the situation, the necessity of having an "education friendly" candidate in the White House weighed into the decision to recommend Obama. It was the best choice at that time.

It would be wonderful to having candidates who only think in our way would be great. It would make my lobbying and political action efforts much easier. Unfortunately, I do not live in my perfect world. So, I go the next step.

I encourage everyone to email both the President and the Secretary Of Education with your concerns.

edited to make polite sense :)

to fight unscrupulous administrators. Unions in theory are good, but teachers' unions are not what they are cracked up to be when so often the leaders are in bed with administration.

I suggest you read some NYC blogs for details of how ineffective they truly are in defending teachers in these fake hearings. The problem of teacher targeting and teachers' unions ineffectiveness in dealing with administrators is nationwide.

I went through the process of termination, and the district committed all kinds of what I contend were criminal acts to win a fake case. Meanwhile, the union did very little for me.

I am sorry that you have suffered under the NY union. Is that AFT or NEA? I became very active in my association and would be considered a leader. I am not in bed with our administration and do not know of anyone in my local or the local next to mine which is. I truly believe that the union is only as strong as its members and those who want to do the hard work to make changes in their union will be the ones who change the system.

AS for using a broad brush to say that unions are in bed with administration, I have to say that is not true for all unions. It would be true to say that YOUR union is in bed with administration from what you have stated. Again I would say, what is being done to counter this culture that has occurred?

I'm afraid is the future of public education. I am out in NV, but it doesn't matter what state; the story is the same all over the country.

Unfortunately, the unions are by and large in bed with administration and for political reasons. The rank and file are spending great piles of their hard-earned cash for these organizations which do little to defend them when they really need help from unscrupulous administrators.

The termination hearings are largely rigged, and seldom do teachers ever win these sham hearings. This is what "tenure" gives you: the "right" to have a kangaroo hearing to be defamed by these crooks who run school districts.

There was a time when school district administrators behaved honorably and hardly ever fired teachers except in the most egregious of cases because they knew how terminations affected children and staff morale. Not anymore: privatization trends and more superintendents being "schooled" in the Eli Broad way have given districts a way out of tenure laws as a way to save money.

Unfortunately because of brainwashing of the public about public education and its problems, few people know this stuff is going on. But thousands and thousands of teachers are being canned all over the country over false allegations or denied tenure as a reason to save money on pensions, salaries, and other benefits.

One actually has to undergo these sham tribunals to truly understand them. Teachers have NO legal rights.

for the past couple years...the service unions are pretty elitist and hierarchical in my opinion, unlike many of the industrial unions.

Many times unions take on administrators roles in deciding who they think are good teachers, unions are for the workers conditions, not for deciding who are good workers, that's the admin's role...

No one besides most teachers and *some* parents have the faintest idea of what's going on in the public school systems.

To the general public, as long as you call it "reform" it sounds good and it will sell.