For months, Democrats have been squabbling back and forth as to what Barack Obama really believes on education. Is he a reformer? Is he for school choice, charters, accountability? Or is he a traditional democrat, who will echo the teacher’s unions positions on NCLB, merit pay and other issues?
The whole ”reformers vs. status quo” meme is a bit tired and something of a false dichotomy. You can favor accountability and still think NCLB is doing harm. There are legitimate reasons to oppose merit pay without being labeled a defender of the status quo. That said, those who thought Barack Obama was something new in the Democratic firmament are having an “uh-oh” moment with word that Linda Darling Hammond is Obama’s choice as his lead education advisor.
Fordham’s Mike Petrilli wonders if Obama will kill education refrom. Liam Julian, writing in National Review Online, looks at the appointment of the “self-described advocate of progressive education” and concludes that “so far, it seems, tradition trumps change.” American Prospect blogger Dana Goldstein calls the selection of LDH a conservative choice.
Not ideologically conservative, but rather, conservative in terms of what it says about Obama’s plans for education. Groups like Democrats for Education Reform – which favor charter schools and merit pay — have been hoping for Obama to embrace their agenda. And indeed, early in the primaries, Obama was booed at a teachers’ union event for saying he supported merit pay. But since he clinched the nomination, Obama’s statements on education have been more circumspect. The appointment of Darling-Hammond, a teacher quality expert who opposes merit pay and is more critical than supportive of NCLB, signals that Obama wishes to avoid a fight with the unions. He’ll spend his political capital on energy and health care instead.
My internet time waster of choice is the anagram server. Type in a name and in seconds it will summon up every conceivable acronym. It’s great for cheating at Scrabble. On a lark, I typed in Linda Darling Hammond. At the top of the list, it came up with: “Handmaid Ladling Norm.”
Time will tell.
I find the status quo vs. reform dichotomy not only a false one, but a self-serving one for the self-proclaimed “reform” camp.
Many of the same reformers promote teacher quality as a key to school improvement, but almost all their plan to promote teacher quality seem to focus on applying simplistic Econ 101 assumptions to teacher motivation and saying “Q.E.D. unions must be bad.”
If Obama believes that teacher quality is a key issue, having someone who actually studies it as an advisor would seem to me to be the right approach.