Among the cliques in our national education debate, I am considered part of the no-excuses crowd. We are defined by our fondness for charter schools and the Teach for America organization, our belief that poor kids can learn as much as rich ones and our support for Obama administration policies that encourage rating teachers, at least in part, on student test scores.
On the other side, as we see it, are the besieged leaders of the establishment: education schools, teachers unions, superintendents and school boards who think Obama has forgotten the need to educate the whole child and is going with anything that might raise proficiency rates.
Our arguments about this issue often disintegrate into the online equivalent of a school-yard brawl. So who are the people we no-excuse types hate? Among the top five on our enemies list has to be Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun professor of education at the Stanford University School of Education. She is the best-known critic of Teach for America’s recruiting bright 20-somethings to be classroom teachers with only a summer of training. She is always a leading establishment candidate for U.S. education secretary.
Read more about the effort at the Washington Post website. To turn around Hillsdale, Darling-Hammond worked with the principal and several teachers, who had graduated from the Stanford Teacher Education Program.
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
