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Tuesday, June 9, 2015

My Question for Hillary

I'll keep it brief.

Candidate Clinton has indicated in talks with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia that she will absolutely listen to teachers. That's a great promise, but let me pare that down to a more direct question.

Last year, after years of failed administration education policies, the NEA general membership called for the resignation of Arne Duncan.  So here's my question:

If you had been President, would you have required the resignation of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education?

Okay, I realize that's a little in-your-face and involves some hypotheticals (such as, would you have ever appointed the guy in the first place), so let me ask a question, because I really want to understand how your administration would represent a break from the destructive policies of the past two administrations:

If you had been President for the past eight years, and knowing what you know now, how would your education policies have been different from the policies that we've actually had?

Please, please please please PLEASE, be specific. Talk about the ESEA rewrite or Common Core or financial incentives for states. But tell us something. If you had been our President for the past eight years, how would US education have been different. Because-- and again, I'm not sure if you get this-- education policy for the last sixteen years has not been good for public education in this country.

I await your response.

4 comments:

  1. This is THE question...hope you get to ask it!!

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  2. This is THE question...hope you get to ask it!!

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  3. I'm not willing to keep it to one question because whatever her answer is will inevitably raise more questions: How will that be funded? What types of public-private partnerships will be involved? How will such private entities be audited and monitored for ethical issues? And, perhaps most important of all, once she's duly elected and doesn't need our vote any more, what guarantee do we have that she will actually do anything remotely like what she's promised during her campaign?

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  4. How about she listens to teachers and does her own research, doing reading homework suggested by teachers, and then she answers that question. Because I assume that until she does that, she won't know what she's talking about. She was always an industrious, even over-achieving student, so if she takes it seriously, she should be up to speed in a couple of months. Then she can ask teachers for feedback on what she's come up with.

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