Our nation's founders believed that high-quality public education is a requirement for a robust and functioning democracy.
This week will examine current efforts that are dramatically improving the performance of public education in the United States. Specifically, we will look at the impact of talented and motivated superintendents, leadership training for principals, trends in teaching teachers, and innovations in curricula. We will discuss the responsibilities, interactions, and support from national, state, and local government leaders, parents and grandparents, and local community groups.
We'll leave with a better understanding of what is required and what is working, and what each of us can do to fulfill the goal of greater academic excellence for students in our schools.
Bio
Linda Darling-Hammond
Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education. Her research, teaching and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.
From 1994 to 2001, Darling-Hammond served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, this report was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation's 10 most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade. She recently served as the leader of President Barack Obama's education policy transition team.
Darling-Hammond has worked with dozens of schools and districts around the nation on studying, developing and scaling up new model schools -- as well as preparation programs for teachers and leaders -- that enable much greater success for diverse students. She has also worked with civil rights and community-based organizations to leverage changes in state and local level policies and to create practices that promote greater equity in educational opportunity and access for traditionally underserved students. For this work, she has been awarded, among others, the Charles W. Eliot Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education, the Asa G. Hilliard Award for Outstanding Achievement in Racial Justice and Education Equity, the Founder' Award from the National Commission on African American Education, the Woman of Valor Award from Educational Equity Concepts, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Having written more than 300 journal articles, Darling-Hammond is author or editor of 16 books, including The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs and Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do, co-written with John Bransford. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale University and her doctorate in urban education (with highest distinction) from Temple University.
The basis of American education is found in the Wilsonian model. That model perpetuates the economic class system which is dependent on cheap labor and poverty. The broad purpose of American education is to train the children to become workers, not capitalists. This in a capitalist's national economic.
When was the last time you heard of capitalists going into the poorest school districts and teaching those children how they will acquire capital and how to participate in the national economic as capitalists?
No, that does not happen. Children are taught to be present and on time, be quiet and polite, be sober, be compliant by following orders, not question "authority", not discuss wages with others, etc. In other words public education prepares American children to be cheap labor.
An education does not guarantee wages greater than the wages of poverty which America's capitalist oligarchy has enacted through legislation. American children are not taught that a democracy cannot enact legislation which allows a capitalist to pay wages of poverty, but a capitalist oligarchy can.
American children are not taught that at the inception of the nation, to participate in the vaunted democracy one had to be a white, land owning male and that the national economic was reliant on slavery. They are not taught how slavery disenfranchised non-land owners through their having to compete with the agency of the false economic of slavery.
American children are not taught that "competing in the world market" as labor means competing with forced labor and labor from countries where a dollar a day is the norm.
A glaring example of the failure of American education can be seen in recent college grads who have $30k plus in debt. Debt, except for the capitalist lender, leads to economic disenfranchisement in a capitalist economic. Capitalist employers legally are required to pay no more than the minimum wage, regardless of educational achievement of the employee. This reality seems to have been missed by those graduating with such debt. America's economic reality is waiting to kick them square in the teeth.
"Over 20% of children live in poverty" in America. What's the surprise? Every Senator is a millionaire with vested self-interests. Poverty has been legislated by the capitalist oligarchy which runs America. How can a vaunted democracy legislate its citizens to work to live in poverty? Wilsonian based education treats this as an economic norm in preparing the future labor force.
American educated Americans participate in the Circus Maximus of electing their oppressors.
Americans are taught denial and superstition through division.
Job loss does not exist for American workers because they do not own the jobs. One cannot lose what one does not own. The capitalists still own the jobs. Capital is fungible and has no national obligations. Capital can hire cheap foreign labor in foreign countries to produce the goods. A lack of environmental and social concern in these foreign countries makes their markets even more attractive than the American market to any half-baked capitalist.
Americans are not taught about the decline of the democracy of Athens, which America's democracy so mirrors. Nor do the vast majority take it upon themselves to be historically informed. That explains why in America entertainers are more valued than teachers, they provide a compelling diversion from the reality of the capitalist oligarchy and a "democratically" legislated poverty.
American educators, how can the vaunted DEMOCRACY which you profess legislate its citizens into poverty?
Excellent presentation and information. This is an eye opener for those of us not part of the educational system in America. Every politician should listen to this and take her ideas and implement them immediately.
member. 
