Gerald Bracey wrote an excellent post on the Huffington Post about what the heck happened with the Secretary of Ed nomination. He describes how the “frame game” was played and the people who have the most expereince with actual kids (teachers and teachers unions) got labeled as anti-reform or for those not familiar with right wing edu-speak as not caring about kids and the quality of their education.

The history of the Ed Sec position has seen only two ED Secs with actual experience in education. Only one, Terrel Bell, was a K-12 teacher. What did Terrel Bell do? He changed the future of education in America through bringing together countless stakeholders to create the National Commission on Excellence in Education, and publish a Nation at Risk. And he accomplished this while Ronald Reagan was trying to dissolve the USED and cut funding for all of its programs.

We could only have been so lucky as to have a “non-reformer” like LDH in the position. Teachers don’t mess around with reform because it is a code word for privatizing education these days. Why hire somebody to fix education when everyone you need to do it is in a classroom. Hire a teacher for the job and then you have buy-in from the most important group, the people actually doing the teaching. Bracey did an excellent job explaining what happened this fall. The real reformers (people who care about kids) got beat by the fake reformers (arm chair quarterbacks) with no experience actually playing the game on the field. Who do you want to coach your team, someone who has played the game or someone who has watched it from the stands.

image from:http://www.objetsobjects.com/id1.html

Thanks to Thompson @ This Week in Education