Reply #6: That was his official title......

[FrenchieCat]

and like I mentioned to you a couple of days ago,
there is no Education policy in the Obama administration set as of yet.

Mr. Duncan mentioned clearly on that show that they will be doing town halls
and listening to teachers, parents and students for the next few months,
and regardless to how he has been villainized, to date he has done nothing
in his current position that warrants demonizing him.

I sent a long letter to Mr. Duncan via whitehouse.gov in reference to my stance on education,
both in reference to the k-12th grade level, as well as the issue on higher education.

I sent both of my kids to private school, and we totally sacrificed just about any extra money we had, and then some to do so. Why? Because we lived in an area where the school were below sub-par
in every subjects.

Part of the problem with education funding stems directly from property tax, i.e., one's zip code (in California, anyways). Although we live in a nice enough area, we are included in an area that a big portion isn't all that. In a way, we face the same dilemna that my parents faced in the early 70s. My parents bought a house in the Bay Area El Cerrito hills (because of the superior school district). However, due to Integration legislation, the area where we lived was designated to be bussed to a school in the flatland that was, at the time considered subpar. So it was ironic, that my family who moved in order to offer their children a better education, ended up having their Black children being bussed back down from where they were trying to get away from in the first place.

I say all of this to say that education has many problems, and to believe that these problems haven't been with us for a very long time, and that somehow there is no new idea to be tried is very short sighted, IMO. And no, I don't think that just because someone is an educator, it provides them with more insight on what needs to be done to correct prominent problems in our education system as well as the issue of funding. I think that parents, and yes, even kids, may have answers that are just as good as those of Educators....because the problems vary.

Obama's idea of providing teachers with merit pay if they choose to teach in underpriviledged schools is one that I support, as it appears that unequal local/district education funding provides children in the richer areas of town way too many advantages, and so teacher incentives would be an excellent idea.

I will reserve judgement as to other proposals as they are made.....

Anyways....those are my two cents.