Let's Leave Some Children Behind

Michael Petrilli is a leading conservative commentator on education policy. He is executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank based in Washington. He is also an executive editor of Education Next and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Petrilli is notorious for his hostility to teacher unions. He has also been a strong advocate for charter schools and voucher programs. In a recent blog posting on Education Week’s Bridging Differences blog, Petrilli discussed his views that education policy should be about sorting out "the especially deserving poor" who are worthy of help, rather than attempting to help all children succeed through access to quality education. Petrilli is to be admired for his brutal honesty about the values that underlie his education reform agenda. The rest of us are left to wonder what happens to those children "left behind" - and to wonder how the conservative authors of the No Child Left Behind Act reconcile the rhetoric of the law's title with Petrilli's honest discussion of the moral values behind the conservative agenda for public education.

MCEA in the News

The much watched local political blog, MARYLAND JUICE, ran a story today interviewing MCEA's new Political Director, Barbara Hueter. Barbara is both a former MCPS teacher and a former political staffer who previously served as an aide to the Speaker of the House in the Ohio legislature. Click here to read the interview, and to see the ad that MCEA ran in this week's Gazette newspaper soliciting pro-education candidates for public office.

Why I Stopped Writing Recommendations for Teach For America

Congatulations to Slate Magazine for running an insightful piece by Catherine Michna entitled "Why I Stopped Writing Recommendation Letters for Teach for America". Michna is a Teach for America alumnus herself, but she has come to have serious reservations about TFA's model of sending thousands of poorly trained and ill-prepared recent college graduates to teach in high poverty schools, where they only stay for short periods of time before leaving: contributing to the high turnover rates in high poverty schools.