Broad's Deborah Gist Out to Make Teacher Certification Decisions in RI Based on Test Scores

The Oligarchs' diversified portfolio of assaults on public education is in full operation, and it is largely directed by Eli Broad's trainees, who have been placed in superintendents' chairs from Los Angeles to Chicago to Providence, RI to Raleigh to Boston, with stops in between.  In many cases, as in Boston, the Broadies provide the personnel, while Bill and Melinda provide the software, if you will.  More later on the new BPS "Gates Compact."

The latest leak from the the Broad/Gates septic think tank is a real doozie.  Rhode Island's Ed Commish, Deborah Gist (Broad Class of '08), just put forward her boss's most extreme use yet of teacher test scores.  While other states like Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Florida are working overtime to make the unconscionable, workable, with new teacher evaluations based on test scores, the Broadies have taken the destruction of the teaching profession one step further down in Providence.  If the Broad plan passes public examination, which is going on this month, even teacher certification will be based on test scores, thus eliminating entirely those annoying Deweyean democrats in the schools of teacher education who have been teaching for years that the public schools are democratic institutions and that poor children should be treated as least as humanely as we do our dogs and parakeets.

In the Broadie's new assault on public education, prospective applicants with a Bachelor's degree may become teachers under a Preliminary or Initial Educator certificate (with or without the 5 weeks of brainwashing from a TFA camp).  Then from year to year students' test scores will determine who gets Professional and Advanced teaching certificates. 

Think this adds any higher stakes to the test score derby?  If it takes full scale manipulation and corruption to end the test score gap, bring it on, say the Broadies. At least we'll be over those whining over-educated losers with all their fancy ideas about child development needs and situated cognition, whatever that is. Please!

A clip from the Providence Journal.  Note that the corrupt outfit, NCTQ, is quoted as if they they had any legitimate expertise in matters of teacher quality or preparation:

PROVIDENCE –– The state Department of Education is proposing dramatic changes to the way teachers are certified, part of Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist’s plan to raise the quality of teaching throughout the state.

For the first time, certification would be tied to a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom, based on the new evaluation system rolling out this fall.

 Also, certification would be tiered, with new teachers receiving a three-year “initial” certificate, and advancing to a five-year “professional certificate” if their evaluations are satisfactory. To distinguish the top level, teachers who are “highly effective” would be eligible for a seven-year “advanced” certificate.

But the nine-member Rhode Island Certification Policy Advisory Board opposes some elements of the proposal.

Specifically, the advisory board, which includes teachers union officials, the heads of schools of education at the state colleges, and representatives of teachers, principals and superintendents, objects to the omission of a requirement that teachers take college courses for credit — as many other states require.

Instead, the proposal requires teachers to participate in professional-development courses or workshops as determined by their principal, based on their evaluation.

“You need to grow professionally,” said Alexander Sidorkin, dean of the School of Education of Rhode Island College. “The evaluation system is new and we, on the board, don’t believe that all principals in all schools will have their teachers do something significant in terms of professional development.”

The board has recommended the creation of a consortium of higher-education institutions and other organizations that provide professional development that would oversee the quality of the programs and ensure they are relevant.

Over eight years — the length of an initial certificate and a professional certificate — teachers would be expected to receive “a master’s degree or the equivalent,” which is approximately 30 graduate credits, Sidorkin said.

Mary Ann Snider, who is in charge of teacher certification at the state Department of Education, says the new approach would allow principals to target the areas a particular teacher needs to strengthen.

“We don’t want this to be an empty, bureaucratic exercise for teachers,” Snider said. “Through the annual evaluation process, a teacher could learn they don’t have deep enough content knowledge in mathematics, and it may be best that he or she takes a course at a college. For other teachers, it might be they have problems with classroom management, and it could be best for them to partner with a master teacher in their building, and learn from them.”

Arthur McKee, a managing director at the National Council on Teaching Quality, agrees, saying certification should be linked to teacher evaluation.

“By and large, getting a master’s degree in education does not increase effectiveness in the classroom, whatsoever,” he said.

“You want to find out what the teachers need and find the available resources” they need to improve, he said. . . .

And who, pray tell, is Arthur McKee, other than "a managing director" of NCTQ?  Wow, he is "heading up a national review of education schools."  And looky here, he came to NCTQ from the Bridge Foundation, the corporate foundation purse strings that run ed deform in DC.  And before that, he was making a living trying to figure out how to use the homeless to generate tax breaks for the wealthy.  His bio:

Arthur McKee co-lead CityBridge Foundation’s work in education reform in DC, which aims to close the achievement gap in the nation’s capital through strategic investments in PK-12 education. He worked closely with his colleagues in the foundation and the foundation’s partners, developing and implementing the initiative’s strategies in creating models of excellence, attracting and preparing talent in education, and engaging the public in education reform.

Before helping to launch the Foundation’s Early Years Education Initiative in 2006, Arthur investigated the potential of philanthropic strategies in the areas of homeless service provision, workforce development, and asset building.

Arthur joined the Foundation in 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in Russian history from U.C. Berkeley.  He serves on the boards of DC Preparatory Academy and Princeton AlumniCorps. He and his wife have two school-age children.

Sounds to me like he is the perfect guy to do Eli Broad's "national review of education schools."

Dear Mr. President: Don't Send Us Unprepared Temporary Missionaries to Teach Our Children

From WaPo:

By Valerie Strauss

This letter was just sent to President Obama by more than 50 organizations -- including education, civil rights, disability, student, parent, and community groups -- about legislation in Congress that would allow teachers still in training to be considered “highly qualified” so they can meet a standard set in the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Dear Mr. President:

As organizations concerned with promoting educational quality and equity, particularly for students who have traditionally been least well served by our educational system, we are deeply committed to the development of well-prepared, experienced, and effective teachers for all communities, and to ensuring that every student has a fully prepared and effective teacher.

On behalf of the nation’s 50 million elementary and secondary students, we write to you with a sense of urgency about a critical issue that threatens the welfare of many of them.

We are deeply concerned about a provision inserted in H.R. 3082, the Continuing Resolution for government funding passed in December, which undermined the federal definition of a “highly qualified teacher” in the No Child Left Behind Act by allowing states to label teachers as “highly qualified” when they are still in training – and, in many cases, just beginning training – in alternative route programs.

This provision – inserted in the law without notice to concerned public stakeholders and without public debate – codifies a Bush-era regulation that was challenged by parents of low-income students of color in court because their children were disproportionately taught by such under-prepared teachers and because the regulation removed the obligation of states and districts to disclose and rectify the inequity.

The provision seeks to reverse the recent federal appeals court ruling these parents obtained, which held that the regulation patently violated NCLB’s unambiguous requirement that only fully prepared teachers be deemed “highly qualified” and that, as such, teachers still in-training must be publicly disclosed and not concentrated in low-income, high-minority schools.

Our concern with this provision (and with any federal policy that reinforces the unequal allocation of fully trained and certified teachers to all students) is that it disproportionately impacts our most vulnerable populations: low-income students and students of color, English language learners, and students with disabilities who are most often assigned such underprepared teachers.

Further, this provision hides this disparate reality from parents and the public by disingenuously labeling teachers-in-training as “highly qualified” and hindering advocacy for better prepared teachers.

Research confirms what logic and experience dictate: that teachers-in training are significantly less effective in supporting student achievement than those who are fully trained when they enter teaching, and that the negative effects are particularly pronounced for students whose success depends most acutely on fully-trained professionals.
We believe that students with the greatest needs should have the best-prepared and most effective teachers to support their success, and that pursuit of that goal should be the purpose of federal policy.

In the coming weeks, we will propose specific actions to the Administration and the Congress that can achieve this goal, including repeal of this provision and development of a transparent definition of teacher quality, along with a set of policies that will allow the nation to put a well-prepared and effective teacher in every classroom. We will work tirelessly and in concert to see that policy is enacted that will support high-quality teaching for every child.

Respectfully,

Action United
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment
Alliance for Multilingual Multicultural Education
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
American Association of State Colleges and Universities
American Federation of Teachers
ASPIRA Association
Association of University Centers on Disabilities
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Bay Area Parent Leadership Action Network
California Association for Bilingual Education
California Latino School Boards Association
Californians for Justice
Californians Together
Campaign for Fiscal Equity
Campaign for Quality Education
Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning
Center for Teaching Quality
Citizens for Effective Schools
Coalition for Educational Justice
Council for Exceptional Children
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
Easter Seals
ELC, Education Law Center
FairTest, The National Center for Fair & Open Testing
Higher Education Consortium for Special Education
Justice Matters
Latino Elected and Appointed Officials National Taskforce on Education
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Learning Disabilities Association of America
Los Angeles Educational Partnership
Movement Strategy Center
NAACP
National Alliance of Black School Educators
National Center for Learning Disabilities
National Council for Educating Black Children
National Council of Teachers of English
National Disability Rights Network
National Down Syndrome Congress
National Down Syndrome Society
National Education Association
National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project
National League of United Latin American Citizens
Parent-U-Turn
Parents for Unity
Philadelphia Education Fund
Public Advocates Inc.
Public Education Network
Rural School and Community Trust
RYSE Center
School Social Work Association of America
Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children
Texas Association for Chicanos and Higher Education
United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries
Youth Together

cc: Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, U.S. Department of Education

What Makes Mike Petrilli An Expert on Anything, Particularly Anything about Teachers?

The NYTimes has an interesting piece on schools run by teachers, and who is the first neolib sludge tanker to condemn it.  That's right:

. . . . They say that most teachers have neither the time nor the expertise to deal with the inner workings of a school, like paying bills, conducting fire drills and refereeing faculty disputes.

“Ever try to plan a vacation with a large extended family? That’s what it’s going to be like,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy group in Washington. “It’s a good idea in theory, but there are just a handful of teachers who can pull it off.” . . . .

Well, at least Petrilli has a BS in Political Science, and look where where those bona fides got Margaret Spellings.  Oh, yeah, he taught in a corporate training camp and he is pals with Checker Finn.

Ever been in a real school?  Ever taught a real class? Ever knew a real teacher?  Good questions for any ed reporter to ask while jotting down the wisdom of Mikey, don't you think.

Duncan's BTTF (Bribe To The Flop)

Since last Fall Bush and Obama have handed over 3 trillion dollars (give or take a few hundred billion) in taxpayer money to save American business from the ruin that corporate greed and profligate behavior would have otherwise guaranteed the entire country, except for those with foreign bank accounts, of course.

In comparison, 2.5 percent of that $3 trillion, or $100 billion, went to the education bailout, and a sliver of that $100 billion (4.3% of it) has been given to the Secretary of Education to "incent" states to change their laws so that they will be in line with the Broad/Gates corporate education reform based on paying teachers for test scores, creating mammoth data surveillance systems, opening up the floodgates to "alternative" teacher preparation programs such as ABCTE and TFA (for the urban and rural poor), and expanding corporate charter chain gang schools to become the dominant model for schooling in urban America.

Even though the Dunc has been hawking the BTTF for months now, the President, himself, was on the road yesterday in Wisconsin to announce the race has really started now. Ready, set, yawn.

Not only is no one excited, but most believe that none of 4.3 percent of the 2.5% of the corporate bailout will improve education or close the achievement gap or accomplish any of the blah-blah about competitive global economies. What it will likely do is continue shrinking school curriculums into the box built by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, weaken the teaching profession and teacher unions, make test scores even more high stakes and certainly more high profit, and solidify the education industry as the dominant voice for urban school matters in America. That's pretty good bang for your buck, or some excellent leveraging, as Bill and Eli might chuckle.

And all of it is going full steam ahead despite what the preponderance of evidence tells us about these proposals.

• For instance, the only peer-reviewed large-scale study of charter schools,

for example, a 14 state study out of a Stanford research center reported that 17% of charters did better than public schools, while 37% did worse. The reason that charters do no better, and frequently do worse, than public schools is that they do not provide the promised innovations, have higher turnover and less qualified staff. Also clearly emerging from the findings is that charter schools segregate by wealth and race. It is troublesome that our leaders who promised to be "evidence-based" have not based their initiatives on the evidence.

• A study of performance pay in Texas reported yesterday in the Dallas Morning News found this:

For the $300 million spent on merit pay for teachers over the last three years, Texas was hoping for a big boost in student achievement.

But it didn't happen with the now-defunct program, according to experts hired by the state.

The Texas Educator Excellence Grant, or TEEG, plan did not produce the academic improvements that proponents – including Gov. Rick Perry – hoped for when the program was launched with much fanfare in 2006, a new report from the National Center on Performance Incentives said.

"There is no systematic evidence that TEEG had an impact on student achievement gains," said researchers for Texas A&M University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Missouri.. . . .

• This comes four weeks after the National Academy of Science's National Research Council offered this warning in the Press Release to their Report regarding Duncan's pay-per-score plan:

Evaluations must be appropriate to the specific program being assessed and will be easier to design if grantees provide a "theory of action" for any proposed reform -- a logical chain of reasoning explaining how the innovation will lead to improved student learning. Evaluations should be designed before programs begin so baseline data can be collected; they should also provide short-term feedback to aid midcourse adjustments and long-term data to judge the program's impact. While standardized tests are helpful in measuring a reform's effects, evaluations should rely on multiple indicators of what students know and can do, not just a single test score, the report adds.

. . . .

One way of evaluating teachers, currently the subject of intense interest and research, are value-added approaches, which typically compare a student's scores going into a grade with his or her scores coming out of it, in order to assess how much "value" a year with a particular teacher added to the student's educational experience. The report expresses concern that the department's proposed regulations place excessive emphasis on value-added approaches. Too little research has been done on these methods' validity to base high-stakes decisions about teachers on them. A student's scores may be affected by many factors other than a teacher -- his or her motivation, for example, or the amount of parental support -- and value-added techniques have not yet found a good way to account for these other elements.

• And alternative certification to add an unending suply of cheaper script readers in the urban schools that need the most experienced and qualified teachers? A study by Mathematica, commissioned by the bogus take-a-test-to-teach outfit, ABCTE, found an increasing supply of incompetents that Jeb's boys in Florida are turning loose on the poor and the disenfranchised in Florida schools. The leafy, er, the palm frond suburbs? They will not look at an ABCTE "certified teacher," and for good reason. From the Mathematica report out in September 2009:

Using data on 30 ABCTE teachers in Florida over two years, we found no differences in student gains in reading between students of ABCTE and non–ABCTE teachers. However, students of ABCTE teachers scored lower than their counterparts on the state math test. The difference was equal to an effect size of 0.25 and was statistically significant [approximately 10 percentage points], although the estimate varied slightly depending on how the matching was conducted and how the statistical model was specified. Limiting the sample to subgroups of teachers, such as novices or ABCTE teachers who scored high or low on certification exams (and their matched counterparts), did not change the overall conclusion either (p. 1).

This is just a sampling of the hard data that should give pause to Duncan and Obama's capitulation to the corporate ed reform oligarchs, whose ideological agendas are driving education policy, evidence be damned. The question faced by states: is it worth it to jeopardize public schools for what amounts to chump change, just to expand the education industry and to create a new unaccountable and unregulated corporate bureaucracy to be in charge of the children we have essentially thrown away?

Arizona now has corporate prisons to house poor adult lawbreakers. Will nationalized corporate chain gang schools be the cheap solution to urban and rural poverty among those too young for prison?

Arkansas State Takes the Randy Best Diploma Mill Route for Teacher Preparation

Best Associates has a strong commitment to the education industry and a track record of exceptional results. The market is huge, with the U.S. spending more than $700 billion annually. --Best Associates Website

While Arne Duncan was running Chicago Public Schools, he shepherded hundreds of Chicago teachers through Randy Best's for-profit diploma mill, the American College of Education. Now it appears that the oligarchs and their puppet are getting ready to scale up for delivery of their alternative teacher ed programs, even though the preparation offered by such programs does not come close even to the level of rigor of the traditional teacher ed programs, which have been repeatedly attacked over the years by the same corporationists who now want to offer something that is an insult to the notion of academic integrity.

This new strategy of the cheap online diploma mill ed degree will help generate a vast oversupply of "teachers," which can be used in the urban school chain gangs and then discarded for other eager recruits as soon they burn out from the ten hour work days that are being planned for the new KIPPs and KIPP knock-offs based on "no excuses." The skill level and benefits will be reduced to those of prison guards, which will be quite good enough to suit the oligarchs whose children, after all, will never encounter one of the Arkansas State or Lamar University or American College of Education alums. For the corporate welfare charter schools and the charity publics that will remain, where all the unwanted special populations will be warehoused, the key to manning them is volume, volume, volume.

Any university faculty member in a school of education who believes that there is something called faculty governance or even union membership that will protect you from the onslaught of corporate bottom feeders like Randy Best, you should have a look at what is happening at Arkansas State. If you want to save your profession, you need to take a break from your post-post-structuralist text long enough to get organized.

Some clips from a nice piece of reporting from Inside Higher Ed:

For some in higher education, what happened at the University of Toledo earlier this month was a small victory in a simmering war. For others, it was an illustration of academe’s resistance to a future that is coming, ready or not.

Faced with the prospect of partnering with a private company to deliver online master's degrees in education, the faculty at Toledo rose up in protest and managed to kill the deal. But the story of Higher Ed Holdings -- an ambitious Texas-based company selling distance learning support to universities -- didn’t begin in Ohio, and it’s not likely to end there. Moreover, a growing debate about how universities will be forced to change in the coming decades -- and the extent to which the private sector will play a role -- is a subject that’s not going to die with the Toledo deal.

At Arkansas State University, where a recent partnership with Higher Ed Holdings is getting decidedly mixed reviews, fissures are quickly forming. Just last week, a faculty member resigned from an academic committee in protest, proclaiming: “I simply refuse to be part of this HEH scam.” The professor’s e-mail is emblematic of the passion with which some faculty are resisting the company, even as others characterize its approach as “the wave of the future.”. . . .

. . . .

. . . .Prospective Arkansas students who visit the Academic Partnership's Web site are greeted by video of a company spokeswoman who springs forth from the bottom of the page hologram-style. The spokeswoman hits the high notes of the marketing campaign: Low price, quick completion. The degrees cost a total of $4,950, which is as much as 60 percent less than comparable degrees cost. The time to degree is as little as 18 months for a degrees that can traditionally take 24 months to complete.

Borrowing a marketing technique that's traditionally employed in infomercials, Higher Ed Holdings is also pushing a "limited time" offer. The first 500 students accepted into the Arkansas State master's program are given the "First Course FREE!" -- a $495 value. The discount is given in the form of a "scholarship" to the "first 500 qualified and accepted applicants."

In exchange for Higher Ed Holdings’ services, universities typically give the company 80 percent of tuition revenues, according to three contracts provided to Inside Higher Ed. While the universities forfeit significant dollars in the deal, state appropriations are rising in tandem. Public universities typically receive state appropriations based party on credit hour production, and that number is rising steadily, even though the enrollment growth hasn’t required any new brick and mortar.. . . .

So, in effect, state dollars go out the door to Randy Best, while a replacement supply of state dollars comes through the other door from the taxpayers.

. . . .

. . . .What unquestionably changes in a partnership with Higher Ed Holdings is enrollment, and some argue that this change alone has an affect on quality. At Lamar, where the partnership with Higher Ed Holdings is in full swing, classes have grown to as large as 2,000 students.

The large enrollments have raised questions in the minds of some professors about how they could possibly develop any kind of relationship or dialogue with their students. While Higher Ed Holdings officials maintain that faculty control curriculum, they don’t dispute that the large classes require faculty to rely more heavily on standardized testing than essays or other assignments that require more grading time.

“You’ve got to do your course to incorporate quite a bit of auto-grading, and strike a balance as to how much high-touch grading you have,” said Robert Riggs, a newly-hired spokesman for the company. “That’s a fact of life of doing it online; there has to be a pretty good component of auto grading.” . . . .

In a workshop for professors at Arkansas State, Higher Ed Holdings officials explained that coaches could only devote five to eight minutes per student, per week to grading, according to two faculty members who were present. Company officials also encouraged faculty to consider breaking down large essays into smaller pieces, say 150 words each or about a paragraph at a time, so they could be more easily graded, the faculty said.

Julie Grady, an assistant professor for curriculum at Arkansas State, said she felt the company was placing restrictions on assignments and content, even though they repeatedly said faculty could “absolutely … absolutely … absolutely” (they said it a lot) do whatever they wanted.

“It was ‘Oh yes, you have absolute control over the assessment. But it has to be something the coaches can grade,’ ” Grady recalls from the meeting. “‘Yes, you have control, but you’ve got to make sure it’s something the coaches can grade quickly.’ We can do whatever we want, but we have to make sure the coaches can handle 100 to 125 students each.” . . . .

. . . .

The compressed time frame is not dissimiliar from the way summer courses are offered at Arkansas State. Moreover, distance learning models are often arranged so students can take a series of shorter, intensive online courses -- as opposed to taking several longer courses at once. Even so, some faculty say they're unconvinced quality is retained in the Higher Ed Holdings model. Summer sessions involve longer, more frequent class periods where 14 weeks of content can be compressed into five weeks. With the Higher Ed Holdings model, where all courses are online and coaches have limited grading time for hundreds of students, faculty say there's less assurance that the five week courses will be equivalent to the 14 week courses.

Even as the numbers of students grow in classes, faculty may be expected to do less work. An internal Higher Ed Holdings document, which the company provided to Inside Higher Ed in a slightly redacted form, indicates that faculty can expect to spend three to five hours a week managing a class. Developing the course typically takes one to two weeks, according to the document.. . . .

Duncan Uses Citizen's Briefing Book to Advance Business Roundtable Agenda

The Obama Team has up a website called Citizen's Briefing Book. According to the site, ideas can be entered, and others can vote the idea up (+ 10 points) or down (-10 points):

Share your ideas on any issue facing the new administration, then rate or comment on other ideas. The best rated ideas will be gathered into a Citizen's Briefing Book to be delivered to President Obama after he is sworn in.

I spent some time on this site, and below are the ideas related to education that were ranked between 910 points to 54,900 points. There are over a hundred other ideas with a lower ranking than 910. And please note that the idea, "Eliminate No Child Left Behind," has 1050 points but is not listed in this grouping of "Popular Ideas." (In order to find it, in fact, you have to search the phrase, "Eliminate No Child Left Behind"). On the other hand, the idea, "Reform No Child Left Behind (NCLB)" has fewer points (1100) and is included in the Popular Ideas. Hmm--those algorithms can be so picky.

The Briefing Book is a great idea if it works to actually affect decision making, and only time will tell that. The NCLB "eliminate" vs. "reform" business just cited does not bode well for a transparent process. But that shortcoming is insignificant in comparison to how the Secretary Designate is using the Citizen's Briefing Book. So far, the Briefing Book has been turned into a scam to promote the Duncan (Business Roundtable) agenda, which has nothing to do with what citizens are suggesting to improve education.

In Duncan's first YouTube comments (see below) on what he is hearing from the citizens who care enough to write down their education ideas, he opens with this as #1:

" First there has been a series of folks who are interested in looking at alternate routes into the teaching profession. That's something I'm actually a big fan of . . . over the past five years, I think we brought 1,200 new teachers into the Chicago Public Schools through alternative certification routes."

Now I can assure you that the "series of folks" interested in alternative routes to teaching are not among those who are writing ideas into the "Briefing Book." I could not find any idea, in fact, on alternate routes to teaching or alternate certification or anything related under teacher preparation that had more than a couple of comments and very few points. Duncan is using the Briefing Book as an entry point to continue the propagandizing for the BR agenda that he began in Chicago under Daley. And with Wendy Kopp's name being floated for a top job with Duncan, it would make sense for him to begin to soften the ground for the cheap solution to the urban teacher issue: a ready supply of non-professional, inexpensive, temporary, issue-ignorant, enthused, malleable, patronizing, and privileged lasses who will not hang around long enough to be overly concerned with benefits or rights.

Duncan's second issue pick relates to an actual idea from the Most Popular List--a greater emphasis on vocational education. Some serious fact-checking is needed, however, on Duncan's claim that at there is a vast shortage of skilled blue collar workers. Perhaps this will prove true if any money from the bailout actually goes to rebuild infrastructure after the banks' stolen cash is replaced.

And the third idea that Duncan pulls is student loan forgiveness, which is a ways down the list from the public's more popular ideas, which are listed here, even though they have escaped the attention apparently of the Secretary Designate, who has much bigger fish to fry and many fewer people to listen to with ideas that are worth a whole lot more.

This is a ranked list rom the most "Popular Ideas" that are related to education:

54,900 An end to the government sponsored abstinence education to be replaced by an introduction of age appropriate sex education

22670 Encourage Trade Schools

12970 Establish a Free Online Educational System for the Working Poor!

9980 Encourage Science and Technology

9850 Healthy Kids Learn Better

9080 Focus on the Art and Creativity

7290 Lost SCIENTISTS and ENGINEERS

7270 Libraries of all types need our support

6940 Limit the cost of student loans

4790 Create an online E-Library

3900 Renew US leadership in education

3730 Return Civics Education to the Schools

3170 Money Management Taught in Public Schools

2900 National Service for College Students

1980 Financial Literacy Programs

1870 A New Curriculum

1690 Reclaiming America's Status as Science and Engineering Leader

1560 Studen [sic] Loan Help

1350 Re-introduce civics as a standard in high school education. Understanding

the constitution is fundamental to enforcing the constitution.

1330 STOP COLLEGE TEXTBOOK PRICE-GOUGING - help our students by reforming system!

1240 Solar and Wind Powered Schools

1210 Invest in Education (teacher pay)

1140 America needs more Doctors, Scientists and Engineers to solve today's and tomorrow's problems.

1140 No Child Left Inside - Promote Environmental Education

1120 Stop the privatization of public works

1120 Green Textbooks

1100 Reform No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)

1050 Include teachers in educational decision making

1030 Financial Literacy and Budgeting in Education

1020 Public School Gardens

990 Expand Student Loan Forgiveness Programs

950 Foreign languages should be an integral part of American education.

920 Cost of Education

910 Stop Credit card companies from taking advantage of college students

At least a hundred other ideas fall between 910 and 40 in the "Popular Idea" section, which is where I found this, the closest thing I could find that has anything to do with teacher qualification:

40 Teacher Qualifications
No degrees in education as a qualification for teaching. Prospective teachers must have a master's degree in their chosen field. Learning to be an educator is another, further step in the quest to be a teacher.

Finally, I found what is probably the least popular education idea:

-240 Abandoning public education

Too bad that the Business Roundtable, the ed industry, and Arne Duncan don't feel the same way.