Regarding the finalists for Commissioner

As per usual, this is only my personal opinion.

When asked for my (own personal) opinion about what we need in the next Commissioner, I have said two things: 

1. We need to be absolutely completely certain that they, all the way through to their bones, support all kids. I want to be able to trust that we aren't going back off our support for trans kids, or gay kids, or Black kids, or kids whose first language isn't English. I want to know that the person in charge of the K-12 department isn't on board with discrimination by any public school district on any terms. I want to know that they aren't going play games, especially given what is going on in Washington, on backing every student.
   Every kid, every day. 
   
   
2. As I said in my blog post, I said we needed to have someone who can run the Department. Because this is a high-profile hire--and don't get me wrong! It is!--there is very much this perception that this is a high-profile job. 
   Mostly, it shouldn't be. The Secretary is the political appointment, the ribbon cutter, the show horse, the out in front person. 
   The Commissioner should be the one who is ensuring that we're actually doing what we say we're doing in public education. There are going to be aspects of that in public--certainly, one would expect the Commissioner to ongoingly be talking to superintendents, school committees* and so forth!--but a lot of it isn't showy, isn't in public, and probably looks kind of boring.

(think of this as a chapter break)

I've been watching education policy long enough now that I have some organizations that immediately throw up red flags for me. A few of them are: 

• Teach for America
• The Broad Institute (and its variations)
• New School Venture Funds
• "turnaround" organizations or agencies

If you read my post on the finalists, you'll see each of them has some of the above in their bio.

Now, let me say this in large letters: THIS DOES NOT IMMEDIATELY RULE PEOPLE OUT in my book. There are fine educators who have come out of TFA. The "run schools like a business" Broad notion, while entirely broken, doesn't ruin everyone it touches. I'm sure NSVF has put some reasonable money somewhere, and there has been good turnaround work done.

However, the reason it is a flag for me is that these are organizations that look at schools as institutions that cannot be fixed from the INside. If you look back through the applicants, only Martinez appears to have decided that schools can be improved from his working on the inside; the other two are now in "let us dabble in from outside" organizations working with schools.

There is no more "insider" job than that of Commissioner. 

As I noted, this wasn't particularly a position I held until I started looking through the backgrounds of those being considered. As I look at them, though, I have a concern that we have a set of people who may be particularly not suited to what the job actually is. 

It's okay to think that schools need partners and such; I'd even agree. That isn't, though, quite what we see here. And changing organizations and institutions from the INside is a particular set of skills. I don't know that we have people here who have them.

I'll be there tomorrow and listening so as to find out what we can from interviews. 

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*though that would be a novelty, aside from the interims, in my experience