Can superintendents of large urban school districts expect help from President Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan?
They don’t sound eager to coddle the teachers unions. When you see the Obama administration with the Race to the Top forcing states to lift the cap on charter schools and change the laws on the data attached to them, they are trying to dismantle laws created to protect various special interest groups. I don’t disagree with the folks who point to the outside forces. But the fact is we have wrinkles internally in urban education. We need to hold teachers accountable, and make sure we have the best and the brightest in front of our kids. When you look at groups like Teach for America, these teachers come into your schools with a different attitude. I’m not saying they are any better than the ones we have right now. But their attitude is: “I’m going to close the achievement gap. I’m going to look to create two to three years of gain every single year, and I’m not going to make excuses for what I can’t control.” Are you saying then – leaving aside the concentration of poverty issues – that
