NBC's Education Nation... here are the speakers. And the "Just Others".

[madfloridian]

Daily Kos diarist teacherken points out that the voices of teachers and parents are mostly missing from the list of speakers. There is an electronic town hall in which teachers will be included, but they are not among the speakers. The speakers are mostly the voices of "reform". Voices like Diane Ravitch, Alfie Kohn are missing, there are no education bloggers, no past or present Teachers of the Year.

Here is the list of the speakers.

The problem with NBC's Education Nation - where are the voices of parents and teachers?

On September 13, NBC issued a press release in which it announced the confirmed speakers to date. Here is that list as presented:

• Maria Bartiromo: Anchor of CNBC's "Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo" and Anchor and Managing Editor of "Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo"
• Michael Bloomberg: Mayor, City of New York
• Cory Booker: Mayor, City of Newark, New Jersey
• Phil Bredesen: Governor, State of Tennessee
• Steven Brill: co-founder of Journalism Online, CourtTV and American Lawyer magazine and author of "The Rubber Room" In The New Yorker
• Tom Brokaw: NBC News Special Correspondent
• Geoffrey Canada: CEO & President of Harlem Children's Zone Project
• David Coleman: Founder & CEO, Student Achievement Partners; Contributing Author of the Common Core Standards
• Ann Curry: News Anchor, "Today" and Anchor, "Dateline NBC"
• Arne Duncan: US Secretary of Education
• Byron Garrett: CEO of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
• Allan Golston, President, US Program, The Gates Foundation
• Jennifer M. Granholm: Governor, State of Michigan
• David Gregory: Moderator, "Meet the Press"
• Reed Hastings: Founder & CEO of Netflix
• Lester Holt: Anchor, "NBC Nightly News," Weekend Edition and Co-Host, "Today" Weekend Edition
• Walter Isaacson: President & CEO of the Aspen Institute
• Joel Klein: Chancellor of New York City Schools
• Wendy Kopp: CEO and Founder of Teach for America
• John Legend: Musician; Founder of the Show Me Campaign
• Jack Markell: Governor, State of Delaware
• Gregory McGinity: Managing Director of Policy, The Broad Education Foundation
• Andrea Mitchell: NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Host, "Andrea Mitchell Reports"
• Janet Murguia: President & CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR)
• Michael Nutter: Mayor, City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Bill Pepicello, Ph.D.: President of University of Phoenix
• Sally Ride: First Female Astronaut; Vice-chair of Change the Equation
• Michelle Rhee: Chancellor, District of Columbia Public School System of Washington,D.C.
• Edward Rust: Chairman & CEO of State Farm Insurance Companies
• Gwen Samuel, CT delegate to Mom Congress
• Barry Schuler: Former CEO of AOL
• Sterling Speirn: CEO, Kellogg Foundation
• Margaret Spellings: Former US Secretary of Education
• Antonio Villaraigosa: Mayor, City of Los Angeles, California
• Randi Weingarten: President of American Federation of Teachers (AFT-CLO)
• Brian Williams: Anchor and Managing Editor "NBC Nightly News"

The Chicago K-12 Examiner notes that the Facebook page for Education Nation has relegated the voices of parents who question who's missing in the speakers' list....to a page at Facebook called Just Others.

NBC sidelines parent comments

NBC has deleted some and moved other comments of parents (including me) about the lack of parent voice in their upcoming "Education Nation" events off of their main Facebook page and onto a section called "just others."

Wow. Just others. What a slap in the face.

NBC's reason for censoring and sidelining parents? "In order to keep the conversation focused and allow everyone to have their voice heard, we will be moderating the discussion by deleting repetitive comments."

Right. They obviously want the conversation focused on their privatizing, teacher-bashing, "Waiting for Superman" agenda and not on what parents really want, which is well-funded, well-supported schools open to every child in their neighborhoods.

Teacherken questions the list of speakers.

For many of us, that list was more than a little unbalanced, and illustrates much of what is wrong with discussions of education policy in this nation. There are many corporate executives, there are people from educational policy organizations, there are politicians, there are foundations. There are journalists. Many of these lack any real knowledge about education, or are well known for pushing a particular view of education to the exclusion of any other.

There are more than 30 names. Of these two are from parent organizations, and there is one representative from the smaller of the two national teachers unions.

Where are the voices of parents?

Where are the voices of those actually teaching?

Amazingly enough one of the union heads, Randi Weingarten, has been among the first to make concessions to the new "reformers."

She was was on the faculty of the Broad Superintendents Academy.

The Fellows received guidance from leaders in business, education and the non-profit sectors. Faculty at the Academy included:

* Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education
* Henry Cisneros, CEO, American CityVista
* William Cox, Managing Director, School Evaluation Services
* Chris Cross, Senior Fellow, Center on Education Policy
* Chester E. Finn, Jr., President, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
* Frances Hesselbein, Chairman, The Drucker Foundation
* Don McAdams, Founder, Center for Reform of School Systems
* Donald Nielsen, President, Hazelton Corporation; Chairman, 2WAY Corporation Hugh B. Price, President and CEO, National Urban League
* Paul Ruiz, Principal Partner, Education Trust
* Adam Urbanski, Director, Teacher Union Reform Network
* Randi Weingarten, President, United Federation of Teachers

Hopefully some of the teachers who actually are on the frontlines of education daily and the parents relegated to the Just Others Facebook page will be able to get their voices heard during the town hall segment.

[blondeatlast]

1. Proud "Just Other" here. Grrrr.... nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. I met up with a parent group on Facebook who was refused participation

I am not signing up. It's a crock. And besides, I have lesson plans to write and papers to grade. :)

[madfloridian]

3. Real teacher work to do.

:-)

And keep up the good work.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Always

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. Some comments from Facebook that have not been deleted:

Teachers in a "town hall" only. Teachers and parents are banned from the summit. Only politicians, foundations, and reformer cheerleaders - no dissent allowed.

We can organize meet ups on our own, thank you very much. We want our voice heard on your panels; otherwise it will not represent the real range of views across the country and also parenthetically be very boring tv!

Teachers and parents are not on the guest list. Will you have regular public school teachers or TFA?

We have gotten advance notice of your "hidden agenda". Public school teachers will never support a pro-testing agenda. Sorry.

Education Nation Admins: Do you realize how insulting some of these answers are to people who have been struggling with these issues for more than a year?

The "go organize meet ups" is lame, condescending, parochial and insulting. Seriously, I'm trying to help you here. These are not uninformed individuals you are dealing with. At the very least, treat the parents and teachers who want their voices heard on issues they care passionately about with respect.

If strong and united, parents and teachers will prevail against the billionaire's boys club!

I implore you to include teachers and parents in every one of these discussions and panels. It is imperative to have those voices added to this event. Education is a collaborative effort and should include parents, teachers and students. Please do not make this one sided with them( Gates and Rhee) talking and us only listening and not participating in the discussion since we have seen how that does not work!

Your panel includes not a single teacher. It's full of one side. The omission of voices like Diane Ravitch and Leonie Haimson is inexcusable. It's fairly clear to me you do not want a conversation, but rather a one-sided restatement of the status quo, a status quo pretty decisively refuted by voters last Tuesday.

It's simply disgraceful and irresponsible for a news organization to put forth such a blatant, one-sided agenda.

And DUers wonder why we teachers here are so pissed off.

[MadHound]

6. Hmm, one, maybe two education degrees to share amongst them.

And people wonder why education is in the shape it's currently in. Years and decades of this kind of "leadership" and "reform".

Sad, truly sad.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Starry Messenger]

8. k & r

Disgraceful.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

9. 7 are from NBC!

Maria Bartiromo? wtf?

[MichiganVote]

No Parents. No Teachers. Got a picture yet America?

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. +1

[Jakes Progress]

18. The picture they have is the one grover norquist drew for them.

[Dappleganger]

21. What exactly about this approach is democratic?

NOTHING!

[MichiganVote]

22. Breaking: Duncan and Obama hide competent public school teachers from public view

[LWolf]

10. Those voices are inconvenient; they might make listeners

question the corporate wisdom dispensed.

[madfloridian]

25. Exactly, teachers are the inconvenient voices.

:hi:

[LuckyLib]

11. Maria Bartiromo? Oh, puhleeeeeeze. What on earth does she know about what goes on in schools?

[madfloridian]

24. I noticed that also. She does not impress me much.

My background in education beats hers any old day. They don't want to hear from real educators.

[madrchsod]

12. nice list of union busters....it`s all about the unions

bust the union and they have fire at will cheap labor.

[Orlandodem]

13. Unionize the charter schools!

[madrchsod]

20. there is one in chicago that just unionized....

the problem is college aged students no nothing about unions.

[Greyhound]

15. Corporatists can only make their case when only their side of an issue is presented.

If they were to allow other perspectives and experiences to speak, their lies and weasels would look as foolish as they are.
:kick: & R

[Orlandodem]

17. They are going to attempt to show that charters are better. The FACT is that there is little

evidence to show that charters are better. A few are doing a fine job, but overall there is no real educational value to charters despite what the deformers will tell us.

[Greyhound]

19. Of course not. Education takes place in the willing minds of students,

not in a boardroom, shareholders meeting, or administrative office. The single driving force behind this ongoing disaster is converting schools into profit centers.

That's the beginning and end of the parasite's agenda.

ETA; punctuation error.

[Jakes Progress]

16. Corporate Eduists and Whores.

This is one issue where the country would have been better off if mccain had won. No way Democrats would suck up to these corporate bastards if he had suggested it. We would be doing away with high-stakes testing, privatizing public schools, narrowed curriculum, and teacher witch hunts. I'm sure that Chicago's arne duncan would be right there with palin in trying to run his scam, but without Obama, DU and the Democratic party would stop them in their tracks. Personality ahead of principle.

[eppur_se_muova]

23. Hey, who needs teachers? We've got four corporate CEO's!

Geez, git your priorities straight!

[cjbgreen]

26. Also missing, professional educators, career educators!

How many of the people listed have degrees in education? One
How many of "educators" are engaged in research and teaching at universities? None
How many are career educators? None unless you give Randi Weingarten a pass.
Researchers 0
Ph.D.'s in education 0
I guess we haven't learned from our past mistakes that the business model destroys health care, opportunity, jobs, hope, learning, families!



No*Maria Bartiromo: Anchor of CNBC's "Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo" and Anchor and Managing Editor of "Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo"
No *Michael Bloomberg: Mayor, City of New York
No*Cory Booker: Mayor, City of Newark, New Jersey
No*Phil Bredesen: Governor, State of Tennessee
No*Steven Brill: co-founder of Journalism Online, CourtTV and American Lawyer magazine and author of "The Rubber Room" In The New Yorker
No * Tom Brokaw: NBC News Special Correspondent
Yes* Geoffrey Canada: CEO & President of Harlem Children's Zone Project
No * David Coleman: Founder & CEO, Student Achievement Partners; Contributing Author of the Common Core Standards
No *Ann Curry: News Anchor, "Today" and Anchor, "Dateline NBC"
No * Arne Duncan: US Secretary of Education
No * Byron Garrett: CEO of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
No * Allan Golston, President, US Program, The Gates Foundation Accountant
No • Jennifer M. Granholm: Governor, State of Michigan
No• David Gregory: Moderator, "Meet the Press"
No• Reed Hastings: Founder & CEO of Netflix
No• Lester Holt: Anchor, "NBC Nightly News," Weekend Edition and Co-Host, "Today" Weekend Edition
No• Walter Isaacson: President & CEO of the Aspen Institute
NO• Joel Klein: Chancellor of New York City Schools
NO• Wendy Kopp: CEO and Founder of Teach for America Husband CEO of KIPP
NO• John Legend: Musician; Founder of the Show Me Campaign
No• Jack Markell: Governor, State of Delaware
? Probably No• Gregory McGinity: Managing Director of Policy, The Broad Education Foundation
NO• Andrea Mitchell: NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Host, "Andrea Mitchell Reports"
No• Janet Murguia: President & CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR)
No• Michael Nutter: Mayor, City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
No• Bill Pepicello, Ph.D.: President of University of Phoenix
No• Sally Ride: First Female Astronaut; Vice-chair of Change the Equation
NO• Michelle Rhee: Chancellor, District of Columbia Public School System of Washington,D.C.
No• Edward Rust: Chairman & CEO of State Farm Insurance Companies
No• Gwen Samuel, CT delegate to Mom Congress
No• Barry Schuler: Former CEO of AOL
NO• Sterling Speirn: CEO, Kellogg Foundation
No• Margaret Spellings: Former US Secretary of Education
No• Antonio Villaraigosa: Mayor, City of Los Angeles, California
Yes• Randi Weingarten: President of American Federation of Teachers (AFT-CLO)
No• Brian Williams: Anchor and Managing Editor "NBC Nightly News"
So where are the scholars such as Diane Ravitch, Linda Darling-Hammond, Larry Cuban? Where are the educators who know schools?
Why are most of the people involved or connected to for profit organizations, charters or privatization!
Disgusting and pathetic that this is our National Policy being thrust on children and unwitting families.

[chervilant]

27. And, the Assault Continues...

Obama and Arne Duncan--under the guise of 'fixing' public education--are vilifying teachers and teachers' unions. According to both men, the problem du jour in public education is 'bad teachers' who cannot be fired because they have tenure. According to both men, teachers' unions are rabidly protecting a plethora of bad teachers.

What a load of El Toro PooPoo!!

Here's what Obama said about education when he was campaigning for the presidency:

The Mistakes and Wrongs of NCLB

But I'll tell you what's wrong with No Child Left Behind:
• Forcing our teachers, our principals, and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong.
• Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong.
• Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong.

Tests Shouldn't Prevent a Well-Rounded Education

And by the way - don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend most of the year preparing him to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test.
Don't tell us that these tests have to come at the expense of music, or art, or phys. ed., or science. These tests shouldn't come at the expense of a well-rounded education - they should help complete that well-rounded education.
The teachers I've met didn't devote their lives to testing, they devoted them to teaching, and teaching our children is what they should be allowed to do.

Where is Obama's support for teachers now?!?


With a 40% illiteracy rate in our adult population, it's clear there's something amiss with public education. However, distilling public education's myriad challenges into a 'bad teacher' meme is both simplistic and misleading.

Our children deserve our heartfelt dedication to providing them an exemplary education. Our society MUST become truly child-centric in order to achieve this. Expanded funding, parental participation, and contemporary technology are a fair start in the right direction. Healthy, palatable meals should be a given. Physical activity (and not just competitive sports) should punctuate the lengthy school day, and habituate exercising. These are but a few of the essential elements of exemplary education.

The corporatists would like to 'privatize' education, which is just 'corporatist-speak' for slashing costs and increasing profitability. The corporatists' ubiquitous red herring strategies are manifest in their 'bad teacher' meme. And, if they have their way, monied charter schools will predominate in 'wealthier' neighborhoods, and our low-income children won't stand a chance of getting a good education.

Please, don't be complicit and don't let them destroy public education.