No Darling-Hammond at DoE

by Clay Burell · 2009-02-19 17:43:00 UTC
Topics:

linda darling-hammondThe New Republic reports that Linda Darling-Hammond will not be joining the Obama-Duncan Department of Education. Still no word, a month into the new administration, who will be Deputy Secretary, Under-Secretary, and other posts under Duncan. (Is it normal to take so long to appoint those posts?)

I see it as bad news, and one more win for the testing-and-privatizing wing. But as reader Joe Beckmann weighed in, maybe Darling-Hammond will better serve us outside of Washington than in.

Your thoughts?

Update: Here's the mass email from Darling-Hammond making the rounds on the web (h/t to Alexander Russo):

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, I have been gone quite a bit since last fall leading President Obama's transition team for education policy, a process that is just now winding down.  It has been tremendously gratifying to have had a role in developing his ambitious education agenda and the first steps toward implementation in the stimulus package, which allocates nearly $100 billion to education (!)

So many of you have asked me about my future plans that Deborah and I thought it might be best to abuse the SUSE community listserve this once to let you know that several things have converged in the last week or so to persuade me to stay in California and support the President's agenda from here.

First, of course, is friends and family, whom I have missed and am so glad to be surrounded by once again.  You all have been tremendously supportive in a variety of ways – with courses, students, projects, ideas for the Administration, and many, many gestures of friendship and aid.

Thank you.  And my family members have some needs that I want to be available to support without traveling cross country each week, which I hardly need tell you is tremendously grueling.

In addition, several funders have indicated they want to make major investments in the new Policy Center Prudence Carter and I were just beginning to get off the ground at Stanford when I left to work on the transition.  We will be working on issues of school reform – including standards and assessments, teaching quality, and educational equity in the US and around the world.  I've also been asked to take an important role in an international performance assessment project sponsored by several of the high-tech companies here in Silicon Valley that will greatly advance our ability, with other countries, to build better measures of learning, something the president cares deeply about.   I believe this will help move the agenda forward – and allow me to help the Administration accomplish some things it cannot do from inside the bureaucracy alone.

So I look forward to rejoining you in our many collective undertakings here, and, yes, I will be offering my course in School Reform this spring.

Best, Linda

Clay Burell
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