He talks about the numerous leaders in education that have no academic or educational experience - Arne Duncan, outgoing and incoming Chancellor for New York Schools Joel Klein and Cathleen Black, Michelle Rhee who recently left Washington D.C. And, clearly educational policy is not written by educators.
He goes on to assert: " The standards, testing and accountability movement is built on a claim that education can change society. The corporate support for the accountability movement and the "no excuses" charter school movement seeks to reinforce that claim because, otherwise, corporate America and the politicians supporting corporate America would have to admit that something is wrong with our economic and political structures."
We are currently struggling to "see the future" and are trying to design, define and develop concepts by which we can affect the future in education. The piece that is missing is what Thomas points out -
"The real failure, which is the message being ignored here, is that one of the wealthiest countries in the world refuses to face the inequities of its economic system, a system that permits more than 20% of its children to live in poverty and to languish in schools that America has clearly decided to abandon, along with its democratic principles."
True Leadership in education is our only hope.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/15/education-schools
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