Friend of Education Proposes a "Marshall Plan For Teachers"
July 6, 2009
NEA President Dennis Van Roekel looks on as Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, who received the Friend of Education Award, stands before the RA delegates.
Photo by Calvin Knight for RA Today
One of the most influential and revered public education policy voices in the United States — that’s how NEA President described Linda Darling-Hammond, this year’s recipient of the 2009 Friend of Education award. Darling-Hammond is a professor at Stanford University and a tireless champion of a teacher-led education reform.
Darling-Hammond singled out NEA for being at the forefront of the fight for educational equality and said that, while strides have been made in some areas, the battle for access to high quality education for every person has become a “life and death battle.”
She called on educators across the nation to take the reins and fight for nothing less than a transformation of public education – one in which all students have the right to learn and teachers have the support, resources and respect needed to teach well.
First, we need to close the “Opportunity Gap,” Darling-Hammond said, and pointed to other industrialized countries’ robust investments in universal preschool and health care for all children as models.
“The cost of doing this,” she warned, “will ultimately be less than the costs of not doing it.”
Darling-Hammond also called for a renewed commitment — a “Marshall Plan for teachers” — to hire and support highly-qualified teachers and leaders.
Finally, schools should be transformed into laboratories for “personalized learning environments” in which educators can make decisions about the curriculum, instruction and assessments — and leave the factory assembly line model behind.
Make no mistake, Darling-Hammond said, this agenda will require leadership from educators across the country.
“I know all of you are working hard, day in and day out to educate students. We can do this if we work together — across states and localities, across educational roles, and across party lines.”
