|
Political
Updates and Observations
With
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s (D-NY) defeat of Rep. Tony Cardenas
(D-CA) as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
(DCCC), the Democrats are likely on track to lose their House
majority during the 2022 midterm election.
Cardenas
had by far the superior political record to take on this task based
on his track record in fundraising and in relating to key elements
of the Democratic base, and his staff would have better reflected
its diversity.
Rev.
Raphael Warnock has emerged as the Republicans’ primary Democratic
target in the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff. They hope to use the
focus on his race to stimulate a conservative white turnout that
will also swamp the hopes of Jon Ossoff the other Democrat in the
race.
Georgia’s
grassroots activists will determine whether Warnock and Ossoff will
prevail in their races by having unprecedented turnout among African
American, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Latinx, and Native
American voters
As
Biden prepares to take the presidential oath, the continuing
political infighting between Democratic progressives and moderates
is further weakening his ability to govern and weakening the party.
If
he is to remain true to his commitment to criminal justice reform
that he made to the African American community and to George Floyd’s
family during his presidential campaign, Biden must select a Black
for Attorney General.
African
American civil rights, political, and community leaders have been
pressing President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala
Harris to appoint more Blacks to major cabinet posts. They met with
them last Tuesday, a day after Biden announced his selection of
retired four-star Gen. Lloyd Austin, III as the first African
American Secretary of the Department of Defense.
He
followed that up by choosing Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) to serve as
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. She will be the first
Black female to serve in that post since President-Elect Jimmy Carter
nominated the late Patricia Roberts Harris for that position in 1976.
Although Fudge is ecstatic to serve, many of her allies had been
lobbying for her to become Secretary of Agriculture because of her
stellar work on child nutrition on agriculture subcommittees.
While
these moves look good for the Biden-Harris administration, a
groundbreaking decision for Biden would be for him to keep Dr. Linda
Darling Hammond as Secretary of Education. Currently serving as head
of the transition team for the Department of Education (as she did
for Obama-Biden in 2008), Darling-Hammond, as noted in a previous
column, would bring wide-ranging education experience to the job.
Given
the educational devastation that is being visited upon poor children,
and those of color in particular, an individual with Dr.
Darling-Hammond’s skill set is sorely needed. In her 2010 book,
“The
Flat World and Education,”
she was prescient in outlining the necessity to address the raging
racial inequities that are undermining K-12 public education.
These
inequities have been highlighted during the change to remote virtual
learning throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Poor children of color
are rapidly falling behind their white counterparts in reading, math,
and lack access to technology (Wi-Fi reliability and computers) to
avail themselves of remote instruction. Students with special needs
have been hit the hardest.
A
recent poll of New Jersey parents, by the New Jersey Children’s
Foundation, found that their children “…
don’t have equitable access to the technology, internet, food, and
extra support programs necessary for their students to be
successful.”
They also want to know whether their children are on grade level, and
to have greater access to teachers and the social and emotional
programs to keep their children on track.
Yet
the testing nonprofit, NWEA, in its review of the pandemic-induced
leap to on-line learning has found that remote learning has had
minimal impact on students’ reading and math progress. Its study,
however, largely excluded the nation’s most vulnerable students
from its analysis making its findings practically useless for the
fastest growing segment of the K-12 student population.
Dr.
Darling-Hammond not only has the quintessential educational
portfolio, but she also possesses a detailed understanding of the
Education Department, having looked in all the nooks and crannies
during her previous stint leading the education transition team. That
context will be significant in order to undo the devastation that
Betsy DeVos has wrought. There is no better prepared candidate
available.
In
addition, Darling-Hammond is already well-regarded by educators
across the instructional spectrum for her research and practice
skills. She has also been an activist in many educational
organizations dedicated to improving educational outcomes for the
nation’s most underserved, poverty-ridden student populations -
Native Americans, Latinx students, Asian American and Pacific
Islanders, African Americans, and Alaskan Natives.
Another
of her positive attribute is that she is African American, which will
address, in part, Black leaders’ concerns about having more of
their own in high-profile cabinet positions. Dr. Linda
Darling-Hammond is the full package.
In
the aftermath of the Betsy DeVos debacle in the Education Department
during the Trump administration, education will be a key issue that
the Biden-Harris administration will have to confront, and it is
imperative that they choose an Education Secretary who is up to
redirecting the Department’s emphasis back toward K-12 public
education. There is no better candidate than Dr. Linda Darling
Hammond.
|
