N E T w o r k                    january  2007  vol. 1, no.1

Welcome!
Dear National Education Taskforce (NET) Members,
Here’s wishing you an exciting new year! As members of the NET, you are likely to see that come true.

Don’t the following sentences snap like lightning in the night?

As of now, via the NET—our nonpartisan, nonprofit, research consortium—the education field's advocates of a competent, compassionate and critical citizenry now whisper into the Congressional ear.

We will offer proposals to the U. S. House of Representatives, and they will be read.  

Not only will our proposals be read—they might influence national educational policy.  

This issue of NETwork contains much organizational information. Some of it is repeated on our website, which is “under construction.” For now it is linked from my homepage at http://courses.ttu.edu/fehr (click on “the NET”) or accessible directly at courses.ttu.edu/fehr/the_NET.htm. I will find a new home for it soon.

Who we are

Our 2020 Vision
If our vision is enacted within the next two years, the first class to go through all 12 grades under our plan will graduate in 2020; hence the name 2020 Vision. This vision reminds us to focus on future rather than past educational needs. That seems self-evident, but current educational policy suggests otherwise.

How we are structured
The NET is comprised of members who represent multiple cross-sections of the education field:

Academics

Areas represented include mathematics, science, physical education, the arts, reading, social studies, and languages (particularly English, Spanish, and Mandarin. More on Mandarin in another newsletter).

Policy concerns

In addition to working for fair treatment of marginalized groups (ESL, bilingual, ELL, special education, diversity, immigration, gender, GLBT issues, etc.), we will propose changes that impact all students. These include matters of curriculum, pedagogy, teacher preparation, technology, assessment, and last but not least, ethics.

Teaching and administration

Early childhood, elementary, middle, and high school levels are represented, as well as the principalship and the superintendency.

Leadership
My title is Director. I prefer to be called Dennis, and if you don't object, I will address each of you by first name. Charles Meisgeier and Bill Gelber are the Associate Directors. Our secretary is Jacqueline Kenneally. We four form the Executive Board.

The NET will soon be organized into committees representing the areas listed above. Each committee will be headed by a Chair. The Chairs will form the NET’s Advisory Board.

Chairs are free to create their own advisory groups, organized as they wish. These groups can be given titles that follow this format: The National Education Taskforce Committee on (fill in the blank).

 Committee members report to their Chairs, not to me. These members do not need to be cleared by me—I selected outstanding members of the education field to join the NET and I will trust their judgments. To keep orderly records, I ask that committee recruits not present themselves as members of the NET until after the Chairs have given me their contact information and I have acknowledged receipt.

Contacting our Congressional representatives

How is your relationship with your district representative developing? Each NET member needs not only to initiate this relationship, but to maintain it with periodic contact. The NET’s argument on the testing question is going to be quite powerful and you could be the means by which a resistant representative changes his or her vote. One of the most important tasks you can perform for improving the school experiences of tens of millions of children is this one.

Immediate tasks

We have every right to feel honored to be on this taskforce, but we do not occupy honorary positions¾we occupy working positions. As you know, the debate on reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act looms later this year. In February the NET’s Executive Board will go to Washington D. C. Following that trip you will receive specific assignments. Meanwhile I request that you complete the following tasks. Tasks 1-4 have a January 20 deadline.

Task 1
Please email me a list of areas of the education field on which you can speak with authority. I don’t need a long list; one item is sufficient so long you possess genuine expertise on it. Of course if your expertise extends to more than one area, let me know. This will help me to form specialized committees. Following this, I will appoint Chairs, who then can form their advisory groups.

Task 2
The Executive Board met Dec. 27 and discussed funding. Some of it will probably come from sources suggested by you. If you can suggest such sources, and are prepared to approach them, please do so. We don’t require that all members do this, but we will be grateful to those who do.

Task 3
Please tell me your three major concerns regarding public education today. (These of course must be concerns that Federal legislation can impact.) From your feedback we will establish our long-term agenda. Please send me no more than the three concerns—no supporting arguments, no citations, no fourth concern.

Task 4
Please send me the following information for our “Who we are” webpage:

1)     Your most advanced degree.

2)     Your professional title(s).

3)     Other professional information you wish to be included (50 word limit).

Task 5
Please establish a familiar working relationship with the office of your district’s Congressional representative. If your representative already knows you, that’s great. Each district office should have a staff member who focuses on education issues.

This task is to accomplish four goals:

1)   To establish a working relationship.

2)   To make your representative aware of the NET.

3)   To find out your representative’s views on public education, particularly NCLB. If  you feel unqualified to discuss it in depth at this point, that’s fine. Explain that you are doing preliminary research for the NET.

4)   To ask for recommendations regarding others in your district whom you should meet as a representative of the NET.

Points to consider

Deadlines
Work submitted to Congressional committees after its deadline is less likely to be read. Sometimes these deadlines will be inconveniently short. In all cases they must be met. You might want to discuss this with your supervisors, asking them to work with you when you must devote time to NET assignments.

Full disclosure: Your compliance with the January 20 deadline will help me to determine which NET members are able to meet deadlines. Well-intentioned members of the NET whose life circumstances prevent them from meeting deadlines must be replaced and asked to remove the NET line from their curriculum vitae.

Language
Our work needs to be written in language a Congressional aide can understand, because members of Congress often defer the task to them. No educationese jargon please.

Format
When members forward reports to me (e.g., NCLB material), I ask that they be packaged as follows:
  1) A summary of current research (5000-word max).
   2) An executive summary (500-word max).
   3) Points of argument in bullet format (two-page max).
Please resist the temptation to exceed these limits.

Open Records Act
All NET-related business that is recorded in any format— emails, websites (password-protected or not), voice mail, letters, minutes, video, audio—is legally accessible to anyone. The NET’s goal is to foster excellent education in the United States. As such it is appropriate that we keep our personal lives out of all NET-related communication. Crude language, jokes, degrading comments, or other lapses of taste have no place within this organization.

Annual meeting
Although no location or time is likely to allow all of us to gather in one place, the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) probably will serve best. So NET will annually provide a business meeting and reception at this event, with the possible exception of 2007, given the short notice. If we can pull something together by this spring’s conference (April 9-13, Chicago. See www.aera.net). I will inform you. If you are involved with hosting an event already and we could dovetail our gathering with it, please let me know. That would be a great solution under this year’s circumstances, and a good example of how we are willing to work collaboratively with other organizations. I look forward to our getting to know each other. If you don’t typically attend AERA, you might consider attending, if it does not work a hardship. We do not have funding for members’ travel. All of us are working pro bono at this point.

  Warm regards,

  Dennis