If you think that parsing Obama's portfolio policy is difficult, what to make of the conflicting signals over Teach For America? On the one hand, Barack Obama has praised Michelle Rhee, the poster-child for Teach For America's impact on American education. Several of his advisors are drawn from the group's alumni and friends. And as I mentioned last week, as far as I can tell, almost 100 percent of the TFAers I know are pulling for Obama to win.
So why on earth is the campaign allowing Linda Darling-Hammond to play surrogate for the Senator and say nasty things about TFA in high-profile events? See for yourself; check out Vaishali Honawar's Teacher Beat post about Tuesday night's Education Week debate and scroll down to the YouTube clip about TFA. You'll hear Lisa Graham Keegan of the McCain campaign promoting the program and LDH attacking it, arguing that it's not the way to "build the profession."
Believe me, we had plenty of policy disagreements within the Bush Administration too (see here, for example). And when they weren't resolved, they festered, and policymaking suffered. Someone--probably Barack Obama himself--is going to have to make a decision about whether to embrace reform (and in this case, TFA) or embrace the union-and-ed-school establishment (and in this case, LDH).* If he wins the election and appoints Darling-Hammond to a senior position, we'll know which way he's decided to go.
* My friends inside the campaign say "don't worry, Obama's with us." But we're also hearing through the grapevine that LDH is preparing to move to Washington and that top NEA officials aren't worried a bit about Obama's rhetoric, believing they have a "great" relationship with him. In other words, both camps believe that they have Obama's ear. You have to hand it to him; it takes a very good politician to pull off that trick.
