Darling-Hammond’s Save Our Schools speech

Posted by on August 22, 2011

Why they marched

In a speech at the Save Our Schools march in Washington, D.C., Linda Darling-Hammond explained why she and thousands of others had rallied — to challenge the “aggressive neglect of our children”: “We are here because we want to prepare children for the 21st-century world they are entering, not for an endless series of multiple-choice tests that increasingly deflect us from our mission to teach them well,” she told the crowd. “We are here to protest the policies that produce the increasingly segregated and underfunded schools so many of our children attend.” The march attested to the fact that “it is not acceptable for the wealthiest country in the world to be cutting millions of dollars from schools serving our neediest students… It is not acceptable to have schools in our cities and poor rural districts staffed by a revolving door of beginning and often untrained teachers, many of whom see this as charity work they do on the way to a real job.” However, Darling-Hammond stated, public education has a secret weapon: “the members of communities and the profession like yourselves who are committed first and foremost to our children and who have the courage to speak out against injustice.” The speech is reprinted in its entirety on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/darling-hammond-the-mess-we-are-in/2011/07/31/gIQAXWSIoI_blog.html