GENDRON ADVISING OBAMA
BY MATTHEW STONE Staff Writer
12/03/2008
Kennebec Journal (Maine)
Maine Education Commissioner Susan Gendron is one of 10 state education chiefs helping to lay the groundwork for President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming education secretary.
Gendron and education commissioners from nine other states met with an Obama education adviser Monday and began piecing together recommendations to help the president-elect’s education secretary during the administration’s first 100 days.
The group met with Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, an Obama education adviser whose name has been floated as a potential education secretary. …
Gendron said the task force members saw the No Child Left Behind Act — the sweeping education reform bill passed in 2002 — as valuable, but still called for changes.
“We all acknowledged that (the Act) had been beneficial,” Gendron said in a statement, “but it was now time to focus on how to build on strong standards with a focus on 21st-century skills [which include critical thinking], expanded learning opportunities, and differentiated practice in the classroom to reach every child.”
