Commissioner - From Virginia to Minn.

[UMJoe@aol.com]

Minnesota's largest newspaper announced today in a front page story that the 
former Virginia Secretary of Education, Cheri Pierson Yecke, will be named 
today as our Commissioner of Education. The story compares Virginia standards 
with those in Minnesota.  Any thoughts on this person from people in the east?

Joe

 Federal official to head Minnesota's schoolsNorman Draper
Star Tribune Published Jan. 16, 2003    EDUC16 
 
Cheri Pierson Yecke, an official with the U.S. Department of Education, a 
former secretary of education for the state of Virginia and a former 
Minnesota resident, will be named today as Minnesota's new education 
commissioner, sources said Wednesday.
Officials with Gov. Tim Pawlenty's office would not confirm that his choice 
for the post is Yecke, 47. But Minnesota and Virginia sources told the Star 
Tribune that Yecke will be named today.
With the announcement that Yecke will take over the state Department of 
Children, Families and Learning, Pawlenty will make an appointment he and his 
staff have said they view as one of his most important.
The new commissioner will have to quickly come to grips with the 
testing-heavy federal No Child Left Behind law, which Pawlenty supports but 
many educators abhor. There's also a huge state budget deficit and probable 
scuttling of the embattled state graduation rule, the Profile of Learning. 
Plus, the governor's education reform agenda includes finding ways to change 
the way teachers are compensated.
Cheri Pierson YeckeAccording to published reports and Internet and computer 
data searches, Yecke is director of teacher quality and public school choice 
with the U.S. Department of Education.
Before that, she was secretary of education and deputy secretary of education 
in Virginia, a state that has embraced far more traditional learning 
standards than Minnesota's. She also served on the Virginia state Board of 
Education, was a public school teacher for nine years, and a university 
teacher for three years. In 1988, she was selected Teacher of the Year in 
Stafford County, Va.
Yecke, who could not be reached for comment, is a Minnesota native, according 
to published reports. She has lived in several states, and resided in the St. 
Paul suburb of Cottage Grove for periods during the 1980s and 1990s.
'Done her homework'  
Pawlenty's chief of staff, Charlie Weaver, would not comment Wednesday on who 
the Pawlenty team's choice is. He would say only that the candidate chosen 
for the state's top education job "has done her homework."
"I'm confident she can hit the ground running," he said.
Sources also told the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch Wednesday that Yecke will 
be named.
Weaver said the governor's staff and transition team interviewed six 
finalists for the job after plowing through dozens of résumés, and considered 
as many as a hundred names before the choice was made.
By deciding to go outside of the state, Pawlenty steered clear of a Minnesota 
education establishment many of his supporters feel is too tied to the status 
quo to sign on with the new governor's education reform agenda.
Virginia's standards  
Yecke probably appeals to the Pawlenty team because of her involvement with 
Virginia's Standards of Learning, a set of academic minimum standards adopted 
in 1995 for public schools that stresses knowledge in core subject areas such 
as English, math, science and history/social sciences. Virginia students must 
pass tests measuring their proficiency in the Standards of Learning.
Unlike Minnesota's Profile of Learning, which aims more at fostering 
show-what-you-know learning, the Virginia Standards of Learning set out 
specifics of what kids are supposed to know.
For instance, the standards for eighth-grade history/social sciences are 
summarized this way: "These standards enable students to explore the 
historical development of people, places and patterns of life from ancient 
times until 1500 A.D. in terms of the impact on Western civilization," and 
comprise a detailed outline of that period. Students must learn about 
Alexander the Great, the fall of Constantinople and the Black Death, among 
many other things.
-- Staff writers Mary Jane Smetanka and Dane Smith contributed to this report.
-- Norman Draper is at ndraper@startribune.com.