The State Senate Executive Committee confirms former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten as Delaware’s new Secretary of Education.
Cindy Marten has over 15 years of classroom teaching experience and has additionally spent time as a vice principal, principal and superintendent before being appointed as education’s second-in-command at the federal level.
Perhaps her most pertinent experience is her role in implementing California’s new Local Control Funding Formula during her time as superintendent within the San Diego Unified School District.
In 2013, California legislatively implemented the new formula which mandated the state distribute funding to school districts in an equitable manner, but gave local control to districts on how to use that funding.
The law went into effect on Marten’s first day as superintendent, and five years later, the Learning Policy Institute studied every district in the state and identified San Diego Unified School District as a district where the formula was successful.
“I'm bringing that to say, I have experience, not just the passion I have around equitable funding – what we need to do is equitably fund our schools, why we need to do it is it's the only way – I actually have experience on how to do it, and it is complicated,” said Marten.
Marten adds she understands Gov. Matt Meyer’s desire to fix the funding system quickly and efficiently, and she is excited to be a part of the conversations within the Public Education Funding Commission.
When asked about how she thinks Delaware’s education system fell into the nation’s bottom five, Marten says doesn’t know if there’s one right answer, but she looks forward to the challenge of correcting it.
“I don't think it's a simple ‘either or — we're either missing the will or we're missing the skill.’ I think it's a little bit of both, and some of the things that need to happen are going to take some political will, they're going to take investments, but they're not simply throwing money at the problem and saying here just spend this and then it's going to be fixed,” said Marten.
She also committed to working on improving Delaware’s chronic absenteeism problem, the skyrocketing incidents of student behavioral issues and creating better guidelines for homeschool programs.
She was supported unanimously by the Senate Executive Committee, but will still need a vote from the full Senate.