Obama’s Education Policy Working Group was announced at the start of a long Thanksgiving weekend, rounding out his team of education advisers for the transition. To reformers it might have seemed like a corporation releasing financial records after the closing bell on a Friday. The working group’s main focus will be to “develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration.”

During one of three press conferences introducing his proposed economic team last week, the President-elect spoke to the importance of a diversity of opinion and background in determining policy, saying in effect that change will come to Washington only when Beltway groupthink is taken out of the equation. (Dare we hope that equal importance is placed on the announcement of the next Secretary of Education?)

A policy team of whom two thirds have D.C. government postings on their resume doesn’t count as groupthink? Obama made charter schools and other reform-based models the centerpiece of many of his education speeches during the campaign. If the Policy Working Group is to develop the ideas put forth on the trail, does a team of university researchers and union officials without a shred of support for real reform bode well for our children in the coming administration?

Some never dreamed when he spoke of change that he was talking about changing the positive progress education reform has made for children in ways that could undo years of impactful innovations.