Today, an Oakland Unified science teacher-coach and 11 other teachers will get what they’ve been seeking for six months: the ear of  U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The dozen teachers will have a 30-minute teleconference with Duncan to state some of the views they’ve been making on the Facebook page Teachers’ Letters to Obama, which Anthony Cody of Oakland started six months ago out of frustration with the directions that Duncan and President Obama were taking in education. Cody’s hoping this will be the first of a series of dialogues with Duncan, whom he says needs to hear more from teachers in the field.

Cody, who also has a column in EdWeek’s Teacher Magazine, posted an open letter to Obama last fall. That was followed up with 107 letters from teachers that were sent to the White House. They made it as far as the bowels of the Ed Department.

Now the Facebook page has close to 2,000 members, many of whom, like Cody, dislike Duncan’s approach to restructuring schools, his emphasis on evaluating and paying teachers based in large part on standardized test results and other proposals that Duncan and Obama are making in the blueprint for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, aka No Child Left Behind.

Cody and the other 11 teachers have good cred: Many, like Cody, are Nationally Board Certified teachers; some have been their states’ teachers of the year. Some have their own blogs on ed policy. See here for their profiles. They encompass a range of perspectives.

Cody surveyed Facebook members on topics they would want to cover; 270 responded. And he posted their comments.

The dozen teachers will give short presentations to Duncan a half-dozen issues: College and Career Readiness; Great Teachers and Leaders; Diverse Learners; Safe and Successful Schools.

For his part, on school restructuring, Cody plans to make two points:

• There needs to be better ways of measuring student achievement than high-stakes standardized tests;

• The four choices that Duncan has given schools for restructuring: closing, converting to a charter, firing half the staff, and firing the principal and adopting other reforms ­ – are narrow, unimaginative and inflexible.

Cody plans to report back on Facebook after the meeting.