Crazy Crawfish blogs from Louisiana. His friends know him
as Jason France. He worked in the assessment division of the
Louisiana Department of Education until he couldn’t stand it
anymore.
He wrote a comment for this blog in which he critiques Arne Duncan’s critique of critics who
live in “an alternate universe.”
Crazy Crawfish writes:
I may not know the secret to fixing every school, but I know what doesn’t
work: Arne Duncan.
Also: Closing the schools
Firing all the teachers
Busing all the kids hours away to new schools
Putting 50+ kids in.a class
Virtual schools
Common core
Stripping funding from them
Handing then over to profit centric people
TFA
Handing everyone an ipad instead of a good teacher
Continued testing
Vouchers
Forcing all disabled kids to take ACT
Charters with fascist mandatory marches
Narrowing curriculum to exclude arts, history, science
USED
Resegregation
Schools that teach creationism
Schools that treat kids like products instead of people
Mass school closings Etc
(Basically anything Arne Duncan does)
By opposing Arne Duncan, if we do nothing else, we are improving schools by delaying
him from destroying them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Today’s EDUCATION NATION hardly mentioned Duncan at all, though the term ‘charter’ was uttered nearly 200 times, though the term ‘union’ was only mentioned TWICE….
Today’s program was a FARCE, platforming ROHEMA ELLIS, formerly from MICHELLE RHEE’S DCPS, as the network ‘expert’ on education, still pushing the corporate right agenda, though she remained silent when others, including teachers confronting, and even BOYCOTTING, high stakes testing, even using statistics from DCPS…
But my favorite teacher quote was “Those who can TEACH, those who CAN’T, make LAWS about teaching…” which was a barometer of the awarenesses of attendees, who appeared far more expert than the panelists…
“those who can teach” and those who can’t, design hugely flawed systems as with Coleman and Common Core.
I saw a little bit and couldn’t believe how it still had not improved. Jenna Bush was a host and introduced Charlotte Danielson and likened her to Bono. I’m sorry but I don’t know any teacher who worships Danielson like an idol. Ellis has never presented anything substantial about education. Brian Williams said the dumbest most exaggerated things and a young teacher on the stage acted as though the new evaluations will be great because you can finally get feedback. Anyone who is a teacher knows how absolutely ridiculous the is.
I agree. Now the Big question…How do stop this disaster???
Krazy Crawfish I love your name as I have been called “Crazy George” for a long time and I like it. Crazy is not always the crazy they normally describe. In our case it is crazy smart and dedicated unlike them and that is why they call us crazy or Krazy. It is a badge of honor. What we do is do real data and analysis not ideology. Real research is the search for the truth and the proofs that it is the truth not a fiction dreamed up in someones nightmare as it is now. When you do real research you never know what you will find if you are experienced as experience shows you how wrong you can be with suppositions before information. It is refreshing to me to read and learn from others who do the real “Heavy Lifting.” Keep educating me as no one knows everything and that is the first step to understanding for real not for fake.
All “Real Education” starts with proper finances which are sustainable into time. This provides stability. Financial stability and accountability provide the stable funding for programs. Without some stability there can be no real education or plan. Money = educational programs. Stable money = stable programs, teachers and education in a rational thought out way not this knee jerk from this wonder game to the next with no one knowing what is happening next. I was lucky enough to be educated by those who had been doing it for hundreds of years with constant improvement in their ways of doing such to a higher level. There is nothing new to this. I remember no ball point pens or hand caculators just #2 lead pencils, mechanical pencils and fountain pens and it was a big deal when they had cartridges not fill from the bottle. How is it that we can do things without these tools that the new ones can’t with the tools? Could it be we learned how it really worked and had to do it by hand. Today, I will work out billions with a pen and paper no problem and you go to a store and they cannot make change. All my friends and family with business’s are telling me that this is common and disturbing. They do not need the fancy tools they need real education and understanding of what they are doing and why along with the critical thinking skills that the arts brings. We need educated well rounded people not those who only know how to do basic math and language and nothing else.
“Real Education starts with proper finances”
Couldn’t agree more. This is numbers business. If education is underfunded, public or private makes no difference. There is no magic cure to do things on the cheap, that is the realm of magical thinking where you can get something for nothing. We don’t believe in perpetual motion machines, we believe in conservation on energy and closed systems where there are finite resources.
The common core is an ROI problem. Look at Airbus, how much did they spend on the A380? There is no return on the money spent. Should Boeing spend 5 billion dollars to put a new wing on a 777? These are tough questions. How much is to be spent on the common core??? 60, 000 students, 10K in training, texts, and iPads? We’re talking 600 Billion dollar investment. This is the cost of a 10 year war. Is this a wise use of funds? I don’t particularly agree with Marguerite Roza on most issues of education, but there is an engineer who is analyzing the school funds. $1,500 a year for a cheerleader, but only $600 for a whole year of math. These are real numbers. A teacher has to beg the booster club to come up with $500 bus ride for a field trip, yet sports teams run busses non-stop for the JV or C-team badmitton or whatever. I have a friend in Douglas Co. CO, they have to pay for bus transportation to school? If that is reform, I can agree with that. If one chooses to live in a 1/2 million dollar house in the hinterlands, why should the taxpayers subsidize that lifestyle.
Incentivize neighborhood schools by forcing people to pay for transportation. Let people pay for their own sports. Spend all that money equally on In School physical education for all students and art and music.
Imagine if Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had simply followed this maxim: first, do no harm.
Then imagine if he had read and understood this small bit of non-informational text by Albert Einstein: “Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
But he didn’t listen or read…
And thankfully he is increasingly unable to push the charterite/privatizer strategy forward. Which doesn’t mean that some other edufraud would do any better.
As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might have said to increasingly jittery “education reformers” of today: ‘You wage war on kids and public schools with the secretary of education you have—not the one you might want or wish to have at a later time.’
😦
As always, KTA makes excellent points. Arne certainly might be leading the way for the next Sect. of Ed who might be far more intelligent than Arne…this damage could be exponential if we don’t end it quickly.
As a frustrated NBA star, Arne keeps his eyes focused on the ball. He does not see all the peripheral damage he is causing as he pokes his sharp elbows into the guts of real trained teachers and their students.
“As a frustrated NBA star. . .”
Maybe as in NBA in Australia’s National Basketball League. The closest he gets to the US NBA is as a “celebrity”. From Wiki: From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball, mostly in Australia, with teams including Melbourne’s Eastside Spectres, of Australia’s National Basketball League. Duncan also participated in the 2012 and 2013 NBA All-Star Weekend Celebrity Games.
Duane…my mistake. Left out the word “wannabe” star.
He is about HARM.
Agreed.
With Common Core: Who decided that most subjects should be taught and learned sooner would be better? Who decided that ALL students must learn all things about all things? Adults society doesn’t work that way. A violinist is not an electrical engineer. An artiist is not a computer programmer. A thorasic surgeon, cpa, professional football player, plumber etc. are not in charge of the architecture of sky scrapers.
Why do we expect children to be experts at all things when we’d never expect that of adults? Would be blame their bosses if they were not experts at everything? Would we blame their college professors if they can’t fix a heart and be an expert at cutting/dying hair and replacing the electricity in a building? We do seem to be doing this to teachers. We are now expected to make movies on the computer; somehow we are now in video design and production, design computer based lessons, sing songs, expertly handle all students who may have add/adhd, emotional problems, memory problems, etc. Now it is the teachers fault. If an employee failed to follow training and directions, as an adult, it would be the employees’ fault and they might be fired. If teachers have classrooms where a few students are not “on task” (as if we had total mind control) the teacher’s new evaluation forms in many states/areas say it is the teacher’s fault…the boss is always fired if the employees are not perfect..not the “employees”. This is education today. re: -Crazy Crawfish on Arne Duncan
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dianerav posted: “Crazy Crawfish blogs from Louisiana. His friends know him as Jason France. He worked in the assessment division of the Louisiana Department of Education until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
He wrote a comment for this blog in which he critiques Arne Dunc”
I had a few typos there. Oops. Should read “Continuous” testing. Most other points are decipherable. 🙂
That “alternative world” must be the classroom. Duncan has never been a teacher. Even Michelle Rhee spent a couple of inauspicious years in the classroom.before realizing she wasn’t cut out for the job. That lack of real-world experience sees endemic among those who call themselves “reformers”.
*seems… sorry.
Exactly, Da Coach! The real world of classrooms and kids who differ from one another is, to these people, an alternate reality. It is not the one that they have inhabited, and they have no experience of it.
Outstanding summary, Crazy!