Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers that the suburban revolt against Common Core has a simple explanation: white suburban moms are discovering that their children are not as brilliant as they thought, and their schools are not as good as they thought.

Here is a description of his remarks and the rationale behind them.

According to blogger Rick Hess, the appalling results of the Common Core tests were supposed to set off a suburban uprising against their public schools and unleash a demand for vouchers and charters. Hess thought it was unlikely, and he was right. Suburban moms and dads of all races–not just whites–are angry at the Common Core, angry at the tests, angry at the state officials who seem determined to hurt their children and destroy their community public schools.

Duncan apparently thinks American students are mostly dumb, and US schools are awful.

Other supporters of the Common Core share his low opinion of our youth.

In July 2012, Jeb Bush–one of the strongest proponents of the Common Core–warned that when the states begin to release the Common Core test results, there would be a “train wreck” and “a rude awakening.” Since Bush is an avid proponent of charters, vouchers, and e-schooling, one may safely assume that he anticipated a flight from public schools to those alternatives, as failure rates were released.

In New York, the fly in the ointment was that with only a few exceptions, the charter schools fared even worse on the Common Core tests than the public schools.

Up until now, Duncan had been blaming the pushback to the Common Core on the Tea Party and extremists.

He really doesn’t get it.

Bottom line: Suburban parents–moms and dads of all races–blame the tests, not their kids or their teachers. They know this is a manufactured crisis (hat tip to Berliner and Biddle). Their kids are not failures. The Common Core tests are.