For five years, I have listened to Arne Duncan lecture the American people about how terrible our public schools are.
He goes on at length about our ignorant students, our misguided parents, our ineffective teachers, our failing public schools.
In his eyes, we seem to be a nation of slackers, bums, ignoramuses, fools, and failures.
We know that he likes: charter schools, Teach for America, closing public schools and handing them over to corporate management, and “graduate schools” that have no scholars, no researchers, just tutors of test-taking skills. And of course, he loves the heavy emphasis on test-taking in places like Shanghai and Singapore. Test scores are his North Star. He wishes we could be like Shanghai, and that all our moms were “Tiger Moms,” cracking the whip over the children and making them get ready for the next test. All work, no play. He dreams of a new America of test-taking grinds. Arne Duncan is our Mr. Gradgrind, and if you don’t know who that is, google it.
Every once in a while, he launches a campaign calling for “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” but no one believes him. They know it is just empty PR.
So, I wonder, what are the unforgettable phrases of Arne Duncan that will be his legacy, the words that encapsulate his unique combination of certainty and cluelessness.
Entry one must be his immortal comment about Hurricane Katrina, which caused the deaths of over 1,000 people and wiped out public education and the teachers’ union in New Orleans: He said that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” Forget the fact that the great majority of charter schools in New Orleans today are rated either D or F by the state of Louisiana (which favors them). According to Secretary Duncan, every major city needs a Hurricane Katrina or some other natural disaster to demolish public education and eliminate teachers’ unions so they can be replaced by privately managed charter schools and Teach for America. Of course, then Teach for America would have to train 1,000,000 teachers a year instead of only 10,000, and it would put an end to the teaching profession, but Arne hasn’t thought that far in advance.
Entry two was captured by Gary Rubinstein in this post on his blog: At Teach for America’s 20th anniversary celebration, Arne Duncan was a featured speaker. He told the story of a school that had only a 40% graduation rate. The school was shut down and replaced by three charter schools. One graduated all of its students, and all were accepted into college. Duncan said: “Same children, same community, same poverty, same violence. Actually went to school in the same building with different adults, different expectations, different sense of what’s possible. Guess what? That made all the difference in the world.” Gary pointed out that the students were not the same kids, and that the 107 who graduated were not the same as the 166 who started in the class. Yes, the graduation rate was higher, but it was not the 100% that Arne implied. And to make matters worse, the students at that particular “miracle school” had lower test scores than the Chicago school district. But Arne was trying to promote his theory that schools get better if everyone is fired and the slate is wiped clean.
Then there was the time last year when he sneered at parents in New York state who objected to the absurd Common Core tests as “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” He quickly tried to walk that one back, but it stuck. He deeply believes that our kids are dummies and their parents want to believe that they are smart when they are not. I guess you need to have a Harvard B.A. to be so arrogant about the brainpower of other people’s children.
My personal favorite occurred when he visited a charter school in Brooklyn. He told those assembled that the United States is facing both an economic crisis and an educational crisis. And then came this immortal line: “We should be able to look every second grader in the eye and say, ‘You’re on track, you’re going to be able to go to a good college, or you’re not,’ ” he said. “Right now, in too many states, quite frankly, we lie to children. We lie to them and we lie to their families.”
The claim that we are “lying to our students” or “we are lying to our children” is like a mantra for Arne, so that’s not new. What is special about this line is the idea that you should be able to look every second grader in the eye and be able to tell them that they are on track to go to a good college. Since I have a grandson who is in second grade, I know how absurd this is. I look into his eyes and I see a laughing, happy child. That’s what I want to see. Sometimes I see a sad child, and I want to know what’s wrong and can I help. I see a child who loves to read and loves to play. The last thing in the world that would occur to me as a parent, a grandparent, or an educator is to ask whether he was on track to go to a good college. I want him to be on track to be happy, healthy, curious about the world, eager to learn, and secure in the love that surrounds him.
Julian Vasquez Heilig collected his Top Ten of Arne’s Inanities.
The reality is that it is easy to find Arne’s clueless remarks. They occur whenever he goes off script.
What is your favorite Arne Duncan line? I have known almost every Secretary of Education since the U.S. Department of Education was created in 1980. I have never known one who had so little respect for students, educators, parents, school boards, or public education as our current Secretary. Nor have I known one who had so little understanding about what constitutes genuine learning. Not test scores, but a love of learning, a love of tinkering, a love of knowledge. It is innovation, creativity, imagination, curiosity, wit, and the pursuit of new knowledge that is the genius of our nation. Those who care not to preserve those essential aspects of education are not educators, but technicians, bureaucrats, and bean counters.
My wish: Arne Duncan should take the PARCC test for eighth graders and publish his scores.
“I’d like to thank my celebrity teammates; this MVP trophy would not be mine without them. And I’d especially like to thank the many corporate sponsors who made this NBA All-Star weekend such a great success. And most of all I’d like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for donating this magnificent MVP trophy which will find a prominent place in my office at the Department of Education.”
He really said that? GAG!!!! I shouldn’t have read this just after lunch.
My favorite Arne line hasn’t been uttered yet….
“Effective immediately, I resign.”
Ah, if wishing could make it so!
Bravo!
or
“I sincerely apologize to all parents, teachers, and students for selling you out to Bill and Melinda. I apologize for letting my arrogance control my ignorance. But heck, what do I know about children and classroom dynamics and all that teachy-learny stuff. You may not know this but I didn’t ask to be Secretary of Education. It was a fast idea, in retrospect, probably not a good one. But please don’t blame Barac either, I beat him in a game of HORSE, he lost the bet and the rest is history. My bad people.”
Eighth grade? That might be a stretch.
Poor Mrs. Duncan. Who wants to tell her he’s not that bright?
My favorite has already been listed “the white mom fiasco”. But here is a close second that came at the recent “Teaching and Learning Conference” in DC. Arne was waxing and waning poetically about his recent visit to Massachusetts and referenced a conversation he had with a new teacher in his first few years of teaching and who was at a turn around school. The school was in its first year after the turn around and the teacher supposedly thanked Duncan (according to Duncan) for what he was doing and told him that he was having his best teaching year ever. Great.. so when the majority of veteran teachers are fired, students are moved out of local schools and jostled about…and the teaching staff suddenly consists of new teachers just “cutting their teeth” and likely to leave in a two year period… this is considered a “great year” of teaching.
How on earth do teachers in the first two or three years of teaching know what a “best year of teaching” is like? In my first three years of teaching, I was just trying to survive. It was certainly NOT my best teaching.
Reblogged this on McBlog.
This is my favorite, because Duncan is still repeating this nonsense.
Last week:
Arne Duncan @arneduncan Apr 3
Remarkable commitment & hard work by teachers/students at Denver’s Stapleton HS. 100% grads admitted to 4yr colleges http://bit.ly/1gRxf21
Gary Rubinstein @garyrubinstein Apr 3
.@arneduncan 89/144 = .62=62%. There were 144 9th graders there in 2010-2011. 89 graduating seniors this year.
For such a big promoter of STEM, Duncan seems to have real trouble with division and percentages. This seems to be a pattern.
Also, if you’re planning on running around calling local public school people “liars” to sell the Common Core, you better be very careful and check the statements you’re handed by staff before promoting them as fact.
And, I get that it is technically true that 100% of “grads” were accepted to 4 year colleges, but I imagine a lot of public schools could book that same amazing number if they lost the bottom quarter of the class sometime prior to senior year.
Surely this isn’t a national goal, going from 144 9th graders to 89 seniors and then claiming victory.
So what is it?
Go look at where they were accepted to college. Also, go interview the teachers of the schools and see if they weren’t forced to pass failing students. Also, check to see if the students were given credit recovery courses that magically let them pass semester long classes in about a week. Yes!!!! He has found the magic bullet! What a joke. He can con people but anyone that has worked in these environments knows the con. The news media seems to have ignored the truth and promoted lies. We all know the emperor has no clothes.
My favorite is: “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
That line was Secretary Duncan’s 47% moment where he revealed the genuine philosophy behind his policies…while simultaneously covering himself for any failure of those policies. He’s the first educational leader I’ve known who “wins” when schools are shown to do “poorly.”
I am a high school Math teacher in upstate NY. I have only been a teacher for 10 years. I graduated from the Naval Academy in 1982, served on active duty for 5 years, then worked for Verizon for 16 years. Consequently I have seen military America, corporate America, and now education. Oh, and I have PhD from Teachers College. I’m no dummy. My question to Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Tom Friedman, Bill Gates, et al…., when did the school system turn bad? If our school systems have turned out all these wise people like Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, etc, who are not really all that old (surely not older than I am at 57), did the schools and the teachers suddenly turn bad in the 80’s? 90’s? 2000’s? And how is testing them going to help? How is Pearson going to help? I won’t go on. I’m just extremely frustrated and discouraged. I love Math and I love teaching. There are problems, I’m not denying that. But it’s not the system or the teachers. I think some of the problem is today’s society and the nature of society. Learning takes time and persistence. Our society has turned into a “do it now, have it now” culture. Our electronics give us instantaneous gratification which cannot be mimicked in a Mathematics classroom. Thank you for letting me vent. Nick Marcantonio
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2014 14:00:45 +0000 To: nicholas_marcantonio@msn.com
I do not have a “favorite” Arne flub.
I am seriously aggrieved that the country’s educational leader has such misguided contempt for public schools, principals, teachers, support staff, students, and parents.
Everyone citizen deserves better leadership.
“Every” citizen …
New Orleans certainly does not need another Katrina. They were lucky that the death toll was only about 2,000. New Orleans is a death trap.
My favorite Arne line will be “goodbye. I am moving on now.”
My recommendation is that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and any other person that pontificates regarding education, be required to teach for a week in a school where most students are living in poverty, speak other languages than English, live in substandard housing and don’t have access to health care.
Even with the ACA, many undocumented families don’t have good health care. Anyone that makes important decisions regarding how best to educate our students must have walked the walk and talked the talk.
I’d like to see him teach in the Detroit EAA that he has helped to promote with a Tea Party governor.
Even with the ACA, many are still without healthcare. I’m in FL, where Medicaid wasn’t expanded, and told that since I made less than $15,000 a year, I don’t qualify for any help. That wasn’t a typo. ACA was designed for those in poverty to get Medicaid instead of federal subsidies, but the red states won’t expand it. I am a legal citizen, and still do not have healthcare, because I am too poor. God bless America!
Wonderful statement. So true. I agree with you 100%!
I don’t know if it’s my favorite line, but I definitely got the best work-out responding to the white suburban moms line. It was then that I knew just how far disconnected he had become from the planet.
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2013/11/arne-duncan-vs-white-moms.html
I would also have to nominate the classic #AskArne video on which he assures us that the DOE has not given corporate supporters a special seat at the table. That was pretty amazing.
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/01/askarne-spleen-theater.html
That is also my favorite line. Arne is a “Broadie” along with numerous other folks in the Dept. of Ed. Yet, they have no special seat at the table. This guy is a clown.
Well, I don’t like any of them, but if I had to pick out the most frightening, it would be Diane’s personal favorite.
“We should be able to look every second grader in the eye and say, ‘You’re on track, you’re going to be able to go to a good college, or you’re not,’ ” he said. “Right now, in too many states, quite frankly, we lie to children. We lie to them and we lie to their families.”
This particular quote reveals his true M.O., the entire reason why he want to shape education to his whims. Kids aren’t kids. They are raw material. School is a factory that takes raw material and produces them into obediant workers. It’s not about letting kids grow and apply themselves and shape the world how they see fit. It’s about tracking people into defined, intellectually stunted roles that entrench and benefit the oligarchs of the world. Arne knows this, and being sec. of ed. isn’t enough. He wants to be on top. He wants to be an oligarch. He wants to be the CEO of a kid churning factory. And if he ever learns how Koch Bros. made their money, he knows that he can diversify and expand fast by starting his own big data company, a testing company, and a prison system to take care of his problems. That way, he can rake in that dough from every direction.
Anyway, here’s Mario Savio’s Sproul Hall steps speech that I have been listening to incessantly. The context is a little different, but the feeling is the same. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fYSY2ohHFnQ
My favorite line is also a prospective one: “I plead not guilty, your Honor.”
Or, even better, “I plead guilty, your Honor.”
I’m still stunned that a man so hateful of our public school system is in charge of it. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. And our democrat president put him there. That’s all the evidence I need that dems don’t support public schools, teachers, or teacher’s unions anymore. And with citizens united and mccutcheon, the supreme court is against the 99%. I am very afraid for the future of this country.
So am I. So am I.
There are probably quite a few people about our age who can say that. You’ve known them better than I.
I knew Ted Bell best out of them. I worked for Bill Bennett. Among all of them, I think Bell was best suited for the job, and perhaps the best ED Secretary, especially for elevating education to a concern of the Reagan administration and, for a time, silencing those who wanted to shut down public education and the department itself. Bell was educated in public schools through college; he started out his career as an educator teaching and driving a bus in a small Idaho school district that no longer exists. Almost every time I met with him, there were teachers present who thought he was some sort of rock star. He never acted like a rock star, of course, which was a huge part of his charm.
Bell was a last-second appointee. For some bizarre reason, the Reagan transition team thought they could kill the Department of Education by fiat, and so they had not bothered to think about who should head the department in any detail. When some on Capitol Hill made it clear failing to appoint anyone would be a major gaffe, and a measure of failure understood by everyone, they put out a frantic call. Bell was suggested by Utah’s Orrin Hatch, who was incoming chair of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, which had jurisdiction — but there was a lot of support from almost every possible source. Bell had served a couple of times as Commissioner of Education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and was highly regarded by everyone who dealt with him.
Dr. Ravitch, would you take a moment to tell us about the good things done by Secretaries of Education, and who you regard as the best? Maybe we need to think about what works well, what good works should be promoted, and what we should hope for in the person Obama appoints to replace Duncan.
As Arne is our indifferent President’s basketball pal and education alter ego, we can assume that it is the President himself, not Arne, who should be bearing the brunt of our criticism. The Common Core is his doing. His own children safely sheltered in an elite Friends private school, he himself is the oblivious autocrat responsible for his administration’s catastrophic attack on a pillar of American democracy. The destruction of public education, not Obamacare, will be his true legacy.
Absolutely!
Let’s look closer at Singapore to see if what Arnie thinks is real, or maybe he really does want to US to mirror Singapore—a chilling thought.
Singapore has a brutal tracking system that ranks students by exam scores and then slots them for movement up or not. Score low on exams and your life is pretty much headed for a vocational school and a blue collar job.
Singapore also has public beatings where every student in the school sits in an auditorium and witnesses kids being beat on stage with a bamboo cane that leaves welts and may break the skin causing bleeding and permanent scars. In Singapore, if you spit on the sidewalk while out walking, you can end up being beat by a bamboo cane, pay a hefty fine and end up in prison. And Singapore’s religious restrictions on how one may worship God are similar to China because after Mao died, Deng Xiaoping modeled the new China after Singapore, a small country that has been ruled by the same family since the British Empire set them free. There are no term limits in Singapore.
In 2011, there were 263,906 students in primary school. That number dropped to 214,388 for secondary school where only 66.6% graduate with a diploma.
And that number dropps drastically to 32,420 for students who went on to attend a post secondary school, a college. Therefore only 12% of the total students who started out in primary school eventually attend college in Singapore. The wealthier famlies may send their children to Western countries to attend college because 46% of Singapore’s adults have college diplomas but 54% don’t.
Singapore calls itself a democracy but in reality it is an oligarchy.
Fascinating, Lloyd!
“Money is not the reason that people enter teaching.”
“States should not balance budgets on the backs of their students.”
“Most teachers still say they love teaching though they wouldn’t mind a little more respect for their challenging work and a little less blame for America’s educational shortcomings.”
These are my three favorite Arne Duncan quotes. Yes, they all apparently were uttered by the same buffoon who has made a career out of denigrating teachers and their unions.
My source is Brainyquotes.com.
My most unfavorite dumb remark by Arne Duncan? when he said class size was a “sacred cow” and he would take it on — despite the fact that lowering class size is one of the few reforms proven to increase learning and narrow the achievement gap. Then when Romney made essentially the same claim during his campaign, Obama attacked him for it! see http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/obama-attacks-romney-on-class-size-despite-education-secretarys-similar-view/
I guarantee you, as a blind student, most would have assumed that I was not destined for professional, scholastic, and/or economic success when I was in second grade, and I suspect the same might have been true when my two blind children were in second grade. Too many low expectations, poor training, and stereotypes abound for any but a few people to think otherwise. I was not a stellar standardized test taker, nor was my daughter. My son does quite well on them. All three of us are excellent students regardless of those tests. I graduated from Princeton, have a law degree, am a licensed attorney and certified teacher, including a Master’s in Teaching. My daughter is on the dean’s list at her college. My son is the best student of all of us, and we are all totally blind. I wonder what the charter faction would think of our chances had they been asked to consider our potential in the second grade? Arne Duncan is a slam dunce. Let me say something else. I learned much more of use outside of Princeton and law school than I learned within their walls, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have saved my parents a lot of money on student loans and extended mortgages, taking on second and sometimes third jobs, (my father was a firefighter and my mother first a payroll secretary, then a teacher, then a math coach in the NYC DOE, who both did real estate appraisals to make extra money when my brother and I went to college), I would have saved their money and gone to a state school. Everyone is exceedingly impressed when I share, only when asked, where I went to college. There is nothing all that impressive: I learned how to read, write, speak well, listen effectively, and think critically long before I attended Princeton, and it does not confer upon me anything special. My kids and I were born special, and no one and no test will tell me anything different.
Beautifully said!!!!
I was born prematurely, at seven months. I didn’t speak a word until after my second year. I would definitely have been held back if I had attended elementary school today. I would have been labelled verbally challenged. I would have been placed in the spec ed class.
Fast forward a few years. I was pulled out of fifth grade and placed in seventh. I scored a 180 on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale (that’s at the 99.9981452833th percentile). I got a perfect score on the verbal portion of the GRE. I have written over a hundred books in a dozen different subject areas and have given hundreds of well-received speeches to audiences from one end of this country to the other. I have acted in dozens of plays, often in leading roles. I have practiced, very successfully, the noblest of professions, that of the Buddha and Socrates and Yeshua of Nazareth, of Rumi and Nasreddin and the Baal Shem Tov, that of the teacher.
I think that my verbal skills are just fine.
Kids differ. They differ a lot. They ALL have genius. There is not one intelligence factor. There are not six or seven intelligences. There are thousands and thousands. And there are many, many different ways to be a good reader, writer, speaker, and thinker, ways that never registered in the neatly ordered, regimented minds of the amateurs who concocted the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] in ELA. The most damning thing that I can say about schools as they exist right now is that they are not varied enough. They do not exist to help children find their particular genius and develop it. Case in point: a child can have perfect pitch and go through 12 years of schooling and never have anyone discover that. TO the extent that they are factories for machining identically milled parts, they are failing in their primary function.
Standards and standardized tests do not differ. They do not respect or identify unique gifts. They are instruments of command and control and regimentation. They are instruments of demotivating extrinsic punishment and reward. They serve only the monopolists who want to Walmartize and Microsoft educational products so that they can sell those products “at scale.” They are the last thing that a complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs.
cx: They neither respect nor identify unique gifts.
Bravo. What he said. Amen. Ditto.
My kids and I were born special, and no one and no test will tell me anything different.
Blind Noise. THAT IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!!
and let us remember the magnificent Commissioner of Education Ernest Boyer
I don’t think Duncan understands the meaning of the word “inspiration”.
Has someone mentioned this one? Duncan often cites that among his achievements in Chicago that he “closed the achievement gap.” Here is in an Edutopia interview— he announces that in Chicago he was “absolutely closing the achievement gap.” http://youtu.be/iSfPFvGP23M
Of course, later in time, when people actually look at the numbers, it comes out that the opposite is true. http://www.wbez.org/story/20-years-school-reform-yields-widening-achievement-gaps-no-reading-gains-92628
It’s almost a rite of passage now for ed reformers. They make a claim about the achievement gap, time passes, and then the claim is shown to be bunk.
I thought Obama spelled it RSPECT. That can’t be good for the Obama / Duncan VAM score.*
*assuming that the vector data predicts the same baseline spelling expectation as the dictionary
The first E is being tossed, like Equality, and Expectations, and public Education, and Egalitarianism. And you wondered why people are still looking for Elvis? The E’s are just disappearing . . .
I see what you’re saying. Hopefully a happy ending, just like the lower case n, song-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btVGz294X0w
I was a young academic in arts education when Frances Keppel and John W. Gardner where engaged in thinking about, and shaping, an enlarged federal role in education–early to mid-1960s. One of my favor quotes from John W. Gardner: “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”
It must sadden you, Laura, to see what has become of that federal role.
And here another gem from John W. Gardner, Lyndon B. Johnson’s leader of federal policy.
” The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
From: Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961).
AWWWWW!!!!!! OMG, that’s FUNNNNNNNYYYYY.
Arne the philosopher.
Diogenes, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Derrida, Duncan
reread laura’s post please
Ah, Duane, I see. Thanks for the heads up. I read too quickly.
And you left out Foucault!
That’s meant for Bob!
Discipline and Punish. A prescient book, that one!
Sorry. The more I read that line, now, the more I like it. Oh, the difference that attribution makes in one’s imputations!
What a clueless dolt. He is not an educator, but he plays one on TV. His only skills are those of the courtier, the sycophant, the toady. He doesn’t even speak or present well, which is usually a prerequisite for PR shills like him.
Here, the true story about why the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] were created, about who paid for them and why:
If you want to understand what is truly motivating the deforms that we are seeing in U.S. education today, read that piece.
Warm regards to all.
“He doesn’t even speak or present well, which is usually a prerequisite for PR shills like him.”
Well Georgie Porgie perfected the art of doltiness with his various proclamations which has subsequently opened the door for the likes of the Dunkster.
There you go, Duane, misunderestimating George again.
And, heckuvajob, Arne!
One favorite Duncan quote in answer to the question “…so states will get [RTTT] money if they do this thing that Duncan wants?”
ARNE: “If you play by these rules, absolutely right”.
But even better was Arne answering the question “there’s concern about private corporations and philanthropists that are involved in public education. What is the role of private dollars in public education?”
ARNE: “I think it is important, because sadly education is under-invested in the vast majority of places this country.”
What?! The Secretary is openly admitting we are not adequately funding schools and therefore have begun to use corporations as a funding source’ He continues:
“There is tremendous unmet need…having philanthropy foundations, having businesses step in and help there, I think that’s a good thing.”
He goes in to say GE has provided teacher PD, Ford has sponsored labor conferences, Joyce Foundation helped create teacher evaluations…ugh. There’s more”
“…with so much unmet need for students, for teachers, for schools to shut the doors and say that all these people are bad somehow or have an agenda of hurting kids, hurting teachers, that just hasn’t been my experience…”
http://www.ed.gov/blog/2014/01/arne-duncan-answers-teachers-questions-on-the-role-of-private-funds-and-interests-in-education/comment-page-1/
from the Reformish Lexicon:
plutocrat. Someone who has “no seat at the table where education policy is discussed.” –Arne Duncan
for more from the Reformish Lexicon, go here:
“Surveys show that many talented and committed young people are reluctant to enter teaching for the long haul because they think the profession is low-paying and not prestigious enough.” Arne Duncun
Arne Duncan is why only teachers should be eligible to be Superintendents, Commissioners, Secretary or whatever they are called, all the way from the smallest system up to his position. 10 years or more in public school classrooms. At least 2 degrees and certification, preferably an Ed.S or Ph.D but at least a Masters. Can we just change the law? Overall I love Obama, but he made one huge mistake. And as for the classroom, except for vocational courses, and those done with a co-teacher who is one. Education degrees only or the system can lose its federal funds.
“. . . but he made one huge mistake.”
Would that “one huge mistake” have been the ordering of the murder of a 16 year old American citizen so that that citizen couldn’t have standing in court to challenge the Obomber’s hit on that child’s father???
nope
Could you please clarify this….I’m not able to figure out what you
are saying?
I’m saying that naming the Secretary of Education, as bad as the Dunkster appointment is, pales in comparison to the ordering and having the order carried out of murdering a 16 year old American citizen with no judicial procedures having been followed.
And that Obama should be tried in court for this killing.
For fun only…
“Diane Ravitch is in denial and she is insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country who are proving her wrong every day.” 🙂 Go get him, girl….
That school in Chicago continues to tell that same story of 100% graduation every year. What they don’t mention, as was pointed out, is that the number is always less than what they started out with. I guess they feel if everybody attending on the last day graduates then they have a 100% graduation rate. It’s like saying my child ate all her broccoli because her plate was clean at the end of dinner. Don’t mind all of it that’s stuffed into a napkin and off to the side.
A series of interesting, and stunning, factual observations on Singapore, Mr. Lofthouse.
May I use them? What’s the source?
Diane Ravitch, this is one of the most beautifully written, most powerful posts that you have produced, and that is saying a lot.
Wow
States are beginning to drop out of the Common Core. Evidently, Arne Duncan wasn’t as brilliant as his mother thought he was.
Graminivorous quadruped. Ha! spell check doesn’t recognize “graminivorous”! Hard Times, Dickens. I have thought of this for a number of miserable test prep years.
“Ill get back to you on that…” has long been Arne’s way of saying “F___ you” to reporters. Whenever Arne was asked a question he didn’t want to answer, instead of refusing to answer (or making of “facts,” like Rahm does), Arne would say “I’ll get back to you on that…” Of course, he never would, but it got him out of the press conference while the majority of corporate reporters nodded and ignored most of the facts.
I love your wish for Arne re: taking the 8th grade test…I would just add that it should be appropriately monitored so he doesn’t “lie” about his results.
Usually I hesitate to give my opinion outside my professional arena, but It is high time to examine the underlying psychological causes of the abnormal behavior exhibited by Arne Duncan. It is time to ask why he is promoting a movement that we in the medical and psychiatric professions can recognize is causing psychological harm to children on a grand scale.
It is time to engage medical professionals to point out the most obvious psychological factors behind his abnormal behavior, other than the superficial discussion that pride and greed can lead to an obsession for more power (wealth and fame).
My professional opinion, after 20+ years of penal psychiatry in Canada, is that Arne Duncan has the same diagnosis of Histrionic Narcissistic Personality Disorder as Jerry Sandusky. (That is my informal diagnosis based on his observable behaviors over a period of several years, as well as providing expert testimony on the disorder in several court cases.)
Arne Duncan does not recognize the impact of this cruelty to children, and his denial and grandiosity will not allow him to listen to others who might point it out. He apparently feels protected in his position and there is no restraint. Does anyone get the connection with the manner in which the University of Pennsylvania officials used denial to excuse the abnormal behaviors of Jerry Sandusky for a decade or more?
I am dismayed at Americans complacency and lack of advocacy for children in this drama that is now becoming a global nightmare. What used to be the most powerful country in the world, has now declined to a dysfunctional society of bystanders watching in denial or helpless fear while their children suffer cruelty at the hands of one person who is abusing his power and demonstrating abnormal behavior.
“I am dismayed at Americans complacency and lack of advocacy for children in this drama that is now becoming a global nightmare.”
Not all Americans. You are reading and leaving comments on this site, aren’t you, and this is a Blog with more than 11 million views that belongs to an American. How many Americans support Diane and comment here regularly?
And a recent Gallup poll, just a few months ago, revealed that 60% of Americans haven’t even heard of Common Core and have no idea what it is. That’s how fast this juggernaut is moving. The unholy alliance of neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, libertarians and fundamentalist evangelical Christians have a battle plan to destroy the public schools and replace them with private Charters and that includes having Common Core dug in deep by the time enough Americans wakes and start thinking about doing something to stop it.
I have friends and former colleagues who are still teaching in the American public schools and they are so busy implementing the Common Core that’s being crammed down their throats through local school boards and administration, that they don’t have time to learn about it and what’s happening across the country.
Last Monday, one friend’s district went on its Spring break and it was the first time he had time to read Diane’s Blog that I’ve been bugging him to read. Then he called me and told me he would be sharing what he was reading with the rest of the teachers at the high school where he works.
Actually you identified who’s behind this travesty when you pointed out that Arne has “Histrionic Narcissistic Personality Disorder ”
I don’t think he’s the only one with this disorder. Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, President Obama, Jeb Bush, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock and all the rest of this pack of parasites and vampires have it too.
They also have too much wealth and power. In addition, they control a big portion of the traditional media.
Arne’s conscious hypocrisy has been evident from the first months of his time as “Chief Executive Officer” of Chicago’s public schools. He got the job in July 2001, after Paul Vallas (who recently returned to Chicago in 2014) self-destructed by making fun of then Mayor Richard Daley and predicting that Vallas’s friend Tom Reece would win the May 2001 Chicago Teachers Union election. After Deborah Lynch won the election handily, Vallas was out and corporate Chicago scooped Arne out of well-earned obscurity and made him VOILA! chief officer of the third largest school system in the USA. Duncan knew so little about his job that before every major event his Svengali, Peter Cunningham, rehearsed him carefully to stick to the scripts his corporate puppeteers put before him. During Arne’s first month in office, I had asked to get in a few more questions during a press conference (in those days, Chicago’s school officials wouldn’t dare not hold them now and then; by 2014 with Rahm in charge, that’s ancient history too) and was told to wait in the waiting area of the CPS “Communications Department.” For almost an hour I listened while about 15 feet away (and around a corner) Peter rehearsed Arne on his carefully scripted talking points. Arne has gotten a few more fatuous cliches down since those days (after all, he’s now been in power 13 years), but he still sticks carefully to his talking points.
The joke is on the rest of us. In Chicago, people were not organized to challenge the idea that a school system should be run “business style” under the boss who was a “Chief Executive Officer.” Of course, Chicago’s first two public schools CEOs had not private business experience, but once they got away with that Big Lie corporate Chicago was on a roll. By 2008, their marketing was so brilliant (and cynically confident) that they were able to sell a second-rate local politician to the nation, then the WORLD, as the embodiment of the “Audacity of Hope” without most people even reading the two books in which the guy (who later appointed Arne Duncan to run the nation’s schools, if they could get away with it) exposed himself, his carefully edited ideas, and especially his corporate agenda. America, then quickly the rest of the world, bought the bullshit. So now we’ve got a war criminal in the White House and a bunch of corporate hacks foisting corporate “school reform” on the nation. Whether it’s 1925 – 1935 in central Europe or today in the USA, it’s important to read what the guys are saying and then think about what will happen if we give them power by voting for them.
Why political appointments matter. Heck of a job, Brownie, er, I mean, Arnie.
I learned how to read in elementary school. I learned how to play basketball in highschool. And I learned to think cricially in college. SAYS IT ALL.
Every time I see “Ask Arne” I wonder what teacher would want to ask him anything, though I know many that would like to tell him a thing or two.
“At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed,”
Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/arne-duncan-mayors-schools-033109.html
Lloyd Lofthouse, If you can recognize Arne Duncan’s mental illness (Histrionic Narcissistic Personality Disorder), and I’m sure others can as well, why has he not been removed from his position? Why is he still allowed to remain as Secretary of Education, which is a job that impacts school children all over America.
And why was G. W. Bush president of the US for eight years?
to answer that question: W was president because of us (well not me personally, but the American public). Mencken said it best,
“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
Regarding charters: “We’ve never gotten beyond nice pilots…” LOL
Do watch the video below from his latest visit to a charter school: http://www.matcheducation.org/secretary-duncan-talks-tutoring
Duncan is just the latest of a long line of non-teachers sitting in the secretary’s chair. Terrel Bell, Reagan’s first Secretary of Education, has been the only k-12 secretary of education in the US.
Presidents appoint attorneys to be Attorneys General, doctors to be Surgeons General, economists to be Secretaries of the Treasury…but K-12 educators are apparently unqualified to be the nation’s highest ranking educator.
Rod Paige infamously called the NEA a terrorist organization. Margaret Spellings claimed that she was qualified for her position because she was “a mom.” Arne Duncan seems to think that since his mom was a tutor he’s somehow qualified to be the Secretary of Education.
Duncan needs to be fired and replaced with a real educator.
His stressing the importance of data collection while visiting a school in Haiti- where they did not have indoor plumbing, clean water , or proper housing. One must wonder what they thought of him..
We have failed teaching the majority of the population to read English, hopefully the Chinese have a better way to teach us Mandarin. I have a feeling we won’t have a choice in the matter.