In response to a post by Krazy TA, who portrayed Arne Duncan as the Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz,” this post comes from “Some DAM Poet, Devalue Added Model”:
So, Duncan is the Scare Crow?
I’ll buy that (though he’s certainly no Ray Bolger)
That leaves quite a few roles to cast:
Here are my suggestions:
The Wizard of Ads (and Fads): Bill Gates
Cowardly Lion: Obama
Tin Man: David Coleman
Dorothy: America’s teachers, trying to get back to Kansas (ie, reality)
Munchkins: America’s school children
Good Witch of the North (Diane Ravitch, Moshe Adler, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Mercedes Schneider, members of American Statistical Association, or other statistical and educational experts who have tried to bring some sanity to the Emerald City and get Dorothy back to Kansas
WWoW: Michelle Rhee (“I’ll get your school, my pretty..and your little bus too”
Flying monkeys: the folks who put together the teacher VAMS, Common Core, standardized testing and other junk (if you recall, there were a lot of flying monkeys and they all looked the same)
Witch’s Castle Guard — singing “tenure-heave-ho” (Campbell Brown, who,being the adversatile actress that she is, also played a lot of parts (76 of them) in The Music Man)
Feel free to weigh in.if you think I have messed up the casting in any way — eg, left anyone out of the flock (is that the right word?) of flying monkeys. Also, I’m not really sure who should play Toto.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dorothy’s friends and family in Kansas: All the parents who fight for public ed and against testing.
WWOW–You nailed that one!!
We got to get the testing and charter lobby in there as well. They are the $$$$ behind the privatization movement.
Wow is right!
Change “Toto” to “Aye-why-pee”
Love it, Diane. Great post! Agree totally.
WOWZER post!
The following is a work of friction (not a typo). I hope you find it amusing.
Let’s NEASC the Emerald City
Ned said, “It’s like pulling back the curtain in The Wizard of Oz.”
My brain is now travelling down the yellow-brick road to the Emerald City.
Fear is in the air.
“Who dares question the great and powerful Oz?”
Thunderous voice! Disembodied head! Fire and brimstone!
And I’m not supposed to analyze why because that would open up a black hole and suck
Me in. So, now I’m Toto and I’m pulling back the curtain.
There’s a flustered old man shouting into a microphone, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
Let’s document what’s happening
Behind the curtain
A lying old man pulls levers and dials while talking into a microphone.
It’s obvious that the amplified voice of the powerless charlatan is the voice of Oz – (an erstwhile know-it-all who uses technology to subjugate the masses).
Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow have returned victorious from their witch-killing task. (I don’t know if “Kill the Witch” is a validated task.).
They have proof of task completion – the burned broom, and they want their reward. Perhaps they reflect on the task and realize that their witch-killing skills are sub-standard. Their discrete skills, such as evading flying monkeys, putting on disguises, running away, getting caught, and throwing water (to put out fire) are still at the developmental rather than mastery level. The witch-killing, it appears, was accidental success. But they have been conditioned to expect their reward. They do, after all, have proof.
So Dorothy unleashes an excoriating diatribe on the evil OZ.
The bad man/ bad wizard re-forms himself as a political spin doctor and proffers credentials on the mannerly heroes, who graciously accept the trinkets and mealy-mouthed praise, because this is how it’s done. Oz the inept then hops in a balloon for his race to the top.
The Witch is dead. All hail Oz, the great and powerful!
I cringe, do a quick pulse-check, and dipstick my incredulity.
Emerald City Self Study
Narrative
Dorothy arrives in Oz, Munchkinland to be exact, and kills the Wicked Witch of the East by planting a house on her. The inhabitants of Munchkinland rejoice. Dorothy professes that it was an accident but the inhabitants of Oz recognize her witch-killing skill. Perhaps it is her innate ability. Perhaps the inhabitants are over-estimating her ability and maturity because of her large stature and they mistakenly create a correlation between a person’s stature, sex, or age and their cognitive witch-killing abilities. We may never know why the Munchkins’ reasoning is faulty. Perhaps they are small-minded.
Glinda, a stately and fashionable local education authority figure, arrives on the scene and asks Dorothy an essential question. “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
After a brief moment of bewildered introspection Dorothy proclaims, “I’m not a witch at all.”
Since Dorothy seems incapable of answering the essential binary question, Glinda decides to out-place Dorothy because Munchkinland cannot meet her needs. She is told to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” and seek guidance from a higher power, the Wizard of Oz. Apparently this is a golden opportunity.
Upon reaching the Emerald City, the capitol of Oz, Dorothy and her companions seek an audience with the Wizard because they have been told that he can meet their needs. Dorothy wants to go home. The Scarecrow wants a brain. The Tin Man wants a heart. And the Lion wants courage. The Wizard of Oz considers Home, Heart, Brain, and Courage important Core Values, so he gives them a task in order to meet his 21st century learner expectations. “Kill the Wicked Witch of the West.” It seems that Glinda has forwarded evidence of Dorothy’s witch-killing skill to the Wizard and he wants to use Dorothy to carry out his genocidal campaign against all things Wicked. Please note that the label genocidal campaign is based solely on evidence and should not be confused with intention. If I were to consider intention, I would have pointed out the following. Oz, the great and powerful has no intention of granting the wishes or meeting the needs of the foursome. Based on their brainless, heartless, homesick and cowardly plea, he provides the task to occupy their time and keep them out of sight-out of mind. Surely he is cognizant of the fact that the task is beyond their capacity and will likely result in their death.
I have been advised by my committee that I have to stop the narrative. They suspect that I have an agenda (and it is not the kind of agenda which arrives by email moments prior to a meeting). This self-study is, I am reminded, a metacognitive activity and I have left out important information from the self study survey. In addition, my verbiage involves speculation (note the frequent use of the word perhaps in the first paragraph) and innuendo. I have been reminded that I am not supposed to wonder why, only report. Therefore, please insert the following narrative right after the above-mentioned Witchicide. I have also changed the font color to red for words and phrases that evoke thought or speculation and for metacognitive additions to the narrative. This will be apparent to anyone who views the document in color but indistinguishable to the local inhabitants of Munchkinland, because they have been conditioned to only see things in black and white, as evidenced (by the lack of color printers/ink). Perhaps the NEASC Community Resources for Learning Committee will point this out in their narrative.
Glinda travels around in a bubble. She treats the inhabitants of Munchkinland like vertically challenged children. (She talks down to them). Though most of them responded positively to the survey question, “Would you like to be taller?” they are gleefully unaware of their height deficits. Observational assessments indicate that the inhabitants sing, dance, and in general cavort and caper with no regard to the seriousness of their vertically challenged situation. This continues to be an ongoing issue in spite of previous NEASC visits and insistence by the recently eliminated Witch of the East that Munchkinland focus ALL its limited resources on HIGHER education in order to meet the following District goal:
By June 2011, 100% of inhabitants will demonstrate vertical awareness and proficiency by achieving or exceeding benchmarks as measured by data including, but not limited to, state and district defined assessments.
Achronological notation – In spite of the fact that they are about to be eliminated because they are not part of the District HIGHER Ed. plan, the Lollipop Guild and the Culinary Inclined, as well as the Vocationally Enabled, welcome Dorothy to Munchkinland with a song and a dance.
I feel compelled to point out that according to a recent survey cited in today’s (10/21/2011) PROJO, Rhode Island, the smallest State, has the highest rate of suicide and thoughts of suicide. (However, I am not trying to draw a correlation between the suicide rate and the dissolution of the Lollipop Guild).
At this point in the narrative you may be tempted to draw conclusions, interpret the findings, or draw a correlation between Munchkinland, Oz, or any number of characters in the above narrative based on names, physical attributes or measured data. I have been told that this is a common occurrence in the NEASC self-study process and is to be expected. After a while (according to plan) all LEAs start to look alike.
Brilliant extenstion of the original post loved this as I have been working on the farce of SLOs
By June 2011, 100% of inhabitants will demonstrate vertical awareness and proficiency by achieving or exceeding benchmarks as measured by data including, but not limited to, state and district defined assessments.
Are learners supposed to read this, like The Gettysburg Address, without context per ELA CCSS?
Though David Coleman might like me to take the context out of the classroom to magically create flying monkeys or his version of “higher order thinkers,” I don’t know how he can take the context out of the teacher. TFA?
Rather than the Wizard of Oz, I think the TFA and Charter movement is best captuted by my recasting of Dustin Hoffman’s classic to become “The TFA Graduate.”
Movie Pitch — The TFA Graduate by Terry A. Ward
tagline: This is Benjamin. He’s a little worried about the future of public education.
Synopsis: Benjamin Braddock, a recent Ivy League graduate returns home and is unsure about his future. He meets a family friend, Eva Moskowitz, and soon enters the exciting world as a TFA teacher in a charter school..
Sample dialogue 1:
A friend of Braddock’s father counsels young Benjamin on his future:
Mr. Duncan: I just want to say two words to you. Just two words.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. Duncan: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. Duncan: Charter schools.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Sample dialogue 2:
Mrs. Moskowitz has Benjamin alone and is trying to get him to commit to her school system:
Benjamin: I mean, you didn’t really think I’d do something like that.
Mrs. Moskowitz: Like what?
Benjamin: What do you think?
Mrs. Moskowitz: Well, I don’t know. Teach?
Benjamin: For god’s sake, Mrs. Moskowitz. Here we are. You got me into your office. You give me a tour. You… put on a Powerpoint presentation. Now you start telling me the state education agencies won’t ever be visiting.
Mrs. Robinson: So?
Benjamin: Mrs. Moskowitz, you’re trying to recruit me.
Mrs. Moskowitz: [laughs] Huh?
Benjamin: Aren’t you?
Both wonderful! One is rated PG, the other R.
When I think of Arne Duncan, I’m more inclined to recall T. S. Eliot than L. Frank Baum.
The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
How good is your pick?
In all honesty, I wish I had thought of it first.
Nothing short of wonderful.
Thank you.
😎
I feel I owe it to SomeDAM Poet to pass along the usual unconfirmed rumors that have been streaming out of the WH like packs of flying monkeys.
Yes, Arne Duncan does have song lyrics pasted on his ceiling, but I underestimated his grit and determination (not to mention the budget devoted to office expenses that have been diverted from the classroom).
Apparently he is so enamored of THE WIZARD OF OZ that he keeps adding to his collection; soon the ceiling in his office will be completely covered. It seems that the Secretary of Education has set the following goal for himself: when his years and years at the DOE are over, he fervently hopes to be able to recite all the songs [in original form or creatively disrupted, er, innovatively destructed, whatever] from the aforementioned 1939 movie classic.
An interesting tidbit: some of the songs are prefaced by EduMantras, apparently based on traditional Eastern practice—or is that Jedi mind tricks played on oneself? Whatever the case, the following bit in full:
“You are asked by uninformed rabble: Why didn’t you do the right thing for the kids when you were in a position of authority and power? Why did you just do what you were told?
You respond:
[start] Yeah, it’s sad, believe me Missy
When you’re born to be a sissy
Without the vim and verve
But I could show my prowess
Be a lion, not a mou-ess
If I only had the nerve
I’m afraid there’s no denyin’
I’m just a dandelion
A fate I don’t deserve [end]
Note to Song About Myself#2: repeat last five words as often as necessary until heart stops racing and jangled nerves calm down and questioner curls up into a fetal position waiting for a rational answer.”
I’m glad I could clear that up…
😎
P.S. The “Missy” in the first line is unknown. Michelle Rhee? Wendy Kopp? Eva Moskowitz? Cami Anderson? Arne’s pet phrase for his de facto boss, Bill Gates, or his titular one? Inquiring minds, actually, don’t want to know…
Sometimes there’s such a thing as too many details.
In any hoo, thank me now or thank me later for the info.
¿? Ok, ok. My treat next time at Pink Slip Bar & Grille. You might call yourself SomeDAM Poet but you are one most insanely DAMKrazyPoet!
Be there or be square.
😏
I need as much laughter as i can get, so thank you for all the creativity.
The laughter and the creativity is what keeps a classroom moving, and it’s why teachers hate scripts – even while we are satirizing ’em.
The Tin Men are the Supreme Court, who decided Rowley, Shaefer vs. Weist, Citizens United, and all the cases that diminish citizens’ and parents’ rights with regard to the power to shape our government and the education their children receive.