You may recall that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times proposed that Arne Duncan should become Secretary of State and extend his Race to the Top internationally.
Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in New York City sees the implications:
“Close &/or privatize embassies that are struggling in terms of diplomacy & conflict resolution?”
Any readers with better ideas?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Ambassadors for America”: poli sci majors intern as ambassadors around the world for half the pay. Think of the savings! Think of how these fresh-faced idealsitic kids can save the world!
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Half the pay? That would still be quite generous. I’m thinking a small stipend and some student loan forgiveness.
But anyway you have the winning comment so far.
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Foreign aid would be determined by the country’s standardized test scores.
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Arne Duncan as Secretary of State? Cool? All the other nations in the world will get a standardized test of knowledge of the lives of upper-middle class suburban American homeowners every year and the United States gets to take over all the countries that fail . Countries with high percentages of unionized labor don’t even get to take the test until they reform.
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It is not enough that he and Obama are destroying public education through privatization and corporatization. Now let us take it to another level and that is worldwide with every other country in the world. Largest bidder gets to run the embassy. Why not? Everything else is up for sale to the highest bidder or most powerful. This is the “New World Order.” When California was pushed by L.A. Mayor Tony Villaraigosa, King Tony, for the California unconstitutional mayoral control Duncan, then superintendent of Chicago, wrote a letter to the California Legislature stating that those before Daley took over in 1995 had put the Chicago Schools into $1.8 billion in debt which Daley, Vallas and Duncan had to clean up. The fact is that I have the pertinent financial pages to the 1994 Chicago Schools Budget and they had a surplus. If he will lie for this what else would he lie for? This is the question yet to be answered and the other question is why has the press not reported on this fact?
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Remember when Vallas was CEO of CPS and on the news virtually every other day promoting himself and his accomplishments, including the fact that he discovered many CPS buildings had been rented out for $1 per year? It was hailed as a windfall of previously lost revenue.
Then Duncan, who had worked as Deputy Chief of Staff for Vallas, came along and began doing that very same thing himself –renting out buildings for $1 per year to charter schools. The practice continues to this day. Why has there been no investigative reporting and outcry about that?
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I would guess your question about the lack of coverage in this $1.00 travesty is merely rhetorical…what skullduggery, from assassinations to trillions “lost” in the DOD (Rumsfield little fessin’ up the day before 9/11) to the press’s compliance in parroting the lies that “W” and the neocons used to get us into Iraq…the list is endless! The fourth estate has totally become the mouthpiece for the powers that be, not the protectors of our nation, holding up truth to power. We have to read foreign newspapers (The Guardian, for one) to learn anything about what devious actions go on here! Our “news” is no more than
Fox mixed with People magazine. The America people are being
denied facts that are determining the demise of public education as
well as our slide into a security state, that is anything but that
Orwellian double speak!
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Tom Friedman to America’s Kids: “Suck On This!”
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/11/tom-friedman-to-americas-kids-suck-on.html
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He could start an innovative new trend of “Charter Embassies.” They would be U.S. embassies that are publicly funded, but cheaper to maintain and not beholden to rules of international law.
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Arne Duncan as Secretary of State:
Step one: “fire” American soldiers and diplomats, shut down UN Peacekeeping forces, and criminalize the Peace Corps, Red Cross, and Red Crescent.
Step two: “WORLD ORDER REFORM.” Replace the above with a combination of robotic drones and various websites with slick stock photographs. Ensure fat government contracts for the suppliers.
Step three (and this is the real war crime): unleash the consultants and PR execs.
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I proudly attended President Obama’s first inauguration at the invitation of two U.S. Congressman. That being said, I wrote and had published 350 words in the Washington Times just six weeks before the President’s inauguration in January 2009. . I criticized President-elect Obama for nominating Arne Duncan for Secretary of Education. I enumerated my many reasons that included the basic fact that he held no teaching cert or administrator’s cert, and had to be hired as the CEO to get around that “minor” technicality… and the Chicago for-profit charters were failing miserably with the exception of the few elementary school charters in the wealthier areas of Chicago. Naming this education-less for-profit-Secretary as the next Secretary of State might be a lovely way to get him out of education-Dodge and stop the hemorrhaging of our nation’s public schools (as long as we can give a for-profit lobotomy to the Republicans and Democrats who have lost their soul to free market and philanthropists like the Broad and Gates Foundations) but it would be a rotten thing to do to the amazing work and rebuilding of foreign relationships by Secretary Clinton. Personally speaking, I am thrilled that President Obama has been reelected…but I hope and dream he will nominate a new and improved Secretary of Education and change his tune on turning our nation’s public schools into a privatized free market free-for all that will only destroy millions of children.
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It’s so hypocritical that the Washington Times would publish a letter opposed to Arne Duncan. I suppose they’ll take Obama-bashing in any form they can get it, but really Duncan was (and is) the Times’ wet dream come true.
I hope you’re not holding your breath waiting for that change of Secretary of Education.
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He would offer other countries funding if they buy into his revolutionary program, but his program would cost more than the funding they would receive.
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Today I got the email form letter response from the President – to the letter I submitted to the White House web site on Oct 17th. Nowhere in the response or in the links at the end do I find the name of Arne Duncan: http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/Issues/Education
I bet he’s doing something else, soon. Secretary of State is a flat out nightmare.
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Last May I had the priviledge to be invited to the Van Leer Education conference in Jerusalem with outstanding educational leaders from across the globe. Award winning Teachers, Principals, University Professors and Director Generals/Heads of State were there to discuss the topic “Regulation and Trust”. As the receipient of the “New York State Outstanding Educator Award” from the School Administrators Assoc. of New York (SAANYS) I was invited to represent our state. It was very clear that the other countries that were there were vey concerned about the adverse effects of our Race to the Top policies. It was very clear from the discussion that the other nations were aganist the over use of high stakes testing and felt it was inappropriate to tie these tests to teacher evaluations. These regulations were seen as the cause for mistrust and not helpful in bringing meaningful learning experiencing to children. The other countries that were there wanted nothing to do with “Race to the Top”. Representatives from Finland described how they have found great success with less regulations,no high stakes testing and an informal evaluation process. Everything opposite of “Race to the Top” .After hearing my colleagues from across the globe I don’t believe that Arne Duncan and his Race to the Top policies would be accepted by any other nation.
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Do these countries need/want our foreign aid? Foreign aid to Egypt has largely been corporate welfare for US arms manufacturers . Somehow, the “needy” Egyptian people understood this but Americans with our glorious free press didn’t.
Foreign aid kept Mubarak in power.
I can see why Arne might be a good fit. Educational aid has become increasingly about corporate welfare.
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Arne Duncan is President Obama’s Robert MacNamara for education. MacNamara continued to advocate for the war in Vietnam even as the evidence mounted that it was a doomed effort to slay an ideologically-imagined dragon. So too, so-called education reformers continue to support ideologically driven policies with no evidentiary-basis. At his education summit, Jeb Bush evoked Lyndon Johnson’s advocacy for civil rights in the face of determined opposition in support of his competition- and privatization-based education agenda. President Obama would do well to remember that Johnson’s continued pursuit of victory in Vietnam in what MacNamara called, the fog of war, undermined efforts at racial and economic justice. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/11/07/a-call-for-president-obama-to-change-course-on-education/)
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OMG! The Arne Duncan who stated on cable that the Sophomore drop out problem had a simple solution…just graduate high school students in their Sophomore year=problem solved! His rationale was, as he so shockingly said, “The Junior & Senior years are just a bunch of STUDY HALLS any way.” Heard that bit of insanity with my own ears, or I wouldn’t believe it! Putting him in ANY cabinet position would be like having “W” back, and we all know how we are still trying to recover from that ordeal!
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Don’t you see? It is already as if Arne is secretary of state. We already tie foreign aid to making “free market” reforms. We tell poor nations that this will bring success– never mind if it is not how the US got rich. Just play along with it. When countries fail to succeed, we tell them they must increase the dose of this medicine.
Do you see the parallels with Arne’s educational policy?
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Arne Duncan is to education what Dick Chaney is to world peace. Duncan as Sec. of State would invade and bomb the countries with the lowest test scores.
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Tom is just…. I wonder if his wife agrees with his assessment of Arne? She was a former MoCo, MD special education teacher. I know that Matt Taibbi doesn’t . Take your pick of the articles below:
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=matt+taibbi%2Btom+friedman&oq=matt+taibbi%2Btom+friedman&gs_l=hp.3…33512.38707.1.39422.2.2.0.0.0.0.318.318.3-1.1.0.les%3B..0.0…1c.1.JKWZny-IUtM&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=67039599a028a8df&bpcl=38897761&biw=1189&bih=596
If your in the area (Montgomery County, MD) you may just want to stop and visit Tom and his home.
http://wonkette.com/413811/this-is-literally-thomas-friedmans-house
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TFA has expanded its model across the globe, where they can actively spread GERM, so Duncan probably has an army of “Ambassador” elitists waiting in the wings.
If the hidden agenda is for corporate America to expand their plundering of and profitting from third world countries, they’ve got a good head start by attempting to control and dumb down the education of future drone employees abroad who will work under inhumane conditions for pennies.
I used to think that conspiracy theorists were nutters, but now that it’s very evident that Democrats, Republicans and ALEC really have conspired here, in order to promote the interests of corporations, I can’t help but wonder about the global end-game. Those abroad with education and/or common sense, who are not overcome by the propaganda of our media or stand to benefit economically, are likely to see through it and attempt to reject it though. In any case, it does not bode well for our global image and foreign relations.
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