A reader writes:
“What I would really like to see is Arnie Duncan in a seventh period class, of whatever subject he could be certified in, implementing his signature policies. Only someone who has never taught in a public school could with a straight face implement race to the top. Should add, it would be a good idea if he took a tests-and-measurement class that might help understand the fundamental problems with ranking teachers, ranking schools, or ranking of any kind. I would add, it is extremely difficult to have an intelligent conversation with someone who lacks a fundamental knowledge of the theories, concepts, principles, of a domain they are in charge of — he is the secretary of education, not the secretary of commerce. Mr. Duncan’s elevation, both in Chicago and then to Washington speaks to how powerless the educational profession is. Our profession has been successfully colonized by business goals, vocabulary, and methods. It will take years, maybe decades to recover from the mess Bush and Obama have generated in our schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Actually, I must say that the education is not powerless, only the teachers are powerless. The managers or administrators have extraordinary power and use it to protect their positions at the expense of teachers if so deemed.
There should be a picture of a school administrator under the phrase, “throws them under the bus.”
Sorry admins, I know you will not like this post, so fire away!
And, no “lol” intended here.
Standin side by side with ya Brutus2011!
Been one who would have been thrown under the bus if I would have let them. Most administrators being some of the worse GAGAs*
out there.
*Go Along to Get Along supposed educators.
Isn’t that an inconvenient truth.
Duncan could be certified to teach in no subject. He is not an educator. He has a BA in sociology from Harvard. This means he should know something about data collection and analysis, including both qualitative and quantitative. My guess is that he spent more time on the basketball court than in the classroom though. Even Harvard has its cheaters, especially among its athletes: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/06/20361014-survey-42-percent-of-harvards-incoming-freshman-class-cheated-on-homework
Because he collected all of the data for his BA thesis himself, he probably has no experience working with the kind of data and data collection projects he currently oversees. I suspect he has the personal failing of many elite university graduates – he claims to understand more than he knows and he is desperate that others won’t peg him for an intellectual impostor. Plus, many of the statistical techniques being used now weren’t even invented yet when he was in college.
For me, this just further drives home the point that because we don’t know what our future leaders will need to know, students need a chance to practice all kinds of reasoning (eg., quantitative, moral, logical) before we set them out in the world. Someone like Arne Duncan needs to be able to draw on his understanding of inequality (the subject of his undergrad thesis), quantitative prediction, and epistemology (among other things) in order to serve us well. So many of these folks have drunk too much of their own kool-aid. Graduating from Harvard may indicate that a person has had a sound education, but it certainly doesn’t guarantee it.
Ted Cruz graduated from Harvard. And Princeton.
The Bush-Obama era is built on schools managed by absentee owners & their control of human capital. This business management strategy comes out of our early slave holding days, so says The Harvard Business School: “The Messy Link Between Slave Owners & Modern Management”
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7182.html
Thanks for sharing that link!
I handed out three slips of paper with Diane’s name and the book title this morning in my Sunday School class (to a principal, a public school elementary teacher and a social worker in the schools)—I have committed myself to telling at least one new person a day about the book. I suggested they read it, and the principal indicated he was familiar with it. Then I moved on to pick up my children.
But when I passed back by I heard the principal and teacher discussing the “new normal” and what I hear routinely from teachers who clearly want to maintain a positive attitude (which I can respect. . .it is their daily experience, so they have to make the best of it for the moment, particularly in a right to work state) is:” I don’t mind it, and I find that it does drive my instruction. . .so long as we only use it formatively.” So what I take away from that is, they don’t like data collected from high stakes tests as summative and punitive.
So whether or not the answer lies in salvaging what we can (at some point) from all the recent changes, or scrapping it all together, I do hear teachers say that. But I don’t know, again, if they say it just to try and be positive (one did tell me off the record she’d just assume scrap all the testing and MClass and CCSS stuff lock stock and barrel).
I think there should be a poll to find out. Gallup, a dedicated Episcopalian (as is my family), has written a study on what works well for parenting based on a poll. I think it is time for some polls of parents and teachers of what they think works well in schooling.
I also wonder if teachers feeling like they have to say something positive about the “new normal” comes from a complete trust that leadership is looking out for them and just made a few missteps. I used to be that trusting, but lately I am far more skeptical (not so much in seeing evil intent on the part of leadership, but definitely in seeing the possibility for colossal miscalculation, blind faith in untested ideas and an assumption that if big money and technology are backing it that it is good).
Joanna,
Have you taken the time to read Wilson’s work(s) to which I so frequently refer?
Just wondering!
Duane
Only the summaries you provide.
What made you ask that?
Duane, it takes a lot of repetition for me to absorb something. That is the type of learner I am. Usually because the first time I read something, I am thinking of a song that it reminds me of. And then the second time I read it, I am remembering that it reminded me of a song. And the third time I read it I am noticing that the funny little picture beside your name is always red, whereas mine is a sea-foam green. So, yeah. . .I will keep reading, it grasping it a little more each time. But my questions relate more to other people and their opinions and actions. So me reading the Wilson list is really beside the point, yes?
I have also read the Bible. But that one takes a lot of repetition to sink in too. 🙂
like the Moose in “If You Give a Moose a Muffin.”
I asked because I try to get a feel for how many have read it. And if you hadn’t to be a gentle prod for you to read it.
“So me reading the Wilson list is really beside the point, yes?”
NO! His dissertation is not a “list”. My truncated summary helps to get people to understand some of the issues involved in the usage of “educational standards” and standardized testing. But to think my summary comes anywhere near explaining all Wilson says is like thinking that reading the Cliff Notes of Moby Dick will be the same as actually reading it. I’ve read it many, many times and each time I come out with more and better understanding of what he is saying.
Duane– are you thinking that if more people read it, the dialogue will change? Or that things will become clearer based on the types of questions posted (by me and others?)
I will put it on my list.
“. . . or scrapping it all together. . .”
That’s this teacher’s position.
“The new normal”. GAGA’s justification for causing harm to the most vulnerable and innocent members of society, the children. Make me puke with that comment (not you Joanna, but those who think like that).
Enslaving Africans was a “New Normal”, gassing Jews was a true “New Normal”, Mao’s and Pol Pot’s re-education camps were a “New Normal”, Obama’s ordering the killing of a sixteen year old American citizen is the “New Normal” (he just extended Bush’s “New Normal” of illegal wars of aggression to his fellow countrymen).
Duncan doesn’t belong in the public sector.
The fact is public schools, charters and private schools funded by vouchers are three separate systems and redefining words and dodging that fundamental factual issue isn’t fooling anyone. He can’t paper this over.
Parents and teachers and others who live in the places he’s reforming feel they own their public schools and there’s a good reason for that: they do. That’s what “public” means (in part).
We don’t need a CEO, and people invested in a public system will never accept one. It’s simply the wrong model of management for a public entity.
I will say that even though NC’s state sup is still cheerleading for RttT, she did have the gumption to file a lawsuit when our previous governor tried to appoint a State CEO for our schools, and won (no CEO of schools in this state). I am proud of June Atkinson for that. I wonder can anyone sue anyone/someone for mishandling or overstepping in DOE. . .or maybe that has been covered already.
It’s bewildering to me that they’re calling themselves “educators” yet insisting language doesn’t matter and basic factual issues don’t matter.
Of course language matters. Words have meaning. Duncan constantly repeats this reform bromide about how parents “don’t care” about whether their school is a public school, a charter school or a private school.
Does he really think he can change the different definitions of these three school entities by insisting they’re all the same, all “public”?
We had a Christian school here that recently “converted” to a charter school. It is the same religious school in all but name and funding mechanism. Are we now supposed to call this religious school a “public school”? Based on what? Public funding? A new sign on the door?
By reform logic, then, any government contractor is a public entity. Catholic Charities, which receives huge public funding, is now “public” according to this crazy redefinition of words.
I saw Mr. King in New York is lashing out at his critics claiming they are “special interests.” So any critic is now labeled a “special interest” and dismissed? Does he understand that he is a public employee? He can’t dodge these people. He works for them.
“. . . like to see is Arnie Duncan in a seventh period class.”
Keep that edufraud as far away from the children as possible. He is destined for Dante’s 21st level of hell when he passes from this lifetime.
So if we were interviewing the next President’s education leader, what would we ask?
I think I’d ask for a one-sentence definition of a “public school”. Without agreement on that, we’re probably wandering around in the weeds for another decade.
I don’t think truly public schools will survive another decade of market-based reform, so it’s quite important to me that he or she answer that question in a way that respects and accepts commonly understood definitions of WORDS. We are the ludicrous point where they have invented a new language, which may be why there’s so much discord.
Getting in touch with my inner Donald Trump:
“Arne Duncan . . . . . . . . . You’re FIRED!”
If Arnie has grandchildren, he should enroll them in urban public schools and he should volunteer as a grandparent to teach kids to read. He wouldn’t possibly last as a teacher.
He’s not lasting as a human either . . . .
Can he BE any more of a moron?
You’re right. That “duh” look that he wears all the same says it all.
Mr. Duncan is simply one of many facilitators of a business plan that is about creating education monopolies. Here is how the plan works:
Suppose that you were named, say, Gill Bates, and that you had made billions by creating the part of a technological system that everyone had to use. In other words, you had figured out how
a. to get a little bit of money from just about everyone
b. to ensure that anyone using that technological system would have to use your essential part of it.
Suppose, then, that you wanted to apply the same model to, say, capturing the education market.
First, some background: Suppose that you you were in the business of selling computers and computer software. Suppose that you thought it inevitable that education would move onto computers. Suppose that you also thought it inevitable that a particular model of computer instruction would be adopted–the “computer adaptive curriculum model.” Here’s how that works: You have a list of stuff that students are supposed to learn (call this list “standards” or “objectives” or whatever you like. And you have a bunch of teaching module, a couple for each objective or standard. Now when little Yolanda sits down to use this computer curriculum, she takes a test. The test tells what objectives little Yolanda hasn’t yet “mastered” and serves up just the lessons that she”needs.”
Here’s how you might proceed: You would create a single national database of student test scores and responses to which all curriculum providers would have to be connected if they wanted to have their products be adaptive to a set of national standards. You might call your product something like inFlower. The idea is that every school district in the country would pay a few bucks per kid for the privilege of using your database of student responses. This would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. But that would be just the beginning. Because there could only be ONE such national database, curriculum developers would have to come to you and pay you to hook their programs up to this database so that they could serve up adaptive curricula. But that’s not all, through your foundation, you could put out an RFP calling for edu-entrepreneurs to create (guess what?) computer adaptive software keyed to standards–software that you, yourself, could hook to your database and sell.
You would end up with the equivalent of what the operating system is in the personal computer business–the piece of the whole that everyone has to use and pay for. You would
a) get a little bit of money from almost everyone (a few dollars per kid, amounting to hundreds of millions per year, and
b) you would have the part of the system that everyone else would have to go through or connect to and, importantly, PAY FOR–a monopoly position that you could leverage
Heck, you could probably even get state departments of education to mandate that people start using computer adaptive curricula. No other vendor could replicate what you were doing–there would be only ONE such national database, so you would have a secure monopoly position to leverage.
But to make all this happen, you would FIRST you would need
a) national standards because you need one set of objectives for that new curriculum portal to track
b) national tests based on those standards because those would provide the justification for signing up for the national database (i.e., to keep track of all that test data)
So, you would need to buy those FIRST. In order to implement your plan, you would have to purchase national standards and tests. Who knows, perhaps you could even convince a lot of boneheaded people that it’s somehow better to have a single set of national standards than it is to have voluntary, competing standards (which would lead to a lot of innovation). Perhaps you could even get a lot of BUSINESS PEOPLE, who HATE centralized authorities and regulation to buy into the idea of centralized regulation of national education standards.
And then you could get your wind-up toy Secretary of Education to issue a technology Blueprint calling for (guess what):
a) the new national tests based on the new national standards,
b) a computer for every child so that every child could take those tests,
c) a nationwide database of student test scores and responses, and
d) computer adaptive curricula attached to that national database of student responses
And, all along, you could have everyone thinking that what you were actually doing was running a crusade to improve U.S. education.
Does all this sound just too creepy, too diabolical, too unbelievable? Too bad Ayn Rand is gone. I could sell the story idea to her. Maybe Stephen King would be interested. After all, the story is REALLY horrifying.
Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff recently said that the purpose of the new standards was to create “national markets” for “products that can be brought to scale.”
That’s a pretty good summary of the story that I just told you, isn’t it?
Hum.
Thank you once again, Robert, for explaining the whole hideous business in a nutshell. Amazing how you could have learned to analyze and synthesize information without having had the benefit of the Common Cor(ps)e State (sic) Standards and wall-to-wall testing!
Thank you for commenting, Sheila. I write these things and wonder if they are falling into a black hole.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] are part of a business plan. And Duncan’s technology blueprint, issued at the beginning of his tenure, laid the whole thing out.
Gee, I wonder which high-tech eduenterprise corp Arne will be working for when he finally has to bid adieu to his current undeserved position?
“I write these things and wonder if they are falling into a black hole.”
Know that feeling quite well. I don’t always comment to your posts because many of them don’t need further comment because they are so well written and to the point many times with humor!
Thanks a bunch, eh!!
Robert D. Shepherd: thank you for your comments.
Let me underscore something you and others have alluded to in other comments, namely, how stunningly unimaginative and counter-productive are the solutions offered by the “education reformers.”
They not only don’t think outside the box, they find ever newer and cleverer ways of confining their thinking to a box. And only boxes that are already invented and proven to be impractical and counterproductive.
Then they try to stick us in the box and complain that it’s our fault that we don’t fit in it.
They think Mediocracy = Meritocracy.
😦
“Because there could only be ONE such national database”
Yep, it’s called a de facto monopoly. Not that Gilly the Boates wouldn’t want that.
Excellent summary of a national outrage.
The tag team of Bush and Obama have done untold damage to our public school system. As if their ill advised efforts (I’m restraining myself from cursing) weren’t bad enough, we in NJ have Chris Christie (aided and abetted by Chris Cerf) who is trying to destroy public education in our state. Christie has gone after the NJEA with flame-throwers, hammers, thongs and small nuclear devices. He said he would never touch the teachers’ pensions but in fact has suspended the COLA for current and future retirees. I will not vote for him but sadly CC is popular in NJ and is likely to have another 4 years to further school privatization and promote charter schools and school vouchers. Another 4 years of demeaning, demonizing and bashing teachers and their unions; this in a state with one of the nations top rated public schools. To listen to Christie you would think that NJ schools are a failure and that there are 50% horrible teachers in our public schools. But of course he is getting paid big bucks (to his political campaign efforts) to promote the Rheeform/deform movement.
Arne Duncan is not an educator, but he plays one on TV.
I contend that teachers must become more active and take a lead from the nurses. They speak out, strike if necessary, to keep the patient ratio to a level so they can properly care for their patients.
Teachers must begin to demand what is right for students. We must drown out the voices of the likes of Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and others that have no knowledge of what is the best way to provide an all inclusive education for students.
Does anybody remember Eric Hoffer? Arne Duncan is a true believer. There will be no changing his mind. To change his mind would be to change his world view. What other possible reason for his intransigence?
“What other possible reason for his intransigence?”
His BFF, homeboy and boss Barry, who is a full throttle “New Democrat” in the strictest neo-liberal Milton Friedman vein, i.e., old style Republican
Arne Duncan’s tongue is the toilet paper for the behinds of Walton, Gates, and Broad.
First, I remember seeing you here TTT. Please come back often if you’re going to write like that!!!!
Contrary to popular belief here, Duncan is no fool. DO NOT be distracted by the river of idiocy that issues forth whenever he speaks. It takes a lot of effort to understand your enemy (us!) well enough to be able to dissemble and lie so consistently about them while avoiding any semblance of the whole truth.. Duncan and/or his speech writers are adept at mixing fact with fiction such that he continues to operate as a Trojan Horse in sheep’s clothing, appearing benign and sincere to the less informed.
Duncan is scripted just as much as other “reformers” on the team, such as Rhee. If you look at the think tank and economist research they cite, to the untrained eye, it seems rather convincing, so they cling to it. Bring up research to the contrary though and you realize they can’t go off script and stumble. That’s why they want to control all the questions.
This change to Common Core is a Huge waste of taxpayers money because the lack of student success in math related professions is not caused by the standards or the curriculum and well educated experts know the causes. These minor changes in moving topics from grade level to grade level will not change the fact that Teachers will still be forced to teach to the NEW TEST and therefore, they will not change how they teach and how the daily classroom routine looks. Spending huge sums of limits resources on implementing this NEW TEST will not increase the number of students demonstrating success in mathematics and related STEM occupations. At some point, the teachers will be blamed for implementing these untested ideas and wasting taxpayers money because they and their unions approved of this Experiment using All of our Public School children as Guinea Pigs. If this were truly the right thing to do, then every Expensive Private School would have already implemented these ideas! I guess this is Darwinism at work. God Bless America and Capitalism!
“All of our Public School children as Guinea Pigs.”
And Guinea Pigs are quite tasty when roasted over coals with a Peruvian hot pepper sauce baste!
From Wiki recipes for edudeformers:
Roasted guinea pig
Ingredients
2 large animals
2 red onions, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tbsp of hot aji pepper paste
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp white pepper
2 tsp of salt
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp oil
annatto (for coloring)
Peanut Dipping Sauce Edit
2 tbsp lard
annatto coloring
2 white onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic
salt
pinch of cumin
1 large cup of roasted and ground coffee with peanuts
3½ cups milk
DirectionsEdit
Mix ingredients well and spread over the inside and outside of the animal.
Allow to marinate for up to one day to allow flavors to meld.
Before roasting, remove excess marinade to avoid scalding.
The spit should be inserted into the back part of the animal and exit from the jaw.
Once on the stick, tie the front and back feet, stretching out the legs.
Put on grill, turning manually.
Continue to apply lard to the skin to avoid drying out the meat.
The cuy is ready when the skin is close to bursting.
Serve with boiled potatoes sprinkled with coriander, chilies, and the following peanut sauce.
If your community is especially progressive, rice may be substituted for the potatoes.
Peanut Dipping Sauce Edit
Fry onions until golden brown, then add other ingredients.
Can We Really Blame Bush and Obama for the Problems in American Public Education?
In a recent post on Diane Ravitch’s blog a reader suggests that “It will take years, maybe decades to recover from the mess Bush and Obama have generated in our schools.” To blame Bush and Obama for ruining education is like trying to…
Arne Duncan’s “reforms” failed in Chicago, yet he’s imposing them nation-wide.
He is not an educator, is not a listener, is not a consensus builder, and is not ”data driven’. He prefers autocracy to democracy and shows it every day.
We have a lot of misguided, and unfortunately, pompous, individuals driving education for this country. Curriculum development should be grassroots, utilizing input from professional educators and child psychologists who understand the development of children. Also, ignoring our differences and creating a one size fits all approach is anti-American. Our country is based on our individual differences. Our diversity is what sets us apart from other nations. Who cares about how well the Finnish children do in school? If other nation’s educational system is better, then why do the elite insist on sending their children to the US to attend our schools? The current premise for change is bogus. It’s time our leaders wake up and smell the coffee the general public is brewing. They are all in for a surprise.
Diane… Are you still active with Gordon commission.? If so why? If not, why not. ? Polly