This mom was taken aback by Arne Duncan’s put down of “white suburban moms” who are disappointed to learn that their child is not so brilliant.
This mom has actually read the Common Core standards and has serious doubts about them. She can’t understand why Duncan disrespects her ability to think and reason for herself.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
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Sign the petition and call the White House, ask for Arne’s resignation:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-arne-duncan-secretary-education/w0DYCDDm
call the White House, ask for Arne’s resignation: 202-456-1111
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Brilliant letter!
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Arne, this is what you are up against. People who have a clue.
By continuing to pretend that it’s otherwise, you simply make yourself seem more and more foolish.
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Superb letter…we need this erudite mom in the classroom teaching English/Language Arts. The Common Core language program does not match up to her critical thinking skill and her use of language.
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Much has been made of the racist stereotyping that Duncan did in this statement, and for good reason. But there is an equally serious issue with what he said that few have commented on, and I am happy to see this Mom call Duncan out on it.
Duncan is like some punk kid being shown a Stradivarius and dismissing it because one can’t shred on it. He clearly has no understanding of the distance between taking stock of the gifts of a given child and subjecting that child one of these crude, invariant standardized tests. This is what happens when one appoints someone whose only talent and experience lies in playing basketball to the post of Secretary of Education. It’s embarrassing to have someone so clueless at the helm of national education policy. It’s as though Barack Obama had appointed Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church his science adviser. We’ve had some terrible Secretaries of Education, but this guy will have a special place in history. He will be remembered as being to education what William McGonagall was to poetry.
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I think of the crudeness of Duncan’s ideas about education and am reminded of this:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nadir-of-western-civilization-to-be-reached-this-f,2812/
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We have a Secretary of Education who has made of mockery of the office with his simple-minded notions and his contempt for kids and parents.
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Not to mention his contempt for democratic processes.
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And, by the say, one can shred on that Stad. Just check out Pinchas Zukerman playing Paganini. 🙂
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Strad
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Duncan’s comments were/are racist! The FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN President should not tolerate this behavior or condone such inflammatory speech from a top level cabinet member.
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Agree
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Here’s an exam question for Arne Duncan:
In what way is calling a child “not brilliant” because he or she does not perform well on a standardized test like saying that a human is worth $160.00 because that’s the value of the separated constituent chemicals that make up the human body? Explain.
Someone who can’t answer this question should not be allowed anywhere near a classroom and certainly shouldn’t hold any position of authority in the education hierarchy.
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Hope Duncan gets to read your brilliant comment…
Love it..
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I can’t believe that President Obama can continue allow his name to be attached to this failure of a leader. Duncan’s comments are not only racist and classist, they reveal the fact that he is no educator. As a “brown” suburban mom who also happens to be a teacher, I think all my kids are smart. My son is smart because he is such an analytical thinker and he loves to talk to any adult he can find and absorb every ounce of information he can find. My daughter is smart because she has the best smile ever, she wanted so much to learn to read just like her older brother that she worked on it day and night from the moment she figured out words. The little boy in my class who can’t sit still and won’t stop calling out is smart because he can figure out the smart board and iPad so much better than me, actually he’s teaching me how to use it. The little girl in my class who is “below grade level” in reading is smart because any time I need to know what’s going on with the kids in my class she can tell me everything, she’s so “with it.”
Arne is no educator, because to him being smart means doing well on a one day test. He thinks that if my children fail a test I will all of a sudden look at them and think differently of them. He’s no educator and no leader either. As a “brown” suburban mom, I guess he thinks I didn’t think my kids were smart anyway. That’s what he thinks of all the brown and white and in-between urban moms who haven’t had a voice in this mess he’s created.
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Arne Duncan: illustrates the idiom “to stir up a hornets’ nest”
May the swarm not be lightly satisfied.
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We haven’t seen anything yet, Cynewulf! Just wait until these ridiculous national tests are given. There is going to be a firestorm of a magnitude that we’ve never seen before in U.S. education. And then, after that happens, there will be a lot of collaborators with the Common core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth who will be falling all over themselves to explain how they were against this stuff all along.
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Awesome!
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Duncan was raised in Hyde Park, a Chicago neighborhood encompassing the University of Chicago. He is the son of Susan Goodrich (née Morton) and Starkey Davis Duncan, Jr. His father was a psychology professor at the university and his mother runs the Sue Duncan Children’s Center, an after-school program primarily serving African-American youth in the nearby Kenwood neighborhood.
Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools[2] and later Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. His senior thesis, for which he took a year’s leave to do research in the Kenwood neighborhood, was entitled The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass.[3]
While at Harvard, Duncan co-captained the varsity basketball team and was named a first team Academic All-American.[2][4] From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball, mostly in Australia, with teams including Melbourne’s Eastside Spectres, of Australia’s National Basketball League.[5] Duncan also participated in the 2012 and 2013 NBA All-Star Weekend Celebrity Games.[6]
In 1992 childhood friend and investment banker John W. Rogers, Jr., appointed Duncan director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a program mentoring children at one of the city’s worst-performing elementary schools and then assisting them as they proceeded further in the education system.[3] After the school closed in 1996, Duncan and Rogers were instrumental in re-opening it as a charter school, Ariel Community Academy.[11] In 1999, Duncan was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas.[12]
Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Duncan to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools on June 26, 2001.[13] Opinions vary on Duncan’s success as CEO; one prominent publication notes improved test scores and describes Duncan as a consensus builder,[14] while another finds the improvements largely a myth and is troubled by the closing of neighborhood schools and their replacement by charter schools, and what it describes as schools’ militarization.[15]
Duncan was appointed U.S. Secretary of Education by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate on January 20, 2009.[16] One of Duncan’s well-known initiatives as secretary has been a $4 billion Race to the Top competition. It asks states to vie for federal education dollars by submitting proposals that include reforms such as expanding charter schools and judging teachers partly on how well their students do on standardized tests.[17] Duncan sends his own children to public schools.[16
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I do believe that every teacher and administrator that posts here is significantly more qualified to be US Secretary of Education than Arne Duncan. Heck-of-a-job Arnie.
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HA! That last line is hilarious, NY teacher! I haven’t laughed so hard in some time!
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Love that thought!!
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No surprise, really. Teachers with years in the classroom and multiple degrees are all but shunned if caught thinking for themselves.
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Typical response. Reminds me of when I attended a PTA meeting in Duluth MN, I asked the superintendent a question about a concern I had. He told me not to worry my pretty little head. I decided right then to run for school board, I ran and won, thanks to some great people and my pretty little head. Some folks, this man, seem to think insulting women’s intelligence to win their point is effective. White, black, poor, he would not have said this to a man.
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Did I mention this superintendent brought the Edison Schools to Duluth, unlicensed teachers, neglected to test all students for the standardized test at the Edison Schools, no esl kids. At the end of the year, the charters added nothing, just smoke and mirrors and a lot of public money into private hands. They even tested similar if not lower than Duluth Public Schools.
The fab four, that was our group of women who won that year, he was sent on his way. Women have to run for office if we are to change the world.
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Moms know best and we know that Arne is a corporate tool appointed for the purpose of funneling federal funds to corporations.
Moms are researching the common core disaster and inBloom fiasco that Duncan funds and promotes with tax money. Moms are following the money.
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Of course, Arne wasn’t able to articulate appropriately the main point of his statement, which, actually (IMO) is not about the moms or the kids but is the SCHOOLS. “…their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were (sic), and that’s pretty scary.” (I also read that he expounded that point, referring to a house purchase so that a child could go to a particular school, because it is a good school, and would well-prepare the child academically. But–NO–the Common Core and their accompanying “standardized” (neither valid nor reliable, especially not these poorly constructed new ones!) tests PROVE that even these suburban public schools are not good! Well, we all know the answer to that one–REPLACE these not “quite as good” schools with—CHARTERS!!! Yes, folks, THAT’s the purpose of all of this–make even schools who have previously been named schools of excellence (by non othere than the U.S. D.o.Ed.) CHARTER schools!! Mothers, grab your sons and daughters
(because your schools are NOT preparing your children, according to the Common Core Tests & Pea$on state assessments) and RUN–don’t walk–to sign up for the newest charter school, staffed by our highly qualified TFA teachers!!
KA-CHING!!!
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Not many people are aware of this, but Duncan was really Obama’s second choice for Secretary of Education. No, his FIRST choice was never really Linda Darling-Hammond — it was Professor Harold Hill. Of course, ALEC informed Obama that not only was Hill a fictional character, he also had a shred of human decency deep down inside, so the decision was made to go with Duncan instead.
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This is a game of cat and mouse. Arne is the cat. Public. school users and workers are the mice. BUT, I would refer the Cat to the lyrics of a famous choral work, where the Cat is appropriately praised for his elegance, but the Mouse is praised more for his valor.
Those of us (moms, whomever) standing up for our children against the Cat, are showing great personal valor.
Read the lyrics (they are quite interesting, and the music is lovely). (Read down a bit to find the Cat and the Mouse).
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~tan/Britten/lambtext.html
“For the mouse is a creature of great personal valor.”
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Or for the more visual learners:
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Why Arne doesn’t respect her ability to think and reason for herself? Naughty, naughty! She wasn’t going by the script! Her only choices were A, B, C, or D. The powers that be don’t want workers that think for themselves so they naturally don’t value that.
I started elementary school just after Sputnik and believe I was taught to read, reason, and think for myself. Yet, now, as a teacher when I see how Common Core is impacting my students, the lowest 1% of the population, along with the all the testing and how it will impact my evaluation and pay check I have to question where all the research is and the reasons behind it all.
From American history I understand that the wealthy and politicians have always influenced American education. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
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This is wonderful. Here in Arizona when I bring up my dislike of common core people I assume I’m a tea partier and that I object for political reasons. That cold not be further from the truth. I will share this letter with many as a way to succinctly explain my concerns to those who have not been following this debate. Of course, once someone gets interested in the issues I always suggest that they follow Diane’s blog!
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I read the title quickly and thought it said, “Mob to Arne…”
I really can’t wait until it is an actual MOB that Arne is having to deal with.
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Superficial-unrealistic-rigor-is-atrocious/yet so many education reformers propose this/if you drill them hard enough they’ll stay upon their toes esss / Superficial-unrealistic-rigor-is-atrocious!
http://barrylane.bandcamp.com/track/superficialunrealisticrigorisatrocious
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TAGO!
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