The Internet is buzzing about Arne Duncan’s condescending and insulting comment about white suburban moms who oppose the Common Core because they discovered their child was not so brilliant after all and their local public school was not very good.
But meanwhile Mercedes Schneider found Arne’s message to the first Moms Congress, where he defined parental engagement in ways that would make ALEC and Jeb Bush happy. Most people think of parental engagement as getting involved to help your school, but Arne defined as as school choice, exercising your right to leave your school and go elsewhere.
Now we understand why rumors flew in 2012 that if Romney were elected, he might ask Arne to stay on. Race to the Top is completely congruent with No Child Left Behind. The main difference between them is that Democrats stood up to Bush’s NCLB.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Duncan defined several roles, only one of which involved choosing a school:
“Parents can serve in at least one of three roles: Partners in learning, advocates and advisors who push for better schools, and decision-makers who choose the best educational options for their children.”
http://www2.ed.gov/news/speeches/2010/05/05032010.html
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“Parents have more choices today than ever before, from virtual schools to charters to career academies. And our schools need empowered parents.”
I think he’s dropped “virtual schools” – the virtual charters have become a national embarrassment for reformers- and replaced that with “blended learning”.
The inventor of the MOOC concept has renounced his own idea (doesn’t work) – good for him, must be an honest guy:
“We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product,” Thrun tells me. “It was a painful moment.” Turns out he doesn’t even like the term MOOC.
I think it’s probably awkward, though, for the Arne Duncan’s and Tom Friedman’s of this world, who were trumpeting online learning as the next education miracle and pushing it on poor and working class kids.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb
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Thanks for sharing this, Chiara. Interesting story.
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I think reformers like Duncan (and King) have difficulty with “voice” because they favor a market approach where “choice” is the favored approach to parental dissent or disagreement.
The fact is, if you’re a parent and you don’t agree with the methods at a KIPP school or an online academy, you simply go back to the your public school. KIPP and K12 aren’t changing. The kids who don’t fit in and the parents who disagree or dissent just leave. That’s “choice”
That’s fundamentally different with the situation they’re facing with public school parents, who aren’t going anywhere and in fact think Duncan and King should be shown the door. That’s voice.
It’s choice versus voice, which is funny, because it’s exactly what economist Milton Friedman predicted would be the tension when he developed the larger theory of Duncan’s version of ed reform.
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With the destruction of the neighborhood public school proceeding apace, it needs to be pointed out that so-called choice is in the hands of school managers – public or charter – not parents. The school choice meme is a canard, masking the destabilization of zoned community schools.
Whether it’s charter schools creaming students on the front or back end, or small public “academies” (really just test prep factories with fancy branding), the actual choices are in the hands of those running the schools, not parents. Their children’s attendance at these schools is a crap shoot, or in the case of charters, a lottery.
Here in NYC, there’s one choice no one is being offered: the choice of sending your children to an adequately funded, well-resourced neighborhood public school.
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There is never any warning to parents that, making the choice that reformers want them to make, choosing either charters or private voucher schools, means giving up their right to democratic representation in their children’s education, because most of those schools do not have elected school boards with parent and community members.
In fact, many charter schools and private schools don’t even have Parent-Teacher Organizations (PTOs). I’ve worked at a number of private schools and none had PTOs. At one school, the parents really wanted a PTO and tried to establish it, but the school administration told the non-unionized teachers they did not want us involved in the PTO and, out of fear of losing our jobs, teachers obliged. The PTO quickly fizzled out –which was the intent of administration, as they detested that kind of parent involvement.
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Reteach 4 America: you have pinpointed one of the critical roles of a blog like this.
Bringing together relevant information and sharing it with many thousands of others helps set the stage for mobilizing people to ensure a “better education for all.”
When folks point out that “choice” to the rheephormistas means “the choice[s] we self-designated smart people pick for the dummies like you—and nothing else” it loses its appeal.
Thankfully, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan doesn’t know his own cultural history—“Loose lips sink ships.” Well, his loose lips are helping sink the Ship of Fools called $tudent $ucce$$.
And it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch. [NOTE TO THE SATIRE IMPAIRED: SARCASM ALERT!]
😎
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This is really unfair to parents:
“Dr. King said in an interview that interrupting the changes now would not make sense, and noted that the state signed on to the Common Core three years ago. Many of the tests that teachers and parents are complaining about are mandated by federal law, he said, and some, like Regents exams, have been in place for more than a century.”
Duncan tells media the standards are set by states and state leaders then tell parents the tests attached to the standards are mandated by federal law.
Parents know local public school leaders have absolutely no influence or power in ed reforms, so that’s a dead end, and if they turn to Duncan he sends them to King who sends them back to Duncan.
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Politico reporter corrects US Sec of Ed on facts about US public schools:
“In his remarks Friday, Duncan suggested selling the Common Core by reminding parents that their children are not just competing against their neighbors, but against “India, China, Singapore and South Korea” for jobs in the global economy.
In fact, kids at well-to-do suburban schools do exceedingly well against global competition on international reading and math exams. The U.S. average is dragged down to middling, or worse, in the global rankings by its high concentration of high-
poverty schools.”
Good for her. More of this, please.
Why can’t Duncan sell this thing on the merits? What is it, specifically? Why would anyone want it in their public school? Why just keep repeating these tired reform talking points?
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/arne-duncan-common-core-comment-99987_Page2.html
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Of course the oligarchs want us to compete with the workers in those countries. Drives the price/cost of labor way down. Labor wages down higher profits for those who suck the lifeblood of others.
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I wish Duncan would stop repeating the “skills gap” canard.
Scott Walker in Wisconsin said there was a “skills gap” and they all then started repeating it like parrots, but there is a GENUINE debate on the skills gap, and Duncan and Obama just ignore the debate and treat it as fact.
I think part of the reason they do this is political: the economy hasn’t gotten better for middle class people and they need to explain why that is, so they repeat “skills gap!” over and over.
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Talking about billionaires, that 60 Minutes’ segment with the billionaires made me almost projectile vomit. Charley Rose, the fawning stooge for the top 1%, asked some mildly challenging questions of these plutocrats but it was really a love fest for those wonderful rich folks and all their philanthropy. How about the real question, why don’t they pay more in taxes, why aren’t they taxed at the top marginal rate of 91% instead of the paltry 39.6% and even less for capital gains (14%-17% ?). Pete Peterson was one of the guests on the show, Pete Peterson, the guy who has had a jihad against Social Security for decades, a man who has spent millions of dollars propagandizing and proselytizing against SS and advocating for SS “reform.” Beware of billionaires who want to reform anything, especially education and SS. Their idea of reform is really destruction and privatization.
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Read this:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2013/11/17/can-hedge-fund-billionaire-paul-tudor-jones-save-americas-public-education-system/?utm_content=buffer0f55d&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer
It’s inadvertently funny it’s so fawning. It’s like a parody. The hedge fund billionaire will save us!
I wasn’t aware we needed saving! 🙂
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Thanks, Chiara, for that Forbes article on Paul Tudor Jones, yet another billionaire hedge fund manager who’s supposedly going to save us with his philanthropy. He reads from the same script as all these billionaires do with his pro charter school agenda and anti-union comments. If these guys and their corporations would just pay their fair share in taxes it would go a long way in reducing poverty in this country, more so than their foundations accomplish. From the article: “One way to make better teachers, Jones argues, is to reform the way teachers’ unions work in education. “What’s happened in the last 20 years in many of the large cities in the U.S. is that the educational system has been dictated by the unions,” he says. “They have failed. They get an ‘F.’ What we have now is a failure in the way the teaching corps is organized, administered and deployed.” Robin Hood will start this process in New York City during the teachers union contract negotiations next spring. “We will be there, and we will be loud and demonstrative,” he says. (Jones is not completely against teachers unions and prefers to work with them. He recently gave $125,000 to a union-led effort to increase school funding via a tax increase in Colorado.) “The goals Paul and Robin Hood have set are incredibly ambitious, but they’re achievable–if we confront the challenge head-on and don’t shy away from the toughest issues,” says Michael Bloomberg.”
Jones is not against unions except for 99.9% of the time when’ he’s bashing unions. How quaint.
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I think the comment that Duncan was trying to make—and would have made, if he could go back in the Back to the Future DeLorean car—would be:
————-
DUNCAN: “Now while moms and dads of all socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities are all blessed with children who have unlimited gifts and potential, these parents unfortunately are now—thanks to early results of Common Core setting them straight—are now facing the fact that, due to the failed status quo of our current public school system, THEIR WONDERFUL CHILDREN ARE NOT AS WELL-EDUCATED AS THESE PARENTS PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT THEY WERE OR SHOULD BE, and the Common Core is doing the painful and necessary work of helping them come to grips with how bad traditional public schools really are, and how the inferior education at these schools is keeping those brilliant children from reaching their potential and utilize their unlimited gifts.”
————————
I know, I know… that’s a mouthful… I’ll never make it as a speech-writier… but the point is that what Duncan really wanted to do was to trash current traditional public schools… and make the argument that the real problems are: 1) unionized teaching staffs; and 2) democratic control of schools by parents via elected school boards. His point was NOT TO TRASH THE KIDS of suburban white moms, or of any parent…
All parents of every ethnicity, gender, class, etc. …would then use this justification—the old traditional system is hopeless and irreparable, as proven by the “truths” coming out as revealed by Common Core—for then abandoning traditional public schools in favor of a free-market system where all schools are privatized, and all teachers and parents will basically be powerless… as the “reformers” are the only ones who really know best.
Duncan is just the stooge that communicates this message for the “reformers.”
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I think we know what he meant. Please don’t write scripts for him.
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Earlier this month I suggested some reading for the under-informed Duncan (see below). I wonder if he could pass the CCSS criteria for “communication skills.”
http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2013/11/some-reading-for-arne-duncan.html
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From AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he regrets his “clumsy phrasing” in singling out white suburban moms for opposing new higher academic standards.
In a statement released Monday, Duncan defended the sentiment that parents need to realize schools aren’t performing as well as they think — but said that applies to all parents, not just suburban moms.
Duncan faced criticism from conservatives, parents and teachers unions over his Friday remarks about critics of the Common Core State Standards. The remarks were reported by Politico.
Duncan has consistently shown little patience for critics of the standards being implemented in 45 states and the District of Columbia. But his comments went a step further and added elements of race and class.
He says he regretted the remarks, but did not apologize for them.
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Hi everyone,
I’d like to share a talk I recently gave to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL about the excessive testing going on in our public schools and who is profiting by it.
http://youtu.be/WheNIUTddT0
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