Joshua Starr to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: Stop calling lifelong public educators liars.
This is one of Arne’s most inexplicable habits. He has repeatedly said that educators lie to children. They tell children they are smart, they tell them they passed, they tell them they did good work, when Arne knows better. He knows our kids are lazy and dumb. He alone tells the truth.
Thanks to Josh Starr, superintendent of Montgomery County, Maryland, for saying that’s enough. Please, Arne, just stop it.
Find the good and praise it.
Or, as W. H. Auden wrote, “In the prison of his days, Teach the free man how to praise.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s as if Arne is telling us all that we’re encouraging some form of denial… as a teacher who has to CONSTANTLY grade assignments, it’s a form of constantly criticizing children… that MUST be tempered with praise, warm-fuzzies, & finding the positive. So… fighting data with data… I bet his highness Arne doesn’t know that for every negative a child hears, they need to hear 4 positives? I bet his highness Arne doesn’t know that for every negative an at-risk child hears, they need to hear 16 positives? I think the one in denial is the one who continues to pursue negative legislation in spite of the constant feedback that it’s not working.
Hannah,
“. . . that for every negative a child hears, they need to hear 4 positives . . . that for every negative an at-risk child hears, they need to hear 16 positives”
And sources for those statistics/supposed facts, please!
Thanks in advance,
Duane
Not everyone responds to material things, but everyone needs to be validated. When you honestly praise people and acknowledge their positive contributions, they will redouble their efforts. No tricky psychological concepts, just Life Experience 101. I’ll bet Arne lives for corporate praise.
This is part of the agenda of privatization… no sense reforming and privatizing something that already works.
This happens a lot.
For an example of how truly insane the right-wing,
privatizers’ attack on unionized teachers and
traditional public schools is, check out Chris Christie’s
New Jersey.
Now, what would you think of a new owner / general
manager of an NFL team who—immediately after that
team won the Super Bowl—did not praise the team,
but instead publicly said:
— that the season & Super Bowl victory was “irrelevant”
— that the players suck, and are part of “a wretched system”;
and
— the most or all of the winning players need to be replacedl
all the while the new owner or general manager is doing and saying all this just so he adheres to some sinister agenda that his masters demand he follow?
A loaded question, I know, but bear with me.
Well, a couple years back, New Jersey—with a
significantly high-poverty population—scored
Number One out of all fifty states in academic
achievement. Amazing!
However, the “players” were—and are—UNIONIZED
public school teachers, and the privatizers’ playbook
mandates that no good word must ever be spoken of
them.
Goebells himself said Rule 1 of propaganda: “never
say anything remotely complimentary about ‘your enemy”.
Now check this out: Chris Christie’s newly-appointed
New Jersey Ed. Commissioner Bret Schundler said
that New Jersey’s No. 1 NAEP ranking—out of
all fifty states—was irrelevant and meaningless,
that it should be ignored, and that the
teachers were actually ‘wretched’.
He had to; “No sense reforming something that already works.”
It’s true, folks:
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bob_braun/2010/05/us_education_tests_ranks_nj_at.html
As you read what’s below… New Jersey was NUMBER ONE in the NAEP rankings out of all fifty states… NUMBER ONE!!!!!
——————-
“While New Jersey’s education officials might be expected to embrace good news, Schundler’s spokesman, Alan Guenther, dismissed the results as ‘irrelevant.’’
“Guenther lumped all of public education together as one ‘wretched system’ that fails students. In an e-mailed response, he wrote:
” ‘ The NAEP rankings are irrelevant. We should not take solace in the fact that we score well in a wretched system that fails to adequately teach such a high percentage of children.’
“Not everyone agrees, of course. The assessment program is a widely regarded measure of educational progress and, in the past, critics of New Jersey public schools used a poor showing as the sort of bad news that was good news to reformers.”
———————————————–
Don’t you see? A decade-and-a-half earlier, when New Jersey had a low NAEP ranking, the reformers cited this as “proof” that the system was failing, and needed reforming.
Now, that New Jersey’s No. 1 in NAEP rankings… well, now the same NAEP rankings are irrelevant and meaningless..
Here’s another link:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/05/if-you-can-hide-facts-that-dont-fit.html
——————————————
“In the case of the latter reform strategy of declaring the facts irrelevant, New Jersey’s (and the Business Roundtable’s) Education Commissioner, Bret Schundler, provides a prime example. Because the reality does not fit the ‘terrible teacher’ narrative that Governor Christie has adopted, two days ago Schundler denounced New Jersey Public Schools as a ‘wretched system’ and the state’s #1 national ranking on the NAEP in both 4th and 8th grade reading and math as ‘irrelevant.’
“Facts don’t fit the ideology? Just declare them meaningless.”
Here’s a great COMMENT below the first article / link above:
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bob_braun/2010/05/us_education_tests_ranks_nj_at.html
“This is so pathetic it verges on comedy.
“Schundler and Christie have been pushing merit pay,
yet they want to throw out NJ test scores???!!!
“These men are not interested in reform.
They are interested in destruction.
“They want accountability and call NJ’s high performance irrelevant.
HOW DARE HE SAY THAT? It is an outrage.
“NJ’s teachers have succeeded in turning NJ into one of the highest performing education systems in the USA.
“We have a high achieving Education system now.
“Shame on us If we allow these men to succeed.
“Shame on us for voting Christie in.
“Shame on us for sitting by as he ruins education in NJ.
“Let Mr. Shundler go to a few schools and face the students.
Mr. Shundler, tell our children to thier faces that the work they have done is irrelevant.
“Mr. Shundler and Governor Christie do not want fiscal responsibility.
“They do not want accountability.
“THEY WANT PRIVATIZATION AND DEREGULATION.
“It does not matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican, what they are doing is wrong, and you are being misled if you believe them.
“CHRISTIE IS A LIAR!
“Don’t let them end public education in NJ.”
Let’s not get too one=sided here. Yes, NJ averages well on the NAEP’s because, so far, our wealthy communities do extraordinarily well; our numbers are good enough to overcome results in those NJ communities that do very poorly (Newark, Camden, Paterson). And our middle class in the south seems to be hanging on. That does not mean that the status quo is OK– NJ’s poorest communities are doing so badly that Christie’s privatization efforts are not encountering much pushback in its poorest communities.
NJ is obviously hideously segregated. Christie is taking advantage of this to promote privatization– so far, only in the inner-cities. Those areas get a higher per-pupil expenditure, supported by the wealthier areas. What Christie is trying to do now is ostensibly to strip the poor areas of their higher-per-pupil expenditure via privatization– that plays well with those of us ponying up incredibly outrageous property taxes (we have to keep upping local taxes because they take monies away from us to support poor areas)– but anyone with an ounce of common sense has seen that privatization of public services ends up costing more, not less.
The point being: Christie, like every other Republican governor, is scamming the middle-& upper-middle-class taxpayers with the promise of lowering their taxes by privatizing public education for the poor, while raking in campaign monies from for-profit education corporations.
Still missing the point. I see it all the time when those against CC and the test use the test to say who is doing good and who is doing poorly.
We have a fail fail situation. Those who do poorly on the test , fail. Those who do well on the test also fail because they don’t get to learn what is meaningful and aren’t assessed in a rational way.
We must quit using the test as an indicator of school success. It’s just an artificial snap shot in time and only tells what kids do with paper and pencil in hand on the day the test is given. Hardly an indicator of anything.
Although the Yeats poem is wonderful, of late I’ve been reminding myself (and others who might be interested in listening) that our side — the side of justice, democracy, and all that good stuff — has faced worse. Perhaps we could note that what we are watching, in hope, is the end of a low dishonest decade that Arne Duncan (and many others) will personify for history.
On my desk at CTU I have a souvenir my father brought back from his work of 1944 – 45. During those months, his work was in Europe with the U.S. 44th Infantry Division. That was a time when our struggles were more challenging than today. (Not to make light of today)…
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night. – See more at:
From September 1, 1939, same poet. It was a long and nasty march from September 1939 to September 1945, when my mother ended her work (Army Nurse Corps) on Okinawa.
Diane Ravitch: This is one of Arne’s most inexplicable habits. He has repeatedly said that educators lie to children. They tell children they are smart, they tell them they passed, they tell them they did good work, when Arne knows better.
Two comments.
First: Again, public education has been made a political whipping post, and Arne Duncan is using it that way. We need to find a way for public education to be included in the same breath as God, mom, and apple pie. We need politicians, celebrities, and other successful Americans to include a public education on their resume and public bio whenever possible.
Second: Duncan is just being a little stupid. I think all teachers should feel like claiming that they have the best kid. Mr. Duncan should also feel free to claim that his wife is the most wonderful woman in the world, and not feel insulted because we demand that he prove it with quantifiable data.
Arne needs a good dose of Mary Kay Ash.
Ah, if only teachers and parents would rise to the levels of honesty exhibited by Arnie Duncan, if only they would begin to face the awful truth, then perhaps one day (Oh bright hope!) some few of their children might be able to rise to within sight, at a distance, of the secretary’s level of genius. Is it too much to hold out such hope? Call me a dreamer. Go ahead. Say, that Bob Shepherd, he’s a dreamer.
Perhaps some few students, if they understand, now, the depths of their unworthiness, could one day rise to complete the advanced post-graduate work that would enable them to begin to understand the subtleties of Secretary Duncan’s profoundly counterintuitive theory of education. They might begin to understand that punishment and reward based on summative tests of a bullet list of skills will lead inevitably, ineluctably to a Golden Age. It’s a profound theory, and yet, on the face of it, so simple–simple-minded, one might even say–mind-numbingly philistine and simple minded! Oh, Arnie, Arnie! How could we have known? Insights such as yours come only to the few–to extreme outliers. These are once-in-a-millennium, paradigm-shifting revelations that fly in the face of all experience, science, and common sense. We are not capable of such thought as yours, and we are not worthy.
Perhaps some few of our students might, after sufficient bubbling of bubbles, one day be able to sample with understanding, themselves, some portion of the vast, profound scholarly work that Secretary Duncan produced during his miracle year in which, iconoclastically, he pondered, from the free throw line,how curricular and pedagogical approaches might be reenvisioned as a Race to the Top–for such was the key insight that informed his many subsequent scholarly papers and treatises, as well as his decades of classroom teaching–teaching that provided the critical laboratory and crucible within which he tested his insight, refined it, annealed it, and developed it into a system with which to bludgeon us all. Given his towering intellect, his vast scholarship, and his equally vast experience in the classroom, how could our beloved president do other than choose him, Arnie, to lead our legions of benighted, unenlightened teachers and administrators out of their darkness?
The man and the moment met, historically, and melded, like virus and host. It was meant to be.
Oh teacher of teachers–Oh Arnie! When have we ever seen your like? Long will the world remember, and long will it seek to come to grips with what you have wrought! Surely we shall be telling our children’s children, with wonder, with amazement, that such things occurred in these times and were allowed to occur.
Oh Arnie..dear dear Arnie, I did not hear you berating your dear pal Bloomberg when NYC was caught “gaming the high stakes test” system by moving around cut scores and making just a few more easy test questions each year to make it appear as if students were making “brilliant gains” thanks to Bloomberg “leadership”! It was “okay” for Bloomberg to “praise the marvelous strides (knowing full well the “how” behind them) during that time period. And barely a peep was made by you Arnie. I guess Christie is taking your playbook when he falsely scolds NJ teachers completely ignoring favorable NAEP results! Is it okay to LIE as long as what you are doing furthers the goals of those from the “RIGHT SIDE”? Really, Arnie… is this the message we want to send to our nation’s title one students and for that matter our nation’s citizens? Look where it got Madeoff (and that is just one example). I am an optimist and no matter how bad it gets I believe the truth will win out… where will you be then Mr. Duncan? You can start to repair your doings by reversing course. It is possible. As bad as you in your heart know it is, you can start with a moratorium (even a cancellation) of common core. It cannot be salvaged in that it was created with an inextricable tie to high stakes testing and without any regard to child development and the realities of the classroom. But, the classroom teachers could have told you that had you REALLY sought their advice in the first place. But you didn’t. Take teachers’ advice now and start listening to them.
Amanda Ripley is out for school choice week. Her thesis (now) seems to be focused on how we spend “more” than other countries on education.
This is a common talking point of the ed reform crowd, but it seems to be the sort of comparison that is really ripe for spin.
One of you who have been at this a lot longer than she has might want to take it apart, and see if comparing what South Korea spends to what the US spends is a valid comparison. I read one of her pieces on South Korea and my impression was South Korean middle class parents supplement publicly-funded ed with really expensive test prep courses. Economic sites (not ed sites) report that the second largest expense (after housing) in South Korean is private spending on education (tutors, test prep). If so, that doesn’t seem to be a valid comparison.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/book-club-poverty-doesn-t-explain-poor-american-school-performance
Regarding Mr. Duncan’s statement about teachers and public schools “lying” to their students:
Projection, Psychological; “… a defense mechanism in which a person unconsciously rejects his or her unacceptable attributes by ascribing to objects or persons in the outside world.” (via Wikipedia)
Why does Duncan keep lying about TN public schools? Duncan seems determined to protect Kevin Huffman from the statewide pushback against his corporate-friendly agenda coming from parents, teachers, and superintendents. https://www.facebook.com/RemoveKevinHuffman
He praises TN in almost every speech as if being 4th from the bottom of national ACT scores and 47th in funding is an example of quality. Duncan ignored the soaring segregation in Memphis and Chris Barbic’s callous disregard of correcting it. http://nashvillepublicradio.org/blog/2014/01/21/dont-blame-charter-schools-for-lacking-diversity-says-top-tn-reformer/
Why does Duncan keep lying about TN public schools? Duncan seems determined to protect Kevin Huffman from the statewide pushback against his corporate-friendly agenda coming from parents, teachers, and superintendents. https://www.facebook.com/RemoveKevinHuffman
He praises TN in almost every speech as if being 4th from the bottom of national ACT scores and 47th in funding is an example of quality. Duncan ignored the soaring segregation in Memphis and Chris Barbic’s callous disregard of correcting it. http://nashvillepublicradio.org/blog/2014/01/21/dont-blame-charter-schools-for-lacking-diversity-says-top-tn-reformer/
When one calls others liars in a public setting like Duncan does, s/he is usually talking about himself/herself. Watch when people point the finger to deflect blame from himself/herself. This is Psych 101.
It appears to me that Sec. Duncan doesn’t listen to educators that are knowledgeable and have hands on experience with students. Emphasis on standardized testing is destroying our students and stops teachers from teaching students to think. Answering questions on standardize tests is not an indicator of real learning.
Perhaps with more responses from individuals like Mr. Starr, Duncan will realize all this emphasis on standardize testing, actually hinders our students from a receiving a quality education.
actually the system of education does force the lies of the letter grade upon students. The system forces teachers to choose between passing kids forward without learning or failing them into oblivion. The system forces the lie of a standardized test saying that if you do good you are smart and if you don’t you are stupid not giving any credence to what a child can actually do. The system pushes kids into the streets if they don’t learn at the same rate as the gifted robots.
Once we realize that the problem with education is systemic, then we can stop the scapegoating and begin the change..
Just go Mr. Duncan. Please just go away.You have become part of the problem.