Peter Greene has a large appetite for listening to our educational leaders. In this post, he describes speeches given by Arne Duncan and John King, defending the status quo. They want all children tested, they all teachers evaluated by test scores. They want everyone to stop making so much noise. They want everyone to listen to them. Now.
As Greene puts it, Arne’s new message is: “Shut up.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And, IMO, this is nothing new. This is why I retired. After 30 years of making things work as best I could for well over a thousand elementary students, I was no longer interested in jumping through hoops I didn’t believe in or respect.
What is ironic is that the job I loved, the goal to educate the whole child, the reason I felt I was put on this earth ever since I was 8 years old, the ideals which I held high, my own self-respect — is shattered by these insulting, condescending and invasive intrusion into all our lives. It is odd how I feel an aversion to what public schools have been forced to become, and yet I want to believe in what I thought they were.
How strange to feel caught between wanting to escape from and still fight for preserving public schools that are an extension of the community. I can see how and why people want to see their kids elsewhere. But this change is not by choice. It has been foisted upon the educators with utmost disrespect for all…from professors to administrators to teachers…leaving them all out of the loop…unless they sold out to buy in to the change.
I am so sad.
Thank you, Deb, for putting into words what I have been feeling.
I wish there were something I could do, but there isn’t enough time left for me to make a difference.
ditto for me, Deb You said it well.
It particularly makes me sick that teachers are evaluated on test scores.
It is particularly frustrating to realize that no matter how well your kids do, there are always means of making teachers take the blame. They expect more and more. They never let up. Our district has over 90% passage and some levels or classes 100%. It is never enough even though they know there is no guarantee that 100% in all classes is even possible. And so I can’t imagine even remotely how terrified teachers in “failing” districts must feel. The poverty factor continues to be ignored and this whole mess feels like being sucked into a sinkhole.
Deb,
100% agree.
deb, Louisiana Purchase, Elaine Nagle, and Ang: thank you so much for all you have done and are doing.
😎
I am sad, and angry, and yet happy that I am retired and have time to talk to people, or go to this demonstration or teach-in. I am happy to see young peple getting involved, but know they need to hear the benefits of our experience. I am glad this creeky old body has a few more miles, and am enjoying every minute!
“Peter Greene has a large appetite for listening to [supposed] our educational leaders.”
Well, Peter has to have a cast iron stomach. I can’t handle reading/hearing more than maybe two or three sentences before quitting in disgust at such meandering mouthings of idiology (purposely misspelled).
So I thank Peter for doing so for the rest of us weak stomached folk!
After hitting the post button a ghost of Spiro T overcame me for an instant: Meandering mouthing of memorized meaningless musings.
Spiro T. Agnew once declared, “We do not need a nation of intellects”. . . . .
Boy, he was not kidding . . . . .
From the article: “. . . that neither King nor any of the other Purveryors of Reformy Nonsense are fighting the status quo. The PoRN stars have had years upon years to show us all how their complex of standards based test driven high accountability baloney will save us all, and it isn’t happening.”
“Purveyors of Reformy Nonsense”-PoRN
I nominate that for acronym of the year!
well said, Duane!
Oh, I read all of them. You have to. We’re on defense 🙂
Joanne Weiss @JoanneSWeiss 21h
Common Core tests are in classrooms – and they’re actually working — a nice overview courtesy of @libbynelson http://vox.com/e/5365057
People talk about what they value, what’s important to them. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.
They’re really thrilled about these CC tests.
It doesn’t fit with their rhetoric around testing. If it’s just a tool, why the focus on and pom pom waving around the tests? Can they continue to insist it’s not about the tests when all they talk about is testing and test scores? I thought it was “about” the CC standards.
Who here believe, based on past behavior and actions of ed reformers over the last decade, that the CC will be “about” anything OTHER than the tests and test scores?
What was the discussion in NY when the results were released last year? 100% about test scores. Has anything changed? No. They’re the same people.
Thanks for this site. I love it. I linked to Peter’s post at Oped, and in my comment to your blog. Below, is my comment which I post at the end of the article page
.I invite any of you to add a comment at Oped, BECAUSE the audience there are ordinary citizens who do not go to the blogs of teachers or academics… well , they are not so ordinary, as the people who publish or post their regularly, like Robert Reich , Chris Hedges a, David Sirota, Bernie Sanders are very intelligent,educated citizens.Yet, many of them do not see through the smokescreen of confusion sown in the media, and it would be a boost to conversations about the education debacle, if some of the wonderful commentary I read here, appears there. Recently, Scott Baker wrote about education at Oped, and a commentary thread which included my links began. WE NEED TO DO MORE THAN PREACH TO THE CHOIR.
Here is what I said about Peter Greene (the links to the blogs and facebook page are active on the comment.
“Peter Greene’s site is a great find for anyone who wishes to know what the deformers are doing, as Diane Ravitch says on her blog “Peter Greene has a large appetite for listening to our educational leaders” and by leaders she means those people who spin the truth into lies, like Duncan and Emanual, Rhee and Klein, etc.
“Peter has a unique voice at Curmudgucation and has a facebook page, too.
If you want to know the REALITY of what is happening to our public schools, then the Ravitich blog, and Curmudgucation are 2 blogs where it is possible to get the big picture.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/CURMUDGUCATION-Duncan-to-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Children_Duncan-Arne_LEADER_Listening-140413-347.html#comment483175
Duncan, Rhee, King, and the other reformers keep making the same old stale and hollow speeches. They work for a privileged few but not the people. Why is Duncan still at the USDOE? It is amazing how both parties are nothing more than a propaganda machine for anti-public schools and the corporatization of American schools. Pathetic.
It’s nonsensical at this point. We had the Sec of Ed and the NY ed chief talking about “the status quo”.
I guess I’m not clear on what it would take for them to be “in power”.
They know they’re running this thing, right? This rag tag group of parents opposing testing are the “power” they’re fighting? That’s ridiculous. “Truth to power!” as the two education chiefs deliver another stern lecture to parents. I hope they don’t actually believe this. That would be alarming, all by itself.
Dee Dee and Chiara Duggan: the latest round of word salad and rebranding was presaged by his speech to the American Educational Research Association of April 30, 2013.
Link: http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/choosing-right-battles-remarks-and-conversation
For example, he poses two challenges:
1), “The first is to do a more complete job of asking comparative questions in research and evaluation.”
2), “My second challenge would be to remain open to findings that contradict or compel a rethinking of the conventional wisdom.”
He throws in the “Law of Unintended Consequences” and “Campbell’s Law” — and even quotes the latter!
The speech is an exemplar of the “you need look no further than in the mirror to find the source of the problem”!
Yet the concluding part of his talk is nothing more than a hectoring whine directed at many of his most cogent and accurate critics—the Rheeal problem is that you experts aren’t giving us policymakers and managers good enough standardized tests aka “assessments” in Duncanese.
Do not doubt for a moment that he truly is studiously and furiously committed to an alternate view of reality that only exists on RheeWorld—
[start quote]
Most of the assessment done in schools today is after the fact. Some schools have an almost obsessive culture around testing, and that hurts their most vulnerable learners and narrows the curriculum. It’s heartbreaking to hear a child identify himself as “below basic” or “I’m a one out of four.”
[end quote]
Clueless doesn’t begin to describe his out-of-touch assertions. Otherwise, how can he be so solicitous about the “almost obsessive culture around testing” and “most vulnerable learners” and narrowing “the curriculum” and, well, the “heartbreaking” bit at the end tugs at the listener and reader, doesn’t it? And then threaten to withhold funding to CA re the CC tests?
For one link among many re last point: http://edsource.org/2013/brown-signs-bill-delaying-exams-despite-duncans-threat/39904#.U0rMhV7oZz8
And then there’s the very recent declaration by NY State Commissioner John King that the test-score part of teacher evals will only constitute 40% [see link below]. Only! No “almost obsessive culture around testing” here! A tribute in Duncanese, perhaps, to his previous assertion that Montessori and CC are alike in so many many ways.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/10/commissioner-john-kings-message-to-new-york-i-wont-back-down/
😡
What does all this come down to? I refer viewers to two words in lowercase letters in the short posting that precedes this thread: “status quo.”
Logic, decency, honor, consistency, responsibility—all must give way to the defense of the status quo.
Thank y’all for your comments.
😎
It’s also been amusing to watch the ed reformers re-discover public schools during this brief period where they need them to administer these CC tests.
The Obama Administration have spent the last 6 years either using public schools as political punching bags or abandoning them, but public schools are getting all kinds of atta boys for putting in the Duncan testing regime!
It’s amazing how our “failed and failing” public schools suddenly became competent and crucial, just for this brief testing period.
I think it’s a real cynical betrayal of the kids in public schools who are sitting for these tests, and the people in public schools who are actually doing the work. THIS work has the ed reform stamp of approval, so all of a sudden we see a surge in interest.
I predict a dramatic drop-off after the tests are concluded, and we’ll go back to all charters, all the time.
I’d also ask national Democrats why public schools aren’t on the “Fair Shot” campaign agenda for the midterm election cycle.
When did K-12 public schools disappear from Democrats’ campaigns? Are they avoiding that subject because they’d have to explain how their agenda is identical to that of Eric Cantor’s?
They go right from pre-k to college! Where’d the public schools go? Is the argument that they do nothing to benefit public schools at the federal level? Because that’s certainly true.
I think I’ll just vote in state races, then.
http://www.dpcc.senate.gov/?p=news&id=286
Basketball skills aside, the most notable thing about Duncan is how embarrassingly bad he is at just about everything. It’s insulting, and shows what little regard education is held in, that such a human nullity is the ostensible head of federal education policy.
His tenure as “CEO” of the Chicago public schools was a disaster even by the debased metrics of the so-called reformers.
He attacks as failing the education system that he has nominally led for the better part of a decade, showing a gross lack of responsibility for the system he claims is failing.
Aside from an occasional, nasty faux pas – Katrina being a good thing for N.O. schools, deluded white middle class moms – he seems incapable of saying anything that is not a cliche, buzz phrase, talking point, spin, absurdity or complete fabrication.
I know there are political and personal reasons for his being where he is. Still, what an insult that our nominal adversary is someone who is probably laughed at by his patrons when he’s not around.
What kills me about Duncan is that he is completely and totally stupid. He’s way dumber than George W. Bush ever thought of being.
He’s the main reason the Obama presidency is a train wreck.
susannunes,
Maybe we’re wrong.
Perhaps Duncan, instead of being a less-than-zero empty suit, is actually a highly sophisticated holographic a. i. representation?
Or maybe he’s a bio-kinetic ed reform delivery bot? There seem to a lot of those replicating all over the place…
Arne is a wind-up toy. He does precisely what the boss wants him to be doing. That’s why he’s in the job.
Let the politicians know just how strongly you feel about the CC testing madness that has enveloped our public schools like a toxic cloud. The powers that be will only act if their power is threatened. This is a political battle, pure and simple. They have the CA$H but we have the numbers
Easier than you might expect.
In 27 hours, 1,452 letters/emails have been sent to Washington DC by outraged parents and educators from all across the country. Read their comments and add your own feelings and experiences. There is a map that shows the distribution of signees when you mouse-over each state.
I just started this at Petition2Congress yesterday morning. It is very easy to sign, copies are automatically sent to President Obama, and your own senators and your House representative. Please take the time to read and sign the petition entitled:
STOP COMMON CORE TESTING.
Thank you.
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/?m=5265435
Thank you for starting this petition. A thousand plus letters is only a beginning. Everyone reading, please sign the petition and keep those letters going to President Obama and legislators.
Thank you. Yes, just a beginning. Not a bad start for the first really nice weather weekend here in the NE. The vast majority of responders are from New York. Makes sense since we were one of only two states to be one full year ahead of the full CC rollout. Imagine what this would be generating if all parents had endured the experience of a 70% failure rate, the mind-numbing effects of EngageNY modules in the classroom, math HW confusing enough to stump engineers, endless test prep in lieu of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade birthday parties that never happened; the dark, dark shadow of mistrust and vindictiveness cast by Lord Cuomo, and, when we needed them the most, the abandonment of teachers by their union.
So, keep those letters and emails moving, and maybe one day we’ll here President Obama get asked why he has received thousands of emails asking that he STOP COMMON CORE TESTING. Thanks to all that have signed on to OUR petition.
Bully.
Please take the time to read and the petition entitled: STOP COMMON CORE TESTING. Thank you.
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/?m=5265435
2,016 emails/letters and counting – in only 38 hours
Years ago (1970s) I took a management course that described three general groupings of types of jobs based on the characteristics of the workers: there were white collar jobs, blue collar jobs, and pink collar jobs because the bulk of employees in those jobs, in the 1970s, were female. I can’t help but wonder if a small part of the attack on teachers comes from the mentality that the reformers have just assumed that can run over “those women.”
indeed
A lot of latent sexism in Ed Deform