When Arne Duncan went to South Carolina, he probably expected to meet the usual compliant, uninformed business crowd. But Patrick Hayes of EdFirstSC was waiting to meet him, hear him, and ask questions. And Hayes is neither compliant nor uninformed.
Hayes writes:
Ever seen a weasel tap dance? Would you like to?
Well, here it is: me vs. Arne Duncan.
My first thought when I left was that I should’ve boxed him in more during the preamble. ( I was worried about losing the mic as it was).
Looking this over, I don’t think it would have done a bit of good.
The man is animatronic. Push the button and out come the talking points.
For context, here’s the setup (video cuts in midway):
“Your Dept found a 36% error rate for value-added.
Your Dept’s merit pay brief says:
TX, Nashville, and Chicago programs all showed no effect on student achievement.’
We can add NY, Denver and (more than likely) DC to that list.
Why are you spending our money on a policy that is unfair to teachers and has an extensive record of failure?”
Later in the session, Duncan’s talking points misfired. Asked about our move away from Common Core, he went on at length about how upsetting it was seeing SC go back to low standards and lying to parents.
Apparently, nobody told him that our standards were among the most rigorous in the nation, according to Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank that pushes rigor.
Like Duncan, they’re big believers in the fallacy that if we make school harder, we’ve made school better.
Patrick Hayes
Director
EdFirstSC
843-852-9094
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He did the same on CBS’s morning show, robotically repeating his talking points. Most of what he said, repeatedly, was total rubbish. The main impression I got was of a sock puppet: not very bright, not curious, and manipulated from within. Truly a depressing experience.
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That’s a good way of describing Duncan!
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I watched that CBS segment and cringed at his performance. His answers were robotic and merely sound bites. Too bad Diane or Peter or Mercedes weren’t asking the questions.
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There wasn’t any political push-back to him because Democrats and Republicans agree on the same set of policies.
Ed reformers complain a lot about “politics” but an adversarial approach where there’s dissent, even if it’s politically motivated, is really, really important. As it is, the Senator from Louisiana can announce they should build “500 charter schools a year” with federal funding and no one even questions it, not even simple questions, like “where?”
Has she notified the people who are getting these schools? Was any consideration given to the effect of that federal building program on existing public schools? Schools are systems in a given area. You can’t just announce “500 charter schools a year” out of DC and not mention the public schools that are already there.
“We’re going to build on the success of charter schools with this bill,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a key sponsor, who said the legislation would permit the development of 500 charter schools per year across the country.”
It’s nuts, it’s a feeding frenzy, and it’s reckless. It would be really nice to have a lawmaker who isn’t completely co-opted by this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/congress-to-consider-charter-school-legislation/2014/05/07/7ba3df3a-d5fc-11e3-8a78-8fe50322a72c_story.html
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I shouldn’t have watched this just before lunch. My 8th graders can debate better than that! They actually KNOW to cite sources when they make an argument and to NOT ramble.
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This is our secretary of education? He can’t talk, he just babbles incoherently! It’s pathetic.
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He is ripe to be parodied on Stewart or Colbert. Good Lord!
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He has the cadence of a post-game athlete, which really isn’t a surprise, is it? All those words and saying absolutely nothing.
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Abolish the US Department of Corporate Education that “bought” Rod Paige, Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan for the purpose of destroying public education with Bill Gates behind the curtain. Parents are now on top of the corporate scam.
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I totally agree with you. The U.S. Department of Education, established in 1979, needs to be abolished. The U.S. Department of Corporate Education is the perfect name for it. It is full of “no nothings” whose ignorance will destroy public education. It all makes me sick. Parents are the only people who can fix this. But, can they? They are all working, stressed with this horrible economy, and trust their children to our schools. The parents are the key to shutting all of this down. I am shocked that it has gotten to this point.
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Even more sadly, Dems who still support Obama/Duncan, like those in my neighborhood, would call you a Tea Partier for saying the Dept.of Ed should be shut down.
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A bad office holder doesn’t diminish the job he’s doing badly – only underscores why it could be useful. It IS a Tea Party argument to abolish the US Department of Education, for several very critical reasons: (a) it’s critical to assuring the mobility of students across states and to and through careers, particularly as those careers get increasingly technical; (b) it’s critical to bridge k-12 with higher ed, and to mobilize adequate resources – and accountability – particularly in higher ed, where privatization has truly disrupted their primary purpose from teaching to “consuming” educational benefits; and (c) it’s stupid to give up the post just when it’s occupant happens to be an idiot. Blame Obama not the job! And hold both accountable.
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Is it true that Arizona State Online is for-profit?
You would think ONE of the glowing reports on the Starbucks deal that Duncan announced would have mentioned that.
You can no longer make this stuff up. It’s just a complete capture:
“ASU Online is a profit venture,” said Goldrick-Rab. “And basically, these two businesses have gotten together and created a monopoly on college ventures for Starbucks employees.”
Although ASU is a public university, its online wing is definitely a revenue-generating enterprise, helping the university manage its finances in an era of declining state aid. Online courses are taught by ASU professors, but much of the technical and administrative work that goes into managing ASU Online has been handed over to a private company, Pearson.”
So much for regulating online for-profits. We’re now actively endorsing, funding and expanding them.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/starbucks-offers-employees-free-tuition-arizona-state-university-online
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And all over Facebook today are people “congratulating” Starbucks for their “noble” enterprise.
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I think the first question is how many of their current employees have completed two years toward a degree, then, second,what is the federal contribution in terms of grants and aid?
Starbucks employees are low wage workers. Do they all qualify for federal subsidies in terms of tuition? How is “Starbucks” offering that benefit, then? Isn’t that just provided by the public?
I was surprised it was just swallowed whole.
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Ir was ASU emeritus professor Berliner who testified for the plaintiffs in the Vergara trial, and like Chetty of Harvard, also used fantasy stats to prove his point. The ignorant and probably biased judge Treu thereafter relied on the totally made up stats used by these two witnesses.
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In the best of all possible worlds, a higher court will reverse this sham evidence and trial…but don’t hold you breath.
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Something that may be useful is to cite the Consortium on Chicago School Research [CCSR] (http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/), particularly in discussions with Duncan himself. the CCSR is a unique database on student behavior, created, at least in part, because thirty years ago we discovered the schools had six incompatible report card systems, and therefor virtually no consolidated data on which desegregation, transfers, and student outcomes could be compared. As a result, first the University of Illinois, then Northwestern and the University of Chicago created and now curate this remarkable database on attendance, transfers, promotions, retention, graduation and mobility patterns which is, in fact, the largest student research database in the nation.
One of its most dramatic findings, for just one example, was that attendance in grades 7 and 8 was the best predictor of graduation rates four years later than any other data – grades, test scores, language, race, or others. If they go, they finish; if they don’t, they don’t. This, in turn, led to a range of early interventions to improve graduation rates that had – and probably still have – little or nothing to do with tests and test data. It also led me, specifically, to question “gain scores” as a predictor of anything. In several cases, both in and out of Chicago and other districts, we found that “gain scores” were engineered rather than reflective of real growth. It’s easy to hold back batches of kids and drill them for an extra year to improve their score, and even easier to identify them by tests in grades 6,7, or 8. Teachers, administrators – and elected officials, usually their un-reflective victims – then prattle about kids “not ready” for high school, or algebra, or a foreign language, or anything they want to make inaccessible.
The point is that Chicago has the best data, and nobody – but NOBODY – uses it.
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joebeckmann: with all due respect, at this point I cannot vouch for the trustworthiness and accuracy of the data base you mention, but I thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.
😎
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Arne’s job skills are narrowly defined as a signature to turn billions in federal education contracts over to corporations like Pearson or Murdoch’s inBloom (parents revolted). He has no other qualifications. He can’t teach or administer PK-12 due to the lack of credentials. We have a reformist copororate robot as “secretary” that Obama placed in the role. Abolish the department to diminish harm that’s coming in the next administration. Parents – the department is infested with Gates’ insiders.
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This is sort of handy. It’s the DFER list of candidates.
Might want to skip those, next election.
https://dferlist.org/page/candidates
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Also, for future reference: “thoughtful” is DC-speak for “something a person who agrees with my agenda wrote or said”
It’s amusing how often they use it.
Maybe we do need Common Core after all. They could all volunteer 🙂
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I am so fortunate. I am now listening.to Patrick this very moment. I just shared this blog quoting him – with him. This blog just got a huge Smile from Patrick!!!
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http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-06-09/news/bs-md-ci-teacher-evaluation-grievance-20140609_1_marietta-english-the-baltimore-teachers-union-principal-evaluations
This is amazing. Changing cut scores so pay isn’t too much of the budget.
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“The man is animatronic”
tago
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“start listening to the teachers and stop listening to the money”
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yes- stop with the snake oil already 🙂
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Fantastic…wish all teachers would stand up and speak truth to power. Congrats to the wonderful teacher.
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Hope you enjoy my few minutes with Arne D in D ^0^
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The award for Arne Duncan Word Salad 2013 went to Arne Duncan for his presentation at the 2013 AERA annual meeting.
While reading it, remember that he is chastising some of his most cogent and fiercest critics—because they can’t or won’t or don’t care to fix the messes he created.
Link: http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/choosing-right-battles-remarks-and-conversation
Special mention goes to the boo-hoos for children… well, in his own inimitable style:
[start quote]
Many current state assessments tend to focus on easy-to-measure concepts and fill-in-the-bubble answers. Results come back months later, usually after the end of the school year, when their instructional usefulness has expired.
And today’s assessments certainly don’t measures qualities of great teaching that we know make a difference—things like classroom management, teamwork, collaboration, and individualized instruction. They don’t measure the invaluable ability to inspire a love of learning.
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]
The usual unconfirmed rumor has it that this is taped on the ceiling above his chair in the DoE. On those frequent occasions when he leans back to relax he can see these words staring right at him, giving him even greater resolve and determination:
“I could wile away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain
And my head I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had a brain.”
I feel all tingly myself as I relate this stirring bit of DC insider info…
😎
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Just a quick clarification …Fordham USED to say SC had the highest standards in the country. I also have a 2009 press release from Arne Duncan saying the same thing.
Since Gates gave Fordham $6 million to push Common Core, all of their rankings now revolve around alignment to Common Core. Our rankings have dropped from straight-A to C’s and D’s. How they do that with a straight face, I do not know.
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For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone with even 1/2 oz. of grey matter between their ears would even begin to give any credence whatsoever not only to those rankings but also what comes out of the Dunkster’s pie hole.
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Not that we need any more evidence of the contempt teachers are held in, but perhaps most insulting is that the patrons of so-called reform gave us such a substandard facsimile of a human being as Secretary of Education.
Money and power aside, It shows how little they really care about any of this.
Come on, we know there are much more highly-developed bio-kinetic policy bots in DC, but they stick teachers with this obsolete program, embarrassing everyone with its primitive computerized vocal templates and speech recognition systems. What a clunker.
Judging by this back-of-the-hand treatment, you have to wonder if they even think of us as worthy foes.
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Why yes Michael, we are worthy of all the contempt they heap upon us. They need their better models to use on those with more money and power. Everyone else under siege in this economy is too busy to notice teachers being eviscerated, for their purposes the Duncan model 000 will do just fine. They know we do not have the money to fight back, and they have convinced the public we are evil and greedy for wanting to be treated fairly and make a living. How dare we want such things. Next we might even want some dignity!
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You could use this:
“The strongest numbers came when 81% of voters favored giving teachers and students time to adjust to the new expectations before there are consequences for test results with over half of voters feeling strongly about this.”
It’s polling from one of the approximately 10,000 ed reform lobby groups- the questions are slanted as hell, and even then 81% of people think students and teachers need more time to put in this giant national CC program.
The Obama Administration are with the 19% who want test and punish to commence immediately 🙂
Duncan is contra to most of the actual people who will be taking their national test. People will think that’s unreasonable and excessively punitive.
http://www.achieve.org/VoterPerceptionsCCSS
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“Come on, we know there are much more highly-developed bio-kinetic policy bots in DC,”
I cringe when he appears with yet another CEO or billionaire.
DC seems blissfully unaware that an awful lot of people think they’re entirely bought and paid for.
I’m genuinely baffled by the political calculation here. They really think daily appearances with America’s wealthiest people and largest corporations are wise right now?
It’s almost fun to watch, in a train wreck kind of way.
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But they do not play basketball with the Prez/
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Goodness . . .
Arne Duncan’s creepy visage on that screen looks like the almighty OZ. Norman Bates had more charm.
However, notice how fast his rate of utterances is and how hurried his choice of words is. His delivery conveys nervousness and some anxiety in the persusion process. This in psycho-linguistic analysis is reflective of someone who really does not stand by his convictions nearly as much as his desire to fulfill an agenda that rewards him extrinsically. His speech style shows his need to please someone other than himself in order to eventually ad ultimately please himself.
His mannerisms reduce him to nothing more than a little puppet with a long nose, hoping to be turned into a real boy some day if he just pleases the plutocrats by selling their McDonald’s drive through educational mission to the general citizenry.
How cowardly and villainous.
This wooden marionette of a man should be broken into smaller pieces and thrown into the fireplace to keep the house warm. Not even the blue fairy can save him at this point . . . . .
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It sounded a little like someone has given him a new talking point about VAM: how we need to disaggregate data and compare gifted students against each other and so on and so forth. He doesn’t seemed to have figured out how to insert that seamlessly into his narrative of the fastest improving urban districts based on test scores. He may still be working on memorizing that material. 🙂
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