Arne Duncan went to Maryland to urge parents to organize against the House rewrite of NCLB. What parents wanted to talk about was Common Core and testing.
He told them there would be bumps in the road but everything would be fine in the end.
“I’m really afraid that the PARCC assessments are going to take away from my child’s time in the classroom,” one mother said to the education secretary at the Parent Teacher Association town hall at Wiley H. Bates Middle School in Annapolis. (She was referring to common-core-aligned tests being developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, one of two consortia devising such assessments.)
“And another parent asked, “Why are we doing too much too soon on aggressive PARCC testing in schools? … Can’t we take some time to examine this before we use our children as guinea pigs in the classroom?”
Duncan proceeded to make claims about the bill that, strictly speaking, were not accurate. And of course, he won’t back away from Common Core or high-stakes testing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He failed to mention that those “bumps in the road” are their children.
I think the above comment is inappropriate.
Why?
Raj, what comment is inappropriate?
Ye ain’t rednun o mine yet!
What are they supposed to be organizing against?
This is the Senate Democrats:
Murray: As we look to fix #NCLB, I’ll be looking for ways to spur innovation and give schools, districts, and states resources they need
Why don’t they know what they want? They had 7 years to think about it.
So far, we know they want testing. They’re definitely in the pro-testing camp. They’ve already voted for a charter school funding bill, so now we have 1. testing and 2. charter schools. What is the Democrats’ position? Do they have one other than those two items?
To me, there is no problem in using testing to determine what is the level of children’s academic achievement.
However, the tests my children took when in K-12 were not for that. They were merely used to stack-and-rank.
And now that stack-and-rank has evolved into a series of punishments that quite simply have turned public school policy upside down, what with failing schools being closed in favor of charters that don’t “fix” anything, it is not surprising that many are complaining.
This is why children are literally bumps on the road because, as Duncan famously put it, these tests do not show how smart our precious little children are and have been simply thrown under the testing bus.
The bottom line is that the higher socioeconomic classes never used tests on their children and now that the middle (lower and upper) classes have figured out that their children will be forced into this racket, they are not happy.
And neither would I be if my children were still in K-12. I would opt them out in a New York second (and I live in California!).
The other bottom line is that Duncan is too invested in tests. If tests go away an awful lot of people won’t make money. And how can he let down that many people who are, no doubt, donors to all his supporters (as well as the GOP but that is another story)? Sure, Obama does not have to run anymore, but the other ones do. And he cannot let them down, can he?
The implementation failure of the Common Core initiative cannot be ignored. The nation’s children are not to be used as guinea pigs in an experiment. No one believes that all will be just fine, today or tomorrow. Making light of the massive failure by the words “bumps in the road” is not convincing to parents or taxpayers. The comment is consistent with all the statements from Secretary Duncan over the years.
“Core Breach”
While Duncan is imploring
The parents for support
The Common Core’s imploding
The foe has breached the fort
I sure enjoy your clever comments and insight, SomeDAM Poet.
VERY GOOD, SomeDam Poet. TRUE!
This Frankenstein doesn’t really know growing numbers of parents are seeing NCLB as failure, and he is taking children in poverty as hostage by putting his CC dagger under their throats.
He has some nerve asking these people to help him after his many condescending and mocking comments of people like them. Now he knows what the nation needs, but without any congressional authority or lack of reauthorization, he can no longer bully his way through.
I’m surprised he hasn’t learned at this point that you should not minimize the pain a child experiences in school, especially to their parents (a different form of condescion)
“Sympathy For The Duncan”
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man long since disgraced
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a child’s soul and faith
And I was ’round when Barack O’
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure Billy Gates
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around Chicago-land
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the schools and the CTU
Parents all screamed in vain
I stacked and yanked
Held a point guard’s rank
Helped the charters rage
Teachers walked the plank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While young Miss Hell Rhee
Taught for just ten days
Using masking tape
I shouted out,
“Who’s killin’ Public Schools?”
When after all
It is Bill and me
Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man long since disgraced
And I laid traps for Pre-K kids
Taking tests until they screeched No way
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
And every kid is just a data point
And all us reformers saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Arne-D
Cause I’m in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Be sure to use my Common Core
Or I’ll lay your schools to waste
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game,
wow! Good one.
Very succinct.
NY Teacher,
YES!