Arne Duncan once made an insulting comment about “white suburban moms” who got angry about Common Core tests because they were disappointed to learn that their child was not as brilliant as they believed.
This white suburban mom has written a response to Arne.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent, heart-felt response. Duncan will neither see it, read it, understand it, nor act differently because of it. His belief system lacks the capability to respond to evidence to the contrary and is incapable of either reflection or empathy.
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Has Duncan changed his mind about the self-interested, stupid “moms” who are getting in the way of the agenda of the Best and Brightest?
I haven’t seen any indication that he has. If fact, they’ve taken it national. Now anyone who questions standardized tests is included.
What you have to love about the sneering, patronizing dismissal is, many of these women probably voted for Obama. Duncan HAS THE JOB partly because of them.
Apparently he has deluded himself into believing he actually IS a private sector CEO.
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The “Best and Brightest” unfortunately and ruinously brought us the Viet Nam war.
The Dunkster is no “Best and Brightest”, he is the titular head of the “Bestest and Brightestest” who unfortunately and ruinously have brought us the RaTT and concurring edudeforms.
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Thank you. My wife wrote this and it was definitely heart-felt. The efforts were made by sending the letter certified mail to both President Obama and Arne Duncan. Email was also sent directly to Arne and posted on his facebook page. The DOE has responded twice so far. Looks like it is climbing the chain of command.
Thank you Diane for recognizing Michelle’s letter. It was truly written from the heart. She has watched our own two children go through edreform and worked with countless special needs students. She has witnessed the pain.
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Arne Duncan’s racist comment doesn’t deserve a response. Is there something inherently wrong with being white and living in the suburbs? My suburban hometown outside of Washington, DC, is now majority black. Arne Duncan lives in Northern Virginia (where it is majority white) and I doubt that he would choose to live in my former majority black suburb despite its high per household income. He is the quintessential limousine liberal who thinks he knows the truth of other people’s lives.
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Well, it was important politically to discredit them and demean their concerns immediately, lest someone in NY government actually listen to them.
He needn’t have worried. As it turns out, NY lawmakers completely ignored them until they refused the tests. Then and only then did it become time for “collaboration” and “cooperation”.
Funny how that works.
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I would suggest sexist as well.
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correction to my previous post: delete the word “former”
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The test scores are coming!!! The test scores are coming!!!! what we will we learn? Not much. We will have stack ratings of states by the performance of their students and teachers.
Every policy maker and pundit who has foisted the sham “gift” of the Common Core and the PARCC and SBAC tests on public schools will be scrambling for the right “message” when the scores from these tests come in.
That moment is on the way. The dumb explanations for the inevitable DROP IN TEST SCORES will soon be making news that few politicians can ignore. The spin machines of foundations and belief tanks are revving up for this known outcome. Politicians who hope to assume office, or stay in office, will not be able to dodge questions about the results.
The inevitable narrative is that schools are failing to do the job. The schools are not jumping ahead fast enough, or reaching high enough, to reach the public policy expectations for this generation– go to college, get a job, save the economy, ensure our global competitiveness.
Fotrthcoming news about the dismal test scores needs to anticipated and planned for. The dismal test scores might provide an opportunity to demand for accountability from the pushers of this agenda for American education, and especially the false narrative from Chambers of Commerce and bipartisan politicians that test scores are predictors of our nation’s economic competitiveness.
A predictable outcome of the expected drop in test scores and the “comparability of cut scores” across many states is this: Stack ratings of states with winners and losers in exactly the same way that teachers and schools are stack ranked by the same tests. Just as this is a no-win result for teachers and schools, it will be a no-win result for politicians and pundits who have pushed the Common Core and tests.
Politicians, many are already divided about education policy, are in deep trouble. As the scores come in it will be important to highlight the waste of time and money on this failed venture. It will be important to highlight the serious damage done to this test-em-ti-they-drop generation, a generation required to participate in a pathetic and strictly “academic” version of the 3R’s–starting with NCLB, hardwired into Race to the Top and likely to be continued in the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act. and likely to be continued sustain a market for charter schools, on-line, learning and other so-called “disruptive innovations.”
The public needs to be made aware of the billions wasted on the Common Core, a narrowed curriculum, and the misguided efforts by business interests to standardize pubic education, including standardizing through the “alignment” and “calibration” of instruction, resources, and professional development.
Standard-setting has morphed into the quest for control that limits the privacy rights of parents, demands specific methods for instruction, and it extends to the demolition of academic freedom in higher education, especially teacher education
Time and money has been wasted– Wasted on technologies that are not needed, do not work, and will be obsolete in no time; wasted on tests that have no credibility or face validity; wasted on so-called professional development that seeks full compliance from teachers; wasted on endless “alignments” of this with that; wasted opportunities for real improvement informed by the wisdom of teachers and by scholarship known to be a guide for humane and memorable learning (both conspicuously destained for more than two decades).
The potentials of the generation have been treated as if they only only have economic value. Our schools have been commandeered for the purpose of treating children only as “human capital” who are well-or-poorly prepared for economic exploitation. These actions are not only immoral, but fundamentally unAmerican, placing at risk the concept of “consent of the governed” to policies of far-reaching consequence.
This whole standardization agenda is unworthy of a great nation. We must work to reverse this perverse course of standardization, the blatent forwarding of one-size-fits-all training of students and teachers as if that is education. It is not. It is a vision well-suited to a dictorship, not a democracy.
Politicians and pundits have invested trillions in the concept that American education will be improved by stack ratings states based on scores from new tests in two subjects, tests from PARCC and SBAC that will have comparable cut scores…a a near-mnational test (with forms PARCC and SBAC).
The next act in this unfolding disaster will produce some fancy political rhetoric. They will make news at about the same time that candidates will be vying for political office. Many will strive mightily to avoid public shaming of the kind they have been willing to deliver to students, teachers, and schools.
It is time to hone your questions. Anticipate the blame game, the excuses, the tactics that will be in play in order to avoid all of the basic flaws in policies that seek to standardie public education and limit the horizons of students.
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“Every policy maker and pundit who has foisted the sham “gift” of the Common Core and the PARCC and SBAC tests on public schools will be scrambling for the right “message” when the scores from these tests come in.”
I think they’ll dump it on local public schools and go off chasing the Next Big Thing.
They’re already gone. Now they’re pushing edtech. Duncan wrote a piece the other day about the “8 billion” ed tech market. That’s 4X the testing market. Our poor kids are going to be prodded and poked and monitored every minute of every day.
My eldest works in the tech industry and HE thinks they are pushing it too hard. He says it’s a freaking feeding frenzy.
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But what do Blue Explorer moms say?
The fathers of standards and tests don’t get a soccer trophy for their poor workmanship.
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Ah, the art of the patronizing put-down. We are going to pat the ladies on the head, send them back to their suburban PTAs, and let the big boys handle the important stuff. Don’t worry your pretty little blond ponytailed, workout clothed, SUV driving selves get all excited about such important, over your head matters!
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What about white suburban dads that think their kids are great?
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What about black rural dads who think their kids are great?
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Anybody else out there disagree with Arne?
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Too many to name!!
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I think Arne was just disappointed to learn that people do not think he is a brilliant as he believes.
IMHO, we have had to tolerate waaaay too many Ivy league fake “geniuses” in our government over the years.
For some reason, Harvard seems to crank them out like an assembly line of dumb.
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You know, it just occurred to me that the people like Arne Duncan coming from places like Harvard are usually also the people who scored very high on their SATs.
I’m willing to bet there is a pretty high correlation — which alone would be a very good reason to question the value of test scores.
Althoooogh, maybe these test scores are useful after all.
If it is true that the above correlation is high, all we need to do to keep these people out of our government is have a law that sets a maximum test score for government employees. If you scored higher than that, you are automatically disqualified from being an employee or even running for public office.
It’s hard not to wonder whether we might have avoided some disasters over the years as a country (Vietnam included) if we had had such a system in place.
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The Best and the Brightest are meeting again to plan public education for the rest of us.
Gosh, I wonder when we’ll find out what the plans are for our schools? Just another grass roots ed reform gathering with some ordinary middle class folks talking public schools:
“political consultant Karl Rove, coal king Joe Craft, real estate developer Harlan Crow, Goldman Sachs executive Jim Donovan, businessman Sam Fox and brokerage executive Joe Ricketts, who founded what’s now TD Ameritrade.
They joined World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon, former Facebook executive Sean Parker, developer Ross Perot Jr. — son of 1992 presidential candidate H. Ross Perot — and businessman Dick DeVos, who leads the direct-selling giant Amway that specializes in health and beauty products.”
“The Shape of Education Reform in the Post-Obama Era”
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/03/19/16927/meet-top-politicians-mega-donors-who-mingled-secretive-conference
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Reblogged this on To Talk of Many Things and commented:
Arne Duncan doesn’t “get it”. We don’t dislike Common Core because we are White Suburban Moms who only care about our kids. We don’t like it and standardized testing because they aren’t good for ALL students.
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