Mercedes Schneider reports that Arne Duncan sent his children to public schools in Arlington, Virginia, but Virginia never adopted the Common Core standards.
Now, as we know, his children will attend the University of Chicago Lab school, a progressive school that does not use the Common Core standards.
If the CCSS are imperative for America’s children, why has Duncan avoided placing his children in schools where they would encounter them? Doesn’t he want to know how they are doing compared to children in other states? Doesn’t he want them to be college-and-career-ready? Doesn’t he want them to be prepared for global competition?
It doesn’t make sense.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s clear that Arne doesn’t truly believe in the policies he preaches. He is an obvious shill for the neoliberal project.
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The Lab School has a long history of providing a first rate education. Kudos to the school. I guess that the moral of this story is that being a well-to-do political hack, such as Arne and Rahm (the dictator) Emmanuel, is a requirement for gaining entry to a top drawer private school education, while those samesome hacks destroy public school education. Now all we need is vouchers in Illinoiis, so the public can subsidize their children’s’ private school education.
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Snake oil salesman never drink their own potions. A testimony to the level of fraud being perpetrated on 25 million students (and their parents) each year.
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Well put, NY Teacher.
I wanted to point out something to Tim and Raj on the prior post about where Arne is sending his kids.
There are plenty of highly desirable public schools; of course, almost always it is all about the zoning. Many wealthy people opt for these schools because they pay nothing and they are great. And though logistics and other circumstances play roles, one would think that at least some of these major leaders of deform would show their belief in their efforts by enrolling their kids in one of those schools, subject to their deforms.
Who has done that?
:crickets:
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I have to take exception to this. In this democracy, no one has the right to tell me where I can send my kids to school. The same is true for Arne Duncan. I as an individual irrespective of whatever I do for a living reserve this fundamental right. I can send my kids wherever I please for the good of my family/kids. No one has the right to judge me. I will defend every parents right to do the same.
Sunday and Monday have been a “Bash Arne Duncan day” in this blog. Who is the target for tomorrow?
What do the people achieve from this bashing? Are they individually/collectively making the country a better place to live for all of us?
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Raj,
Let me remind you that the principle of this blog is free speech. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere. You object to people voicing opinions you don’t share. That’s too bad. Stop complaining.
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Take exception all day long, that is your right, too. It does seem you are missing an important point. If Duncan believes eschewing Common Core and over-testing is a better approach for HIS kids, why does he impose that on MY kids? Shouldn’t Duncan want the best education for everyone? Isn’t he in charge of education? Why is he taking away MY right to a quality public school? Why are the Reformers ignoring MY right to raise my child and instead force upon us tests? Or does indignation only apply to people who agree with you?
As far as sending your kids where you choose, no one has banned private schools. Go for it. But if MY tax money is going to pay for YOUR private school, I want a say in how my money is being spent. That is an original tea party cry of taxation WITH representation. I want a say in who your school hires, what is taught, and who is running the school. Just like a democratically elected public school board. Or you can always refuse all vouchers and any and all government support.
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Raj:
You are embarrassing yourself, so as an educator I will try to help you. Of course people have a right to judge you. For one thing it is a good way to expose hypocrisy! If you – or Arne – tell me to do one thing and you do another that is problematic. You certainly can understand this notion – I hope. That is the point. The issue is not that a person does not have a right to send their child, in this case, to the Lab school. However, it is hypocritical to send your child to a PROGESSIVE school and then seek to destroy this kind of education environment in our public school system writ large. Now I am not going to school you anymore. You need to read more history of education and education policy books.
Tom
Tom
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Raj,
I’m not attacking Arne for his choice, I’m pointing out that statistically speaking the randomly picked deform leader places his or her kids outside of his or her deforms, despite highly desirable opportunities to do otherwise (though they may not always be their zoned school, but even if you adjusted for that and other factors, I would argue the stats would tell the same tale).
This is not democratic. We don’t want a ruling class or a royal aristocracy that chooses things for the regular folk while they stay within their upper circles. We don’t want to be privatized out of our budgets without even a say. We don’t want blind idiot ideologues or rubber stamps for the 1% in office making decisions that are damaging for the rest. That will ultimately bring the entire nation down, Raj. And that’s your family and their descendants, too. Think about your child’s children and grandchildren, your friends or acquaintances potentially unprotected by long-sustaining wealth.
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Not everyone can afford $50,000 for tuition to the elite private schools…only the rich. You really think school choice will mean Anyone can go to the elite school regardless of their income??
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Raj,
YOU ARE NOT AN OWNER OF THIS BLOG.
You just sound like a pampered kid complaining everything he doesn’t like. I see plenty of those regardless of cyberspace, and you are no exception.
Do you wanna call it quits or go back to your birthplace for good??
Ken
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Has anyone every directly asked these questions of Mr. Duncan? Just curious as to what his excuse would be!
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Duncan steers clear!! Zimba, Creator of the CC Math Standards, is compelled to tutor his young girls in mathematics. ALL materials backed by State of NY are aligned to CCSS. Yet, Zimba knew that when he designed the math standards that they weren’t going to do the job appropriately. Problems with implementation. poorly designed or what? Back in Oct 2013, Zimba admitted CCMS were in his own words, ‘not for STEM, Not only not for STEM but not for selective colleges ‘.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJZY4mh2rt8 Where are the higher & better standards for all? The State of Mass had been doing just fine. Something stinks here. With Duncan choosing altogether to steer clear, Gates kids, not exposed to CC.. others avoiding CC and technology even What’s wrong? Poison. Rotten. This is the social justice Daro spoke of? https://arielsproject.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/common-core-state-standards-for-social-justice/ Run Forrest Run!
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You would think Diane would rant and rave about Arne Duncan’s flexibility over not requiring Virginia to adopt Common Core yet still providing them the normal ESEA funds. He even sent them to public schools (based on my SGP data, many of those Arlington and Fairfax schools are very good btw; next-door Loudoun, not so much).
Now, I wish Virginia would adopt Common Core. It appears our standards were recently beefed up to more closely align with rigorous CC. But our SOL tests are still way too easy. In the Mar 16 article in WaPo about my SGP lawsuit, Duncan essentially threw us under the bus by saying it was a “local decision”. The US Dept of Ed then approved a new growth indicator for Virginia called “progress tables” in which you get positive points if students show growth, but no penalties whatsoever if their scores fall. I call it a “heads you win, tails you don’t lose” game. But Duncan has his hands full with you guys just trying to protect the poor kids. I understand why he told the affluent districts to settle these disagreements ourselves even if I don’t like it.
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“based on my SGP data, many of those Arlington and Fairfax schools are very good btw; next-door Loudoun, not so much”
And where did you get “your” SGP data? Can you please cite a reference and/or website with that info?
TIA!
Duane
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By the way that SGP data suffers all the inherent errors and falsehoods in its epistemological and ontological foundation that renders that data “vain and illusory” and COMPLETELY INVALID.
Your support if patently illogical, false and invalid data is troublesome. I invite you to read Noel Wilson’s complete take down of educational standards and standardized testing “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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Hey Virginia, there is PARCC test. Take it or the SOL test and post your scores. All test supporters should take the tests they impose on our children and tell us how they did. And no fibbing.
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While all of these deformers could claim all sorts of excuses, including shielding their kids from fallout from teachers and admin due to their unpopular deforms, that unpopularity speaks for itself.
And there are much bigger things afoot. This whole deform movement that is heavily fueled by privatizers and faith, and that eschews research and logic, is a prime example of separating church from state and keeping the influence of monopolistic funders and lobbyists out of government.
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Prime example FOR HAVING TO separate church and state, and monopolistic monetary influence from govt.
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Will they take the SAT, or the ACT when it is taken over by CCSS? It will catch up to his children as well as ours.
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The title just sounds like we are watching education horror movie “The Arneator: The architect of Dunncanibalism.” Should it be PG-13?
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To Raj:
To answer your question: “”Are they individually/collectively making the country a better place to live for all of us?””
Why do you come to America? Or why did your parent come to America? (in case you were born and raised in America). If you can honestly answer this question, then you can answer your own question.
Please DO NOT acting like a fool, but graduated from University of Harvard! Do you have human conscience at all?
Please re-read what your post expresses. All 2 years-old children and kindergartners have the same logic like yours. They used to say “”you are not the boss of me”” and then, plead””please feed me.””
You and Arne have used the DEMOCRACY as a tool to do whatever you want to do because it is your right under democracy. However, it is bullying the POPULATION = THE TAX PAYERS by stripping away our publicly democratic RIGHT in OPT OUT MOVEMENT in order to oppose the INVALID CCSS and to maintain our excellent PUBLIC EDUCATION.
If you ever treasure your freedom of expression, please respect for other freedom of expression. If not, please take your foolishness to be with Campbell Brown where you should belong. Back2basic
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Raj, is merely being a petulant little boy, who knows less than zero about legal issues, pedagogy and policy or the rights of the minority in a democracy.
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