John Merrow has been a close observer of American education for decades, so it is always interesting to read him. In this post, he reflects on what Arne Duncan did and accomplished.
John expected that Arne’s experience in Chicago would have inclined him to push for less federal micromanagement but this didn’t happen.
“As CEO of the public schools in Chicago, Duncan had chafed under the directives of “No Child Left Behind” and its hundreds of pages of regulations. I thought the lesson of NCLB was inescapably clear: Washington cannot run public education. However, Democrats, including Secretary Duncan, apparently reached a different conclusion: “Perhaps REPUBLICANS cannot run public education, but we can.”
John made arrangements to film the creation of Race to the Top, but the DOE lawyers mixed it.
Early on, he found Arne open and accessible. As time went by, however, he gave canned answers and talking points, seldom straying.
John thinks that Arne’s worst mistake was to tie teacher evaluations to student scores.
Arne became the most powerful Secretary of Education in the Department’s history, because of the leverage that $5 billion discretionary dollars gave him, a gift from Congress as part of the economic stimulus that followed the 2008 crash.
Arne used that leverage to impose a heavy federal hand on almost every state and literally, to take control of public education–a goal that no other Secretary of Education ever tried (because it was illegal). As a result of Arne’s assertiveness, legislation to reauthorize ESEA/NCLB strips the Secretary of any authority to meddle in state and local issues related to curriculum, assessment, instruction. Such prohibitions are already in the law but Duncan ignored them. I wonder why there has been no lawsuit by a state or district to challenge his indifference to these clear prohibitions against meddling in curriculum and instruction. He claims that he had nothing to do with the Common Core standards, but that is widely viewed as a fabrication since states had to adopt something very much like them (and there were no competitors) to be eligible to compete for Race to the Top funding. Surely, the federal funding ($360 million) of two tests aligned to the CCSS has something to do with shaping curriculum and instruction.
So $5 billion was spent by Arne to promote school closings (mostly in black and Hispanic communities), to encourage the opening of more privately managed charter schools (despite the number of scandals associated with their deregulation and lack of oversight), to make standardized testing the most important ends and means of education, to fire principals and teachers, and to impose an invalid means of evaluating teachers and principals.
Merrow wonders:
“What if he had used that power differently? What if the Secretary had told states that they would be evaluated on their commitment to art, music, science, and recess? Or to project-based learning? Or social and emotional learning? Instead of today’s widespread teacher-bashing, excessive testing, test-prep, and a rash of cheating scandals, many more schools might be places of joy.”
I ask: What if he had used that power to request voluntary proposals to desegregate the nation’s schools?
We would be a different country. It would have been money well spent.
Unfortunately, neither happened. The $5 billion for Race to the Top was not only squandered, but did incalculable harm to students, educators, and public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent analysis of the Duncan legacy!. However, – what if – there had been no A Nation at Risk – what if people (and I could create a big list) had not bought into this report at the time or had listened to Berliner and Biddle, Dan Tanner or Gerald Bracey? What if there had been no Palisades conference and Bill Clinton had not placed his stamp of approval on the efforts of the corporate reformers – what if ___________ etc. You fill in the blanks! You can add your favorite “what ifs.” There are so many “what ifs” that this 67 year old educator is about to scream!!! I guess I’m more interested in the many “whys” it happened re: the current state of education reform and, in particular, why the mainstream media is still not covering the education reforms issues I think need to be addressed. Nevertheless, I trust that folks reading this blog we will keep on trying to get America to listen and understand!
Tom,
Your “What if’s” are on target. Yes, WHAT IF the politicians really cared and understood what teaching is all about? What if the politicians weren’t lining their pockets with $$$$$ and serving our young as meals for the rich?
What if the United states was a democratic republic, instead of an oligarchy?
What if the government just obeyed its own laws and didn’t meddle where they had no business meddling? I think I have an inkling why no state challenged their overreach directly. There are many subtle ways for the feds to let states know that they are unhappy. You don’t want the federal government unhappy with you if there is anything you might want from them.
I have always considered Duncan a fraud. The thrust of his policies has been to delegitimatize public education and undermine teachers and teacher’s unions. It has been a sad process to witness and to protest against. But, when you control the vast amounts of money and the presidency you inevitably control the public space. For me the Obama presidency represents a sad chapter in the history of American education as it has been transformed from a process to educate to a process to learn how to take tests.
Where do we go from here?
Based on Bridge International Academies, backed by Pearson/Zuckerberg /Gates, we go to, for-profit schools in a box.
I just find it laughable that Duncan claims he’s independent of the ed reform foundations and lobbying groups. It must just be a huge coincidence that all of their priorities are the Obama Administration priorities, and people move back and forth between the foundations and government.
He simply isn’t credible when he says this. Is there a single example where Duncan has contradicted or disagreed publicly with Broad or Gates or the Walton people, on anything?
If “movement” actors in government want to show that there is some meaningful difference between “The US Department of Education” and these billionaire funded lobbying groups, they could do that. Give a speech or make a public statement disagreeing or finding fault with Gates, Broad or Walton. Duncan finds plenty of ways to find fault with the people running and working in public schools and teachers unions. Yet he never goes up against a powerful or influential ed reformer.
Valid points that prove deception at the highest levels. In his recent fawning Duncan article, the Politico reporter didn’t feel a necessity to link the former Ed. Dept., Chief of Staff, with her employment at the Gates Foundation (reportedly requiring an ethics waiver). I assume the reporter had a straight face as he concluded that all factions were against Duncan. In an egregious sin of omission, the reporter failed to acknowledge there were no complaints, about Duncan, from the $3 bil. dollar education reform oligarchs.
The not-so-charitable answer to the “what if” is that Wall Street bought the Democratic leadership and gave it a plan to privatize public education. There is so much evidence to support this simple statement that it’s hard to see what other explanations have greater explanatory power. Duncan’s ideas are those put in his head by the Democratic equivalent of ALEC: HEDGE FUND MOGULS, GATES et al.
I just don’t see what the mystery is behind Duncan’s efforts.
Always remember, his kids are not affected by any of this nonsense, nor are the kids of the Democratic leadership. This is a simple story of gutting public education in the service of profit, by turning over the immense tax stream that supports public education to private, for-profit, entities.
In my view, at this point it is knavish or naïve to claim otherwise.
What if the big bang had never happened?
Arne would still be stuck inside the cosmic singularity! Almost makes one think it would have been worth delaying the BB for about 14 billion years.
“Stuck in the Singularity with Arne”
If Big-bang never belched
We’d all be outta luck
For us, there’d be no help
With Arne we’d be stuck
Duncan ticket a lot of people off when he refused to put anything in Race to the Top promoting desegregation. Absolutely ridiculous that he and Obama would not go down that road, or at least give credibility to issue. Ira Glass touched on the “why” on a two part series he did on desegregating schools.
The Obama administration persuaded the national civil rghts groups that their kids have the right to be tested, not the right to an equitable, fully resourced, desegregated education
Which is exactly the difference between Great Society Democrats and the Technocratic Democrats of the last thirty years. There is no quick “fix” to education. Once Democrats gave up addressing poverty (and the racism and sexism that help sustain it), they were left with few other policy options; hence their descent into fantasy, and stupidity. Republicans aren’t left in such a precarious ideological situation because their ideology need never change; free markets fix any problem, anytime, anywhere.
Clinton v Bush: technocratic fantasy versus market fantasy. Adults have left the room.
The tragedy is that Civil Rights organizations, so abandoned (rejected?) by our political system, are so desperate to find a way out that they will take just about anything that comes their way. This is the secret of Eva Moskowitz’s (disgusting but powerful) TV ads.
“That last innocuous sounding phrase means relying heavily student test scores to judge (and perhaps) fire teachers. Dr. Terry Holland, who recently stepped down as Kentucky’s State Superintendent, calls that Duncan’s worst decision, and many agree.”
I read the interview with Bill and Melinda Gates the other day and Mr. Gates is sticking to his guns on test-based teacher ranking schemes, despite all the obvious problems.
Another huge coincidence! So is Arne Duncan! Still waiting for someone in DC to disagree publicly with Bill Gates or (God forbid) contradict him on his plans for US public schoolchildren.
Sticking to his guns and pointing them at teachers, except of course his own kids teachers. Next parent conference he should ask Phoebe’s or Rory’s or Jennifer’s teachers how they feel about test based accountability.
We seem to be unwilling to acknowledge so much was wasted on testing. Not to forget what negativity it had on students and the strife it caused many teachers.
A prime example is that California just negated the exit exam.
The reform crowd is beginning to realize that raising the bar to unrealistic heights has its creates problems that can only be solved by edu-poitical walk-backs. Moral of this story is that the politicians cannot legislate brain development or cultural revolution.
This is what happens when those that try to “reform” education really fail to understand child development, curricula and meaningful learning. They create a plan in a bubble that is designed to appeal to corporations and politicians , not real learning for real students in the 21st century.
The truth is too that the recent Obama Administration focus on free community college or prek was NOT a focus when they had the opportunity to put it in.
It’s difficult to listen to the Democrats running for President or Congress promising prek or access to community college because they didn’t do anything about those things when they had the chance. To claim that these are now a “priority” is just not credible.
Their “priorities” were testing systems, data systems and charter schools. I can tell those were their priorities because they focused there for the 1st seven years. These other things only became a “priority” in Obama’s administration when they had no money or power to do anything about them.
That’s the definition of “not a priority”- when you do something only after you’ve put in your actual priorities.
I mean, honestly. Do they think we don’t know the meaning of that word? 🙂
Duncan is such a good eg of an unprincipled distaste for federal power. He was taught and conditioned that a “real educational administrator” must collect and exercise complete power over his dominion [it was pretty much “his” when he was educated]. You manipulate the Board, crush the teachers, and gather sycophants around you. This is, well, being a real man too, just like the biz CEOs the ed admin’rs have long envied and emulated as best they can.
So, when he became Sec of Educ, he had no principles that would allow him to think seriously or in terms of values about whether he should do to his former peers what he’d bitched about back in the day. Nope, he followed the traditional ethic of the ed admin: get as much power as you can and use it in as untrammeled and undemocratic a fashion as possible. Cuz you’re entitled.
If you read the ed admin textbooks & bios across the past century, that was the overriding message: don’t trust or empower anyone else but yourself as soon as you get to be school, district or even higher head of the biz. Be authoritative and in control. I think most of these guys and now gals would say their TV hero was “Boss” [w/Kelsey Grammar].
So, he’s the epitome of the profession which David Tyack & Elizabeth Hansot named “Managers of Virtue,” as it evolved into a culture of self-aggrandizement and egocentrism. Admittedly, many/most of the jobs were increasingly quasi-impossible w/hopeless gaps tween promises/duties and attainable outcomes. And as the politics of educ became somewhere tween rancid and toxic thruout the last century, the ed admins coped w/a mix of a bunker mentality and a complete disconnect from their system and the community.
So, if Duncan is one venal, arrogant and distasteful son of a bitch, he is most assuredly the son of a bitch we created and promoted and deserved.
Or…. Duncan reflects neo-liberal Chicago politics. Make the 0.2% richer. Screw labor. Screw children. Screw the poor. Screw middle class taxpayers.
We could still take these ideas for voluntary proposals for desegregation and to evaluate on commitment to arts and so forth, right? Arne messed up. But we don’t have to stop there.
The wiser party will create a platform along these lines. Right?