Peter Greene warns us not to be taken in by Secretary Duncan’s latest pretense of disavowing testing. We have heard this song before. So he wants to limit testing to “only” 2% of class time? That’s more testing, not less. Will he cancel his ironclad demand to evaluate teachers by student test scores? Is VAM dead and finished? He didn’t say that.

Peter writes:

“Remember that theoretical problem where someone keeps moving half the distance to a point, and how that means they’ll never actually get there? Well, today Arne Duncan once again moved half the distance to the point at which he will someday theoretically accept responsibility for the administrations failed education policies and then actually do something about them.

“Duncan issued a statement about testing, and I’d like to be excited that he almost admitted culpability in the Great Testing Circus while stating some actual policy changes to address the problem. But he didn’t get there, and I’ve seen the Duncan “I’ll Kind of Say the Right Thing Almost and Then Go On Acting As If I Haven’t Said Anything At All” show far too many times.”

No, says Peter, it is not a problem of implementation. The problem is the policy itself. And Duncan did not renounce the policy. What did he offer? An apology for ruining American education for seven years? No. A policy to free teachers, principals and schools from the tyranny of testing? No. A promise to stop punishments based on test scores? No.

What did he offer?

False hope.