Peter Greene reports that Arne Duncan has landed a fat cushy gig at a huge investment firm, based on his smashing accomplishments as superintendent of the Chicago public schools and as Secretary of Education, where he reformed the American school system.
Fact check: the Chicago public schools are in deep trouble; the only federal evaluation of Race to the Top said it was a flop.
Is this the way the world works?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools[6] and later Harvard College, and graduated magna cum laude in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in SOCIOLOGY! His senior thesis, for which he took a year’s leave to do research in the Kenwood neighborhood, was entitled “The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass”.
In 1992, childhood friend and investment banker John W. Rogers, Jr., appointed Duncan director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a program mentoring children at one of the city’s worst-performing elementary schools and then assisting them as they proceeded further in the education system. After the school closed in 1996, Duncan and Rogers were instrumental in re-opening it as a charter school, Ariel Community Academy. In 1999, Duncan was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas.
Can anyone please explain how a man with NO training in Educational Pedagogy, Instructional practices and strategies and absolutely NO TEACHING EXPERIENCE was ever appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Chicago public schools and then eventually Secretary of Education for the US?
He was no more qualified for this position than is Betsy DeVos.
Politics and Influence has a long history in interfering in Education. There are MANY qualified, dedicated educators who would certainly do a much better job in improving education than have Vallas, Duncan and now DeVos.
Educators need to demand that trained and experienced educators be placed in State and Federal level Eduction positions.
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His thesis would have been better entitled, “Opportunities to Profit Off the Urban Underclass,” since that was his task as a so-called reformer.
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Apparently, Duncan expanded his thesis so that states like Ohio could experience a multi-billion dollar boondoggle, with Republican campaign donors (charter operators) corrupting state government.
On-line schools with reported 70% truancy rates get money as if the students were getting something.
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Yes!
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How much profit did Wall Street and the banks earn from Arne Duncan’s sabotage of community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public education?
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He won’t last after he recruits from his contact base.
Sent from my iPhone, with keys way too small for humans.
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“…Bono, lead singer of That Band You’re Supposed To Like and an always-useful prop for capitalists who want to look socially conscious…”
My nomination for quote of the year.
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Preach it, Lloyd! …they will grasp voraciously until the “useful idiot’s” political demise- more to come. SAD, BELIEVE ME.
@propubliced
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It’s most likely a reward for funneling mountains of public education money into the coffers of hedge funds and investment firms. Such vast amounts of public tax money are being skimmed away by charter schools and funneled into corporate and private pockets that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report that, because of their lack of accountability to the public, charter schools pose a risk to the Department of Education’s goals. The report finds that “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of financial fraud and the artful skimming of tax money into private pockets.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its favorable reporting on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax dollars that are intended to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets and to the bottom lines of hedge funds.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Court, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools at all because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. That’s common sense to any taxpayer: Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money but have virtually no public record accountability of what they do with the tax money they divert from genuine public schools.
There are many tactics used by many charter school operators to reap profit from their schools, even the so-called “non-profits”, such as private charter school boards paying exorbitant sums to lease building space for their school in buildings that are owned by corporations that are in turn owned or controlled by the charter school board members or are REIT investments that are part of a hedge fund’s portfolio. There are many other avenues of making a hidden profit from operating private charter schools.
In addition to the siphoning away of money from needy schools, reports from the NAACP and ACLU have revealed facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children of color; and, very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that private charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students. Based on these and other findings of racial discrimination in charter schools, the NAACP Board of Directors has passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice.
Therefore, in order to assure that tax dollars are being spent wisely and that there is no racism in charter schools, charter schools should minimally (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that the charter schools are accountable to the public; (2) be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) be required to operate so that anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
Those aren’t unreasonable requirements. In fact, they are common sense to taxpayers and to anyone who seeks to assure that America’s children — especially her neediest children — are optimally benefiting from public tax dollars intended for their education. But, after the internal scams of charter schools become exposed to taxpayers through routine public reporting, the charter school industry will dry up and disappear, and the money that the charter school industry has been draining away from America’s neediest children will again flow to those in need.
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Agree
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Beats working, I suppose.
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A job like his former chief of staff, who moved from an executive position at the Gates Foundation to the U.S. Dept. of Ed. and, then to a financial firm once owned by Bain Capital.
Duncan is proof, it’s not what you know but who you know. He, Melinda Gates, the widow Jobs and Betsy DeVos can offer valuable courses based on their experience which has nothing to do with the lofty ideals of education and everything to do with one’s social milieu
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Yep, it’s called “falling up” and this indeed is the way the world works now. It’s especially true for those who are crony capitalists and corporate tools, as well as for those and their families who were privileged to begin with, in defiance of equal opportunity for all, because the game is rigged for and by people with money and power.
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.” John Maynard Keynes
They don’t work for the benefit of all, but that doesn’t stop wishful thinking voters from electing super-rich businessmen, such as Michael Bloomberg, Bruce Rauner and Donald Trump, as if they will improve the common man’s lot in life. They won’t, because the pattern is that the rich just protect other people who are rich, because they can never have enough money and power.
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In a 60 Minutes interview, Bloomberg showed his God complex. He literally said he would gain admittance through the pearly gates without God’s review. In a throw off comment, he dismissed opposition to his ed transmutation schemes. No reviews necessary. He’s God.
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He’ll raise millions for that firm among charter lovers. That hypocritical opportunist.
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“He’ll (Duncan),” “hypocritical opportunist.” You are being redundant (twice)! 😀
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Similar to Gates’ Impatient Opportunists.
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They try to make Arne look even better by understatement–downplaying his profound educational significance. Thus:
During his tenure, Duncan created the $4 billion Race to the Top program to invest in reform and innovation and worked with Congress to secure additional investments in early learning programs and interventions to raise standards at lower-performing schools. Prior to his role as Secretary of Education, Duncan served for eight years as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, where he boosted test scores and built consensus across the district’s many stakeholders.
But, I’m reminded of something Golda Meir said. Let me take license with her quote: Arne, boychick, “Don’t act so humble, you’re not that great!”
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He was instrumental in creating profits for some very powerful and influential people.
He’s been rewarded.
And he lived happily ever after.
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“…unfettered free markets, so revered in British policy that a million Irish were allowed to die of starvation…” Timothy Egan
The depravity of an unfettered free market and the profanity of its defense finds a home in the oligarch-funded Gates and Arnold Foundations, Fordham and Aspen Institutes, AEI, etc.
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Adult administrators/educators seem to benefit despite outcomes. After over 55 years as an educator I am AMAZED that they still are judged by their hype, politics, or by their accumulated spheres of influence. I STRIVE TO HAVE THEM JUDGED BY THE FACES OF THE CHILDREN PLACED IN THEIR CARE – faces that More . . . than a score, my documentary, captured. Although a first stab at using the media, this almost 80 year-old wants to thank you, Peter, for embedding it into your blog. At Pace University, Regent Johnson mentioned that she viewed it and wanted other regents to do the same. A start for the children, for educators, for our nation. But the self-serving greed of some may try to stifle what educators know – ask the children, do they see and understand the relevance of education in their lives??? Do they love learning??? Let’s change how we judge our educational administrative leaders . . . won’t that be refreshing!!
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Can I join the world in which he lives, where one’s candidacy for jobs is based not on education, achievements, work, aspirations, but rather, frankly, brownnosing the rich and powerful? It looks cushy, and I, too, am tired of actually working for a living.
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The scam is really huge. The financial sector drags down the economy by an estimated 2% (a substantial number of Wall Street executives were privately educated-indicating they’re taught to be leeches).
There are more mutual funds/hedge funds etc. than there are companies in which to invest.
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This is how it works when you know somebodies who know somebodies. Not that you know anything
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“Is this the way the world works?” Yes, and that was pre- post-truth.
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It’s simply payback by the ruling class for ‘services rendered’, of course. In one sense, it’s ‘honest’ in that it fulfills an unwritten agreement. On the other hand, that ‘agreement’ is one that pays the shills for keeping the masses ignorant and confused.
Will Duncan ever be accepted into the society of the monetary elite that owe him so much? Not a chance. A lap dog is a lap dog, pampered and even loved, but never considered an equal.
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