Arne Cashes in Again

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1. GregB says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:06 am

   I know it’s a typo, but Rave to the Top seems more accurate. Please keep it. 😂

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   • dianeravitch says:

     August 5, 2018 at 11:38 am

     I prefer Dash to the Cash

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     • LeftCoastTeacher says:

       August 5, 2018 at 2:07 pm

       RttT:
       Gates to the Top
       Race to the Poppycock
       NCLB on Steroids
       Prelude to the DeVos

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     • dianeravitch says:

       August 5, 2018 at 2:11 pm

       NCLB 2.0

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     • LeftCoastTeacher says:

       August 5, 2018 at 10:39 pm

       Destruction of Public Education. To the Top.

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     • Naked Teaching (@ShirleyWill3) says:

       August 5, 2018 at 11:43 pm

       Totally cool. Totally true. Money grabbers pretending to care about kids.

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   • Dat Guy says:

     August 6, 2018 at 7:28 am

     I would much more prefer Rave to the Top. Techno, glow sticks, dancing. Much more fruitful than technocratic nonsense.
     Drop the beat.
     Unsa unsa unsa unsa

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2. Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:29 am

   Arne is a simpering idiot.

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3. bethree5 says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:31 am

   Nu.

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4. Ed Johnson says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:40 am

   And Duncan was on Face the Nation just this morning hawking his new book, How Schools Work. He was asked to respond to the study that found his and Obama’s School Improvement Grant (SIG) program and the millions spent resulted in no improvement of schools. Responding, he basically minimized SIG as having been just a two-bits effort.

   Yup. That’s an effective way to deal with failure. Minimize it. Learn nothing. Move on the next thing.

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5. dienne77 says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:41 am

   Dreambox knows perfectly well what Race to the Top was and is. Again, it was not a flop. It was, for the people who implemented it, a spectacular success which did exactly what it was intended to do. It’s just that it wasn’t intended to improve education. We assume good intentions in the face of contradictory evidence at our peril.

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6. howardat58 says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:46 am

   I have looked into Dreambox, not impressed at all. Best wishes to A.D. He’ll make it worse.

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7. Chiara says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:53 am

   All of the high-profile Obama people went to ed reform organizations or businesses.

   To me it’s an indication of how completely captured by this “movement” that were and are. There were no real debates on public schools in that administration, no dissenting pro-public school voices. It was 100% lock-step “market based ed reform”.

   I really liked Obama as President but he was no friend to public school students. They had no advocates in his administration and it showed. They lost every year he was in office, because the people Obama hired were not about “improving” public schools- they were about replacing them with contractors.

   If you were in a state where ed reformers had also captured your STATE government, like Ohio for me (and Michigan and Indiana and Wisconsin for others) you got a double whammy.

   It will take years to turn it around in Ohio. We’ll have to replace half our state government officials to recover from the worst decade for public schools in this state in my adult lifetime. That’s the ed reform legacy for kids in existing public schools. Loss.

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   • Linda says:

     August 5, 2018 at 12:47 pm

     “…people went to ed reform organizations and businesses” and also, to the corporate-funded, mislabeled, think tanks i.e. Duncan/King’s Chief of Staff went to the Center for American Progress. CAP was integral to Hillary’s campaign. About 6 mos. after the Democratic candidate’s loss (Michael Moore developed and announced the blueprint in advance, which went unheeded), CAP doubled down by recommending that states authorize charters and that schools raise money by selling ads on buses. CAP keeps repeating its mistakes… because, they like them or, they are paid to continue?

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8. Chiara says:

   August 5, 2018 at 11:59 am

   And, before any one tells me! It goes without saying that DeVos is now and will continue to cause harm to existing public schools, but boy they would be in a lot better shape had the Obama Administration not neglected and in some cases attacked them for the prior 8 years. We really could have used people in our corner when GOP governors were gutting public school budgets, and we had no one at the federal level. Not one committed advocate for the 85% of kids who attend existing public schools. That did damage. We’ll spend the next decade recovering from Obama and Trump, just to get public schools back to 2008 funding levels. It’s an opportunity cost and the ENTIRE burden fell on kids who attend existing public schools. Now, right now. Those specific kids. It was brutally unfair.

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   • Ohio Algebra II Teacher says:

     August 5, 2018 at 4:47 pm

     Don’t forget W as well. He really started this process.

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     • Linda says:

       August 5, 2018 at 5:55 pm

       At the Aspen Institute, there was a page that explained it started with Bill Clinton. Aspen laid it out thoroughly, leaving no question.

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     • Lloyd Lofthouse says:

       August 5, 2018 at 6:11 pm

       Amazing BS!

       Bill Clinton didn’t start the war on public education. That was Ronald Ray-Gun with the lying, misleading “A Nation at Risk Report”.

       And every president since Ray-Gun has supported and continued that war. Clinton shares the guilt with Ray-Gun, the 1st Bush, the 2nd Bush, Obama and now Trump.

       If we divide that share equally among those six sell-out presidents, Clinton’s share of the blame for the damage to public education is the same as the rest at 16.6 percent.

       If we add Bill Gates, since he’s played a major roll in this crime, the blame is about 14.3 percent each.

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     • Linda says:

       August 6, 2018 at 7:43 am

       Lloyd,
       The takeaway-
       Presidents in both parties attempted to destroy America’s most important common good. The richest man in the world tried. U.S. and state Congresses tried. Governors tried. A massive number in the powerful donor class tried. Intellectual prostitutes at think tanks and universities tried. Union heads were complicit.
       But, refusing to surrender against all odds, public education survived, maimed but still fighting. Diane Ravitch is the standard bearer for local democratic governance of community schools for the children of the Americans who built this nation.
       The Ravitch blog posted Mike Petrelli’s question, “Where does reform go from here”. The answer, it can go to hell, and join with its avaricious colonialist brethren, who have long sought to bestride and enslave those who toil for the bread the ruling class eats.

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     • Lloyd Lofthouse says:

       August 6, 2018 at 12:50 pm

       Yes, all the presidents starting with Reagan (if earlier presidents are guilty, please correct me and provide links, thank you) are guilty of trying to destroy the US public education system

       Four Republicans:
       Ray-Gun
       Bush #1 and Bush #2
       Donald Trump

       Two Democrats:
       Bill Clinton
       Obama

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     • Linda says:

       August 6, 2018 at 7:53 am

       Lloyd,
       Aspen’s history gave themselves the credit for putting together the forces to move privatization forward. Their glee in turning the President of the party of the New Deal into a pawn for the donor class likely drove the narrative.
       Attributing the idea’s germination to Reagan didn’t serve their purposes.

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     • Duane E Swacker says:

       August 6, 2018 at 9:10 am

       Linda,

       Gotta love this: “Intellectual prostitutes at think tanks and universities tried. Union heads were complicit.”

       Intellectual prostitutes for sure.

       Excellent commentary! Thanks

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     • Linda says:

       August 6, 2018 at 3:41 pm

       My prior listing of public school attackers omitted Jay Sekulow’s unChristian, self-congratulatory, “blessed” cultists.

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9. LetThemLearn says:

   August 5, 2018 at 12:23 pm

   Over the last 6 years, the Ohio districts I have worked in have required 30 minutes a day for ST Math, 30 minutes a day for Dreambox, and 30 minutes a day for Lexia, give or take. The minutes increase for “at risk” students. When you tack on the iReady, MAP, or STAR Reading/Math programs, the amount of screen time is excessive. Districts are currently subscribing to digital social emotional character trait development programs. That is more screen time. That is more seat time. And, I am speaking of my observations and experiences in elementary school settings.

   Teachers and administrators get bent out of shape when more and more young students act out under these “learning” conditions. In my opinion, acting out is a healthy response to being subjected to oppressive conditions day after day.

   I am still looking for a district, ANY district, where adults can honestly say these programs are working to the benefit of child well being.

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   • Linda says:

     August 5, 2018 at 12:51 pm

     LetThemLearn
     I can’t tell you where the programs are working. But, I can tell you where they are not implemented- in the schools for the kids of the rich.
     If we allow the Ohio Republican politicians to continue to force abuse of our kids, so that tech company’s can exploit them, that’s on us.

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     • Caligirl says:

       August 6, 2018 at 12:04 am

       Waldorf – montessori – no screen time …

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   • Laura H. Chapman says:

     August 5, 2018 at 1:25 pm

     Those time allocations for work on computers–90 minutes a day–are about the same as the minutes for “blended learning” in the Rocketship franchise schools, K-5.

     You are correct in saying that the computer programs marketed as if for social-emotional learning are indistinguishable from character education programs on behalf of “self-management,” grit, growth mindset (mind is a muscle practice leads to mastery) ethos in too many schools.

     Amateur hour self-counseling with the help of a computer program is not necessarily less expensive than hiring professionally trained school counselors and school social workers.

     Duckworth’s Character lab and Doug Lemov’s non-nonsense teaching techniques are BOTH being delivered to TFAers who enroll in the Relay Graduate (sic) School of Education. That should tell you a lot about one of the marketable meanings of character: Conform or expect to be disciplined and punished. Noe also that truth telling is not on the Duckworth list of “character strengths.”

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   • retired teacher says:

     August 5, 2018 at 2:17 pm

     What a sad, oppressive, toxic environment when profit takes priority over what is needed for students! This is educational malpractice. If students are miserable, they should get their parents to contact the superintendent’s office.

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     • Duane E Swacker says:

       August 6, 2018 at 9:13 am

       Please keep repeating the “educational malpractice” thought. That is exactly what all the edudeforms are about.

       Thanks for your excellent comments.

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   • LeftCoastTeacher says:

     August 5, 2018 at 3:11 pm

     Government has become a revolving door for tech and investment companies. More than one person has run for office or applied to serve an office as merely a rèsumé building exercise. It removes any possibility of ethical standards among leaders. Hence, we have people in office whose brains truly are just muscle.

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     • bethree5 says:

       August 6, 2018 at 9:07 am

       Industry lobbying has ever been with us. That its power is now greater is a symptom. The issue is that the will of the people is no longer represented on the Hill to push back. Legislation & deregulation since the ’80’s have relentlessly pushed the money up & away from the common people. Policy-making is driven by that money, which seeks only to grow itself, directly undermining the power of the vote. Our govtl system is awash in legalized corruption, facilitated by pay-to-play campaigns, PACs & Super-PACS & warped non-profit laws, Cit-United. A blue wave could help us turn the ship back some — off hard-right laissez-faire capitalism. That would be a start. But the “get the money out” issue needs to be moved to the front burner.

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10. Akademos says:

    August 5, 2018 at 1:03 pm

    Are our Arne learning?

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    • LeftCoastTeacher says:

      August 5, 2018 at 3:55 pm

      He’s just misunderestimated.

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    • ciedie aech says:

      August 6, 2018 at 2:02 pm

      perfect analogy 🙂

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11. Lloyd Lofthouse says:

    August 5, 2018 at 1:12 pm

    Arne is still being rewarded by his masters for putting the country’s public education system on the auction box to the highest briber.

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12. A Furious Teacher says:

    August 5, 2018 at 1:15 pm

    Arne wasted $4.35 billion of taxpayer dollars on Race to the Top alone. DeVos is horrible and downright clueless, but also cunning. Arne is an egomaniac with dangerous ideas who undermined public education and hurt kids, parents, teachers, districts and entire states. He is a despicable man.

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    • dianeravitch says:

      August 5, 2018 at 2:15 pm

      I forgot to mention that membership on a corporate board usually pays at least $100,000 a year to attend four meetings.

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      • GregB says:

        August 5, 2018 at 2:29 pm

        Plus expenses! Never forget the expenses!

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13. AlwaysLearning says:

    August 5, 2018 at 1:42 pm

    The Reform movement made sense once I read this post years ago on Diane’s blog posted by Bob Shepherd. I believe he was spot on and understood all the pieces and motives after reading this post. I am sharing the link to the post. The post is titled:
    The remarkable but true tale of the birth of the common core.

    Robert Shepherd: The Remarkable But True Tale of the Birth of Common Core

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14. Otis L Griffin says:

    August 5, 2018 at 4:16 pm

    if the kids lost and the investors reaped a profit, than Flop it is

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15. retired teacher says:

    August 5, 2018 at 5:35 pm

    Duncan is finished with his “gig” in the last administration. Despite the massive failure in his former position, he is moving on to greener pastures where he can follow the money and represent a product doomed for more failure. It seems about right for the vapid AD.

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16. Linda says:

    August 5, 2018 at 6:10 pm

    I don’t know if Corey Booker needed to be told that hedge funds would give him big bucks to privatize schools or if he figured it out on his own. . But, “John Podesto….provided policy and political advice to generations of Democratic politicians and operatives”.(NYT)
    Podesto founded CAP and he was Hillary’s campaign manager. CAP doubled down after Hillary lost, writing a paper in March that called for states to authorize charters and that specifically recommended no new taxes (instead, the sale of advertising on buses) to pay for teacher salary increases and presumably to replace the education funding cuts since 2008. Exactly, how many buses are there and what’s the going rate for ad placements on them? (sarcasm) Since CAP’s VP was former TFA, maybe I’m making too much out of the pay issue. Salaries don’t ratchet up much when turnover is stratospheric.

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17. Sarah Pezoa says:

    August 5, 2018 at 6:59 pm

    I guess that’s why he was on Meet the Press today. I couldn’t watch him though.

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18. Naked Teaching (@ShirleyWill3) says:

    August 5, 2018 at 11:55 pm

    Education is increasingly captured by the racketeers. Only, in this country, it’s legal.

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19. Caligirl says:

    August 6, 2018 at 12:09 am

    So many teachers worked to get Obama elected – love Obama and his wife … but we we got a Arne for 8 years … Arne primed the pump for betsy.

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    • dianeravitch says:

      August 6, 2018 at 12:40 am

      Exactly.

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