Nancy Bailey lists the cushy jobs and boards that Arne Duncan has landed.
Who Arne Duncan is Today Speaks To His Past Role as Education Secretary
Getting into education has been a good gig for him. He’s making plenty money telling the country how terrible American education is, how awful teachers are, and why no one has as much courage as he does. He was the U.S. Secretary of Education for seven years. He had a powerful perch. Why didn’t he fix anything?
She hasn’t read Arne Duncan’s books but she knows the first line:
“He begins his book “Education runs on lies.” This is an insult to every authentic educator who will show up to teach children in the coming weeks.
“He talks about knowing poor children, but until you’re responsible for instructing thirty (or more) struggling students in an overcrowded classroom, lacking resources and support on a daily basis, you have no right to judge teachers.
“If only Duncan had been supportive. If he’d stood for teachers and their rights as they help children, maybe he would have been liked. But Duncan was a reformer’s reformer, put in place to privatize public schools.
“We never saw him fighting for better services for students with disabilities, reducing class sizes, or better public school programs to serve a diverse student body.
“Did he join teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kentucky, or Arizona as they struggled to get better public schools for their students?”
You know the answers to all these questions. He didn’t show up in Madison, Wisconsin, when Scott Walker started his war against teachers.
When real courage was required, he was Missing in Action. He is cleaning up now by defaming teachers, students, and parents.
Nancy Bailey sees the change from Duncan to DeVos as a continuum.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is there a link to Nancy Bailey’s article?
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Excellent analysis…let us all remember who hired him and enhanced his power…
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Arne Duncan is scheduled to be on Bill Maher next week.
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Great, they’re both going to conflate stuff.
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I just copied and pasted this post on the “Real Time” Facebook page. I told him Duncan is a propagandist for DFER. If he wants to speak to someone with facts, not bias about public education, he should contact Diane Ravitch. I am disappointed he will be given a big platform to sell his pack of lies. I hope Maher does his homework. His sister was an English teacher in New Jersey.
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THANK YOU, retired teacher. Glad you did that.
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Good move. Hopefully not to be removed by Campbell Brown and Facebook’s information police.
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Of course that will be removed.
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Perhaps it will get deleted, but I have posted Diane’s articles on my Facebook page many times. They make it through the filter because I have received comments from colleagues. I have also posted Dinae’s blog in response to a comment from someone that was pro-charter schools, and they generally go through. NPE also posts on Facebook seemingly without interference.
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Arne Duncan and others have been on Bill Mahers show before.
Paul Thomas wrote about it 7 years ago!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/bill-mahers-real-time-education-debate-failure/2011/05/14/AF0EvU3G_blog.html?utm_term=.09cfb38de2b0
“A new slogan has appeared from the ranks of educators who know the new education reform movement to be misguided, uninformed, and powerful: “Those who can, teach. Those who cannot pass laws about teaching.”
If the public had listened to Paul Thomas seven years ago they could have spared teachers and students a lot of unnecessary grief.
But the American public would rather listen to nitwits than people who know what they are talking about.
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He’s a candidate for my list of most insufferable public servants.
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Yes, just a candidate (one of many), cuz the competition is indeed keen!
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Unfortunately, the appointment of Duncan was one of the conditions that the billionaires demanded for the Obama presidency.
DeVos (picked by Pence) was selected by Trump to appease the right wing Republicans.
It’s the people who suffer as many issues are equally embraced by both political parties.
Both presidents cheered the American people in public, and while Trump is what we teach our children not to be, each of these men contributed to trying to destroy public education for the profit makers and the power brokers.
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“He didn’t show up in Madison, Wisconsin, when Scott Walker started his war against teachers.”
Who? Obama?
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Duncan was just a flunky for Obama and Bill Gates.
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YES, INDEED. Ka-CHING!
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Neither Arne Duncan nor President Obama stood up for teachers against Scott Walker.
Neither showed up when thousands of teachers, nurses, social workers and other public workers were demonstrating in Madison against Act 10 to end collective bargaining.
Walker killed The Wisconsin Idea.
Where were they? Absent.
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NOTABLY absent.
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At least Duncan never mentioned grabbing a pair of comfy shoes and joining the picket lines.
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link is here
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Thank you, Laura. I occasionally forget the link—once is too often!
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Arne is a DUNCE. His name should be Arne DUNCE.
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Arne Dunce-can’t
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Blarney, Blaaarney Duncecap, king of the lying frontiers.
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Education governance has been running on an agenda of lies.
Arne may or may not be sincere. Many say he is, which would make him a really convoluted cheese doodle with a sort of strangely vicious and inflammatory streak, that one doesn’t find in ordinarily convoluted cheese doodles.
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The only thing Duncan is sincere about is his delusion that he actually got his job at DOE based on something other than Obama’s desire for a lunchtime basketball partner.
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Well, wasn’t there a height requirement or something?
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Not sure whether there was a height requirement but pretty sure there was no intelligence requirement.
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Duncan didn’t appoint himself Secretary of Education.
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And Obama didn’t appoint himself President, which is why, to this day, most Democrats (Diane not included) won’t criticize anything he did.
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Totally agree.
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“He begins his book “Education runs on lies.” This is an insult to every authentic educator who will show up to teach children in the coming weeks.”
Normally I agree with what Nancy writes. In this case, I don’t.
Public education IS “run on lies”. And it’s an insult, even worse, injurious to the students.
It’s just that the lies, otherwise known as errors and falsehoods, infidelities to truth, that permeate the standards and testing regime so championed by BLarne D, are not what he is referring to. And those supposed “authentic educators” are as much a part of the problem for being GAGA Good German implementers of those standards and testing regime malpractices that harm all students.
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Just what is it in Duncan’s background that gives him the right to say he knows poor children, let alone anything about education.
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He has seen poor children when visiting their schools.
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Duane, I consider myself an “authentic educator.” In good faith, I worked hard for many years to become a teacher. I’m no different from other teachers who did the same thing. We went into teaching to do our best work for children. We were not the problem. The overuse of standardized testing was not under our control. It was forced upon us, along with the harsh criticism of our profession and democratically run public schools.
You have a school board in your community. If you don’t like the curriculum go voice your concern.
I would not have minded that Duncan had not been a teacher, if he would have supported teachers and been a friend to them. He was not. He still is not.
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