Archives for category: Duncan, Arne
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Duncan Proves That Common Core Is a Federal Mandate by Threatening to Punish Indiana for Backing Out

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
44

Over the past few years, as almost every state adopted the Common Core standards, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insisted they did so voluntarily. He insisted that the creation of the standards was “state-led” and that the federal government had nothing to do with it. No part of these statements was true. The states adopted the CC because they would not be eligible to compete for a share of nearly $5 billion in Race to the Top funding unless they did so. “State-led” meant that the Gates Foundation, which enjoys a close relationship with the US Department of Education, paid more than $200 million to create and evaluate CCSS, and as much as $2 billion to aid in their promotion, advocacy, and implementation.

It would be illegal for the US Department of Education to direct, supervise, or control curriculum or instruction, so Duncan has pretended he was an arms-length observer.

But he was not and is not.

Mercedes Schneider tells the story here of Duncan’s efforts to force Indiana to stick with standards that were allegedly “state-led” and that were not as good as the standards that Indiana previously had. On what legal authority does he have the right or power to tell a state what its academic standards should be? None.

When Indiana recently threatened to drop the Common Core, the US Department promptly sent out a letter threatening to withdraw the state’s waiver from NCLB, on grounds that Indiana had promised to adhere to high academic standards as a condition of getting the waiver.

The irony here is that Indiana already had superior academic standards prior to adopting the Common Core. Even the conservative policy group, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, rated Indiana’s academic standards as at least equal to, perhaps superior to, the Common Core.

Duncan likes to tell the media that “we are lying to our children.” In this case, to put it euphemistically, he is prevaricating to the public.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Indiana

Mike Rose Has Six Questions for Arne Duncan about Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2014 //
45

Secretary Arne Duncan recently announced his plan to judge teacher education programs by their “results,” including the test scores of the students taught by their graduates. If the Ed Schools can’t produce teachers who can raise test scores, Duncan said, they should go out of business. Spoken like a true businessman.

Mike Rose, celebrated author and professor emeritus at UCLA, has six questions for Arne.

He writes:

Six Questions for Secretary Duncan

1. Will you be evaluating with the same metrics all teacher preparation programs, alternative as well as traditional, Teach for America as well as California State University at Northridge or UCLA?

2. If the Department of Education will use close to $100 million per year on grants to forward its agenda, where will that money come from? From other educational programs that serve needy populations? If so, what services or funding will be cut or discontinued because of this reallocation?

3. Policy formation emerges out of staff research, consultation with experts, and political deliberation. What research and consultation leads you to the current project? I ask because your statement about teacher preparation programs needing to improve “or go out of business” as well as your general approach echoes last year’s report from the National Council of Teacher Quality, a report that has been roundly criticized by a wide range of experts.

4. The National Academy of Education recently issued a comprehensive report on evaluating teacher education programs that recommends an approach very different from yours. Have you read it or consulted its authors?

5. There is an increasing number of respected scholarly organizations—the National Academies Board on Testing and Assessment, AERA, the National Academy of Education, the American Statistical Association—that are advising caution in the use of procedures like value-added to evaluate teacher effectiveness. These organizations point to technical, logistical, and conceptual problems in doing so. One conceptual problem imputing causality between teachers’ activity and a test score, for so many other variables come into play. Your stated plan will use student test scores to not only judge teachers, but also the institutions from which they come, introducing another level of questionable causal attribution in your model. You will have a putative causal chain that goes from the student test score to the teacher to the teacher’s training institution. How do you plan to address this basic conceptual problem?

6. The implication in your plan that bad schools will go out of business assumes that all prospective teachers are the economist’s idealized free agents who can go wherever a highly rated program exists. But a number of prospective teachers from lower income backgrounds do not have the finances to travel—or cannot travel because of family obligations and expectations. How will you address the possible unintended consequence of your program placing burdens on this segment of the population?

Thanks, Mike. If I hear from Secretary Duncan, I will post his answers.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Bruce Baker: Meet Arne Duncan’s Latest Nutty Idea

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2014 //
11

Bruce Baker can’t believe that Arne Duncan admires the Relay “Graduate” School of Education, where charter teachers grant masters’ degrees to their colleagues. This demeans the very concept of professionalism and graduate study. But it reveals Duncan’s essential contempt for education.

What if Duncan were in charge of medical education (heaven forbid).

Here is the Duncan model of medical education:

Baker writes:

“Let’s……consider the model of the future – one which blends Arne Duncan’s otherwise entirely inconsistent models of training. I give you:

“The Relay Medical College and North Star Community Hospital

“Here’s how it all works. Deep in the heart of some depressed urban core where families and their children suffer disproportionate obesity, asthma and other chronic health conditions, where few healthy neighborhood groceries exist, but plenty of fast food joints are available, sits the newly minted North Star Community Hospital.

“It all starts here. NSCH is a new kind of hospital that does not require any of its staff to actually hold medical degrees, any form of board certification or nursing credential, or even special technician degrees to operate medical equipment or handle medications. Rather, NSCH recruits bright young undergrads from top liberal arts colleges, with liberal arts majors, and puts them through an intense 5 week training program where they learn to berate and belittle minority families and children and shame them into eating more greens and fiber. Where they learn to demean them into working out – walking the treadmill, etc. It’s rather like an episode of the Biggest Loser. And the Hospital is modeled on the premise that if it can simply engage enough of the community members in its bootcamp style wellness program, delivered by these fresh young faces, they can substantively alter the quality of life in the urban core.

“There is indeed some truth to the argument. Getting more community members to eat healthier and exercise will improve their health stats, including morbidity and mortality measures commonly used in Hospital rating systems. In fact, over time, this Hospital, which provides no actual medical diagnosis and treatment does produce annual reports that show astoundingly good outcome measures for community members who complete their program.

“These great outcome measures generate headlines from the local news writers who fail to explore more deeply what they mean (Yes Star Ledger editorial board, that’s you!). NCSH becomes such a darling of the media and politicians that they are granted authority to start their own medical school to replicate their “successes.” And they are granted the authority to run a medical school where medical training need not even be provided by individuals with medical training!

“Rather, they will grant medical degrees to their own incoming staff based on their own experiences with healthcare awesomeness. That’s right, individuals who themselves had little or no basic science or actual supervised clinical training in actual medicine, but have 3 to 5 years of experience in medical awesomeness in this start-up (pseudo) Hospital will grant medical degrees – to their own incoming peers!”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Teachers and Teaching

John Thompson: Who Does More Damage to Public Education: The Tea Party or Arne Duncan?

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2014 //
59

John Thompson raises a provocative and important question: who is inflicting more damage on teachers and students? Tea Party extremists like North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory or Secretary of Education Arne Duncan?

Thompson, a teacher and historian, describes the assault on teachers in North Carolina, whose governor and Legislature seem determined to destroy public education by expanding vouchers and charters and to dismantle the teaching profession by eliminating tenure, laying off teacher aides, and keeping salaries stagnant.

Thompson writes:

“Which sets of school reforms are inflicting the most damage on teachers and students? Has the right wing Tea Party’s most extreme assaults on public education hurt schools the most? Or, has the Duncan administration’s ill-conceived corporate reforms done the most harm?

“North Carolina was once touted as an exemplar of standards based reforms, and Wake County was praised for its socio-economic integration. Tea Party Governor Pat McCrory and Republicans are phasing out tenure and gutting salaries. As a result, mid-year teacher resignations in Wake schools have increased by an “alarming” 41% this school year. The number of resigning teachers who said they are moving to other North Carolina schools dropped, as there was an increase in teachers leaving for other states. Early retirements have tripled.

“The problem is so extreme that Doug Thilman, Wake’s assistant superintendent for human resources, said at a press conference, “Good teachers are having to make hard decisions to leave our classrooms for a better future somewhere else or in another line of work, in another profession – not in our public schools and not in our state.”

But then there is Arne Duncan’s mad idea that the way to “fix” schools is to fire half or all the staff.

Thompson writes:

“The mirror image of Wakes’ crisis is found in Chicago “turnaround schools.” Chicago’s Catalyst quotes Michael Hansen, senior researcher for the American Institutes for Research, who explains that the Duncan administration’s School Improvement Grant (SIG) are “under-researched.” High attrition following a turnaround has the potential to produce “more harm than help.” (emphasis by the Catalyst)

Ignoring educational research, these expensive turnaround campaigns begin with the mass dismissal of teachers. This immediately reduces the number of African-American teachers serving African-American communities, as well as reducing the experience levels of teachers. Catalyst reports, however, that “large chunks of the new staff–teachers who were hand-picked and spent weeks over the summer getting to know each other, becoming a team and learning how to spark improvement when the school reopened–leave within a few years.”

Catalyst reports “At 16 of the 17 schools that underwent a turnaround between 2007 and 2011, more than half of teachers hired in the first year of the turnaround left by the third year.” Moreover, “Among all turnarounds, an average of two-thirds of new teachers left by year three.” (emphasis in the original)

As the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) explains, such high levels of attrition is problematic because, “It can produce a range of organizational problems at schools, such as discontinuity in professional development, shortages in key subjects and loss of teacher leadership.”

I say that the answer to Thompson’s question is clear. McCrory is gutting public education in his state, and only in his state. Duncan’s idiotic idea of “turnaround” is harming schools and communities across the nation, laying off veteran teachers, reducing the number of African-American teachers, and generating harmful turmoil.

Let’s face it. Duncan has inflicted incalculable harm on public education, especially in urban districts. He became Secretary of Education after eight unsuccessful years as superintendent of schools in Chicago, which was and remains a low-performing district. He was unqualified to be Secretary of Education. In the past, we have had governors with no education credentials, but they at least had the good sense to recognize the reality of federalism, the limitations on their powers, and fact that control of education is a state and local function. Duncan has recognized none of these factors and has used federal funding to impose his will and his bad ideas on districts across the nation. It seems he won’t be satisfied until every teacher is inexperienced (preferably certified by Teach for America), every public school has been turned over to private management, every decision is tightly tied to test scores, and every teacher education institution is run by charter school teachers who grant advanced degrees to one another.

Duncan is a terrific basketball payer but a disastrous Secretary of Education. The real test of public education is whether it can survive two more years of his failed and harmful policies.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America, Testing

Kindergarten Show Canceled so Children Can Get “College-and-Career-Ready

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2014 //
75

Yes, you read that right.

School officials in Elwood, Néw York, canceled a kindergarten play scheduled for May 14-15 because it would take time away from getting the little tykes “college-and-career ready.”

Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss called the school for confirmation. It sounded too crazy to be true.

But it is factual. The interim principal sent a letter to parents of children in kindergarten canceling the annual show. The letter said, in part, “The reason for eliminating the Kindergarten show is simple. We are responsible for preparing children for college and career with valuable lifelong skills and know that we can best do that by having them become strong readers, writers, coworkers and problem solvers.”

A member of the district staff vouched for the letter’s authenticity.

This is nuts. Blame Duncan. Blame Obama. They know nothing about child development. Their poll-tested policies hurt little children. Their policies have no basis in research. Children need time to play. They need time to socialize. Five-year-olds should be allowed a childhood.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Duncan, Arne, Obama, Race to the Top, Testing

Bruce Baker Explains the Logic of Arne-ology

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2014 //
22

Arne Duncan and Barack Obama have this unbelievably incredible idea: grade teachers’ colleges by the test scores of the students taught by their graduates. Got that? It’s a stretch but where our Secretary of Education is involved there is no time or place where test scores don’t matter more than anything else. He loves test so much that I wish he would take the new SAT and publish his scores. Or how about if he took the 8th grade NAEP math test and published his scores. No one–no one–loves standardized tests more than Arne.

Bruce Baker, our pre-eminent manure detector, ran a simulation to test Arne’s latest goofy idea.

If n education school wants to get a high rating in New Zjersey, where should they send their graduates? Which districts should they avoid?

Here is his advice for those seeking to please the Secretary, the man who would be king:

“It’s pretty simple – New Jersey colleges of education would be wise to get their graduates placements in schools that are:

20% of fewer free lunch (to achieve good math gains)
5% or lower black (to achieve good math gains)
11% or lower free lunch (to achieve good LAL gains)
2% or lower black ( to achieve good LAL gains)

Now, the schools NJ colleges of ed should avoid (for placing their grads) are those that are:

over 50% free lunch
over 30% black”

Pretty smart incentives, Mr. Secretary.

Help the haves, hurt the have-nots.

Categories Duncan, Arne

Obama and Duncan Plan to Control Teacher Institutions with Their Failed Ideas

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2014 //
54

With the Obama administration’s latest policy pronouncement, the federal grip on American education grows tighter and stupider every day.

The latest: the administration plans to reward the best teacher-training institutions and drive the “worst” ones out of business. This is like Race to the Top for teacher preparation programs.

What are their measures? Of course, student test scores loom large.

“The goal: To ensure that every state evaluates its teacher education programs by several key metrics, such as how many graduates land teaching jobs, how long they stay in the profession and whether they boost their students’ scores on standardized tests. The administration will then steer financial aid, including nearly $100 million a year in federal grants to aspiring teachers, to those programs that score the highest. The rest, Duncan said, will need to improve or “go out of business.”

Thus, programs that send their graduates to work in urban districts with high-needs students will get low ratings. Duncan will drive them out of business. Smart institutions will steer their graduates to affluent suburbs, where scores will go up regardless of what they do.

The message from the U.S. Department of Education to the nation’s colleges of teacher education:

1. Do not send your graduates to teach struggling students who are likely to get small or no gains on standardized tests, such as students with extreme disabilities and English language learners, as well as gifted students, who are unlikely to post gains because of the ceiling effect.

2. Teach to the test. Drill the students hour after hour. Extend the school day whenever possible so there is more time for test prep.

3. Don’t waste time on non-tested subjects like the arts, history, civics, and science. They don’t count.

4. Invest in Pearson and McGraw-Hill stock.

The evidence is overwhelming that value-added measures for teachers are inaccurate, but neither secretary Duncan nor the White House care about evidence.

As reporter Stephanie Simon points out:

“The formulas for measuring how much “value” a teacher adds to a student’s test scores are complex and often carry a sizable margin of error.

“Earlier this month, the American Statistical Association warned that such formulas must be used with caution because teachers generally account for less than 15 percent — and in some studies, as little as 1 percent — of the variability in student test scores. Value-added models spit out precise-sounding numbers that purport to quantify a teacher’s impact on her students, but in fact the formulas “typically measure correlation, not causation,” the group concluded.

“A recent study funded by the Education Department found that value-added measures may fluctuate significantly due to factors beyond the teachers’ control, including random events such as a dog barking loudly outside a classroom window, distracting students during their standardized test. A 2010 study, also funded by the Education Department, found the models misidentify as many as 50 percent of teachers — pegging them as average when they’re actually better or worse than their peers, or singling them out for praise or condemnation when they’re actually average.

“Yet another challenge: Calculating scores for educators who do not teach subjects or grades assessed with standardized exams. Nationally, some 70 percent of teachers — including most high school and early elementary teachers, plus art, music and physical education teachers — fall into that category.

“Despite such complications, [White House policy director Cecilia] Muñoz made clear in a call with reporters on Thursday that Obama wants student test scores, or other measures of student growth, to figure heavily into states’ evaluations of teacher prep programs.

“This is something the president has a real sense of urgency about,” she said. “What happens in the classroom matters. It doesn’t just matter — it’s the whole ballgame.” So using student outcomes to evaluate teacher preparation programs “is really fundamental to making sure we’re successful,” Muñoz said. “We believe that’s a concept … whose time has come.”

Yes, using student test scores to evaluate teachers, principals, schools, and teacher colleges is “a concept… whose time has come,” despite the fact that there is no evidence for it, despite the fact that the nation’s leading scholarly organizations have warned about its limitations and misuse, despite the fact that it fails to account for factors beyond the teachers” control, and despite the fact that it misidentifies teacher effectiveness at an alarmingly high rate.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/barack-obama-arne-duncan-teacher-training-education-106013.html#ixzz2zuFEulXw

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Chris Rekydal of Washington State: A Hero of American Education

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2014 //
50

Washington State thoughtfully rejected Arne Duncan’s threat to cancel its waiver from the absurd demands of No Child Left Behind. The decision to say no to federal demands and intimidation was bipartisan.

The Legislature refused to bend to Duncan’s insistence that the state adopt test-based evaluation, which has consistently failed across the nation and has been declared inaccurate by the nation’s leading scholarly organizations.

The Washington State legislature understands federalism. Secretary Duncan does not. He thinks he is charge of the nation’s schools–every one f them. As someone who spent eight years running the Chicago public school system, one of the nation’s lowest-performing, he should have earned humility. Unfortunately, he enjoys a sense of certainty that is astonishing, almost as astonishing as his indifference to research and evidence.

The sense of the Washington State legislature was succinctly expressed by Chris Rekydal, a Democrat.

Unlike Duncan, Rekydal understands that the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution leaves education policy to states and localities.

He said in a statement:

“As a legislator who voted for our state’s robust home-grown teacher-principal evaluation system and one of the authors of our state’s new rigorous 24-credit graduation framework, I am disappointed in the federal government’s decision to repeal our waiver.

“This is a tremendous moment in our nation’s history where a state that strongly supported the President in 2008 and again in 2012 soundly rejected the federal government’s demands to structure our teacher-principal evaluation system to the specific criteria established by the U.S. Dept. of Education.

“My message to President Obama and Secretary Duncan is that Washington State is committed to education reform that is collaborative, bipartisan, and focused on student success and teacher growth. Our legislative decision to reject the federal government’s demands was done with substantial deliberation and a deep respect for state and local control.

“The bipartisan rejection of this federal government demand during the 2014 legislative session is a strong and unifying message that our state fully embraces our constitutional 10th Amendment guarantee to develop, fund, and administer our state’s education system as the citizens of the state of Washington and their elected representatives determine, not as federal officials deem it appropriate.

“Washington State has one of the leading K-12 systems in the United States. With 89% of our adult population having earned a high school diploma or greater, we are a national leader in student success, employment growth, and earnings.

“I strongly encourage federal officials to use this moment in history to model Washington State’s success instead of using us as an example of federal government power and leverage. I challenge the federal government to turn a corner on education reform, fix the deeply-flawed and failed No Child Left Behind Act, and get back to empowering the states instead of coercing them.

“No Child Left Behind is a failed policy of the Bush administration that focuses on student failure and school punishment. This is no way to run a public education system. Enacting bad policy at the state level as a result of bad policy at the federal level will not help schools – and certainly won’t help students – be successful.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. education, Washington State

EduShyster Visits Arne Duncan’s Alma Mater

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2014 //
22

EduShyster visited the University of Chicago Lab School, where Arne Duncan was a student from K-12, thirteen years.

She met his favorite teacher, who has been teaching for 49 years.

She searched for the secret sauce that makes him tick.

She would have been better off searching for whatever ingredient led him to look upon public schools with such disdain.

Perhaps she found it. It is just a stone’s throw away.

Categories Chicago, Duncan, Arne

Matt Farmer: Graze to the Top, or How a $4.35 Billion Federal Program Became a Laughing Stock

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2014 //
20

Matt Farmer, a lawyer and public school activist in Chicago, wrote a brilliant satire of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top. You may recognize Matt Farmer as the brilliant litigator who cross-examined and tried billionaire Penny Pritzker in absentia. At the time, Pritzker was a member of the Chicago Board of Education, merrily cutting services for the children in public schools while raising money for a glorious library at her children’s private school. Last year, President Obama appointed Pritzker as Secretary of Commerce. She was a major Obama fund-raiser.

In this new post, Farmer tells us that Arne Duncan has discovered that American kids spend too much time eating lunch.

Other countries spend less time in the lunchroom, he says gravely. We must beat the international competition!

Farmer writes:

“Secretary Arne Duncan’s April 15, 2014, remarks to employees and diners at the National Place food court in Washington.

Today we cross an important threshold in school cafeteria reform by releasing draft guidelines for states to apply for the $3.6 billion dollar Graze to the Top fund. We gather here today at Washington D.C.’s National Place food court to announce – and celebrate — a new Graze to the Top in schoolhouses across America.

For too many years, our nation’s public school students have been trapped for nearly 20 minutes a day in under-performing school cafeterias. Simply put, kids are spending too much time in lunchrooms and not enough time in classrooms. In today’s global economy, a country that eats lunch in less time than America will out-compete us.

And what we now know from international assessments is that students in countries such as Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic spend far less time eating school lunches than do their U.S. peers.”

Surely, spoiled suburban moms will complain. But don’t listen to them. We can’t afford to waste another minute!

“Save, save the minutes!” You have to be a historian of American education to recognize that this phrase was associated with the early 19th century Lancastrian movement, the first effort to standardize education for the children of the poor so that it would be cost-effective. Arne Duncan, the Joseph Lancaster of the 21st century.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Humor, Race to the Top
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