Archives for category: Duncan, Arne
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Duncan Hails Tennessee for Tying Teacher Licenses to Test scores

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2013 //
41

A reader sent this comment:

“U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued the following statement today in support of Tennessee’s decision to make changes to its teacher licensure policy:

“I want to praise Tennessee’s continuing effort to improve support and evaluation for teachers. For too long, in too many places, schools systems have hurt students by treating every teacher the same – failing to identify those who need support and those whose work deserves particular recognition. Tennessee has been a leader in developing systems that do better—and that have earned the support of a growing number of teachers. Tennessee’s new teacher licensure rules continue that effort, by ensuring that decisions on licensure are informed by multiple measures of their effectiveness in the classroom, including measures of student learning. The new system also adds reasonable safeguards to make sure any judgment about teacher performance is fair.”

“Chicago schools are in chaos, Detroit schools in chaos, Philadelphia schools may not open. What is Arne Duncan concentrating on? Promoting his good friend Mr. Huffman. Last week he was promoting his good friend Mayor Bloomberg.

“The cluelessness is just amazing. I’d say “out of touch” but that may be an understatement. They simply don’t live in the same world we do.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Tennessee, Testing

Advice from Your Secretary of Education

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2013 //
15

A reader follows Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Twitter feed (I do not; I do not monitor him). She noticed that he often promotes commercial, for-profit vendors. Others have noticed how often he lauds privately-managed charter schools and how seldom he praises public schools, except when their staff has been fired. She writes:

 

Speaking of monitoring, Duncan’s Twitter feed is absolutely amazing. 90% of his links promote some commercial aspect of education reform. Here’s today’s prominent product placement:

“School models that don’t fit within traditional definitions are largely excluded from receiving E-Rate support. Florida Virtual School, the largest virtual school in the United States serving more than 148,000 students, uses a model built entirely around connected learning resulting in
a broadband tab of $53 million, yet the E-Rate only reimburses $5,237. Schools using blended learning approaches that “flip the classroom,” where students watch lectures online at home and use class time for interactive discussion, also do not receive full E-Rate support.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/317329-new-education-models-need-a-new-e-rate#ixzz2cbzyzhXm
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

I don’t even think he has to go thru the revolving door from government work to the private sector, like so many of his staffers have. He’s promoting private sector education schemes while in his government job. It’s just shameless.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit

Anthony Cody: The DOE Monitored Us But Ignored What We Said

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2013 //
17

If there is a watch list at the U.S. Department of Education, surely Anthony Cody must be on it, along with me.

Anthony has been one of the most articulate critics of Arne Duncan and Bill Gates and the whole corporate reform agenda.

Just when I think he can’t outdo his last column, he proves me wrong.

This time, he explains his efforts to engage with Arne Duncan and how Duncan brushed him off.

He writes:

I actively sought a dialogue with the Arne Duncan and the Department of Education way back in November of 2009, when I wrote an open letter to President Obama, and started a Facebook group called Teachers’ Letters to Obama. In December of that same year I sent a packet of more than 100 letters to Secretary Duncan and the White House. In return I got a short note from a staffer at the DoEd, and no response at all from the White House. Eventually, the Teachers’ Letters group got a short phone conference with Secretary Duncan, and he followed up with a short personal call as well. But that was a very frustrating and aborted sort of dialogue, where the main emphasis on the part of Department of Education was to convince us all that we were somehow incapable of accurately perceiving their policies and their real-world consequences. Widespread frustration with this sort of response, and with administration policies, led to more than 6000 of us gathering in front of the White House at the Save Our Schools March in the summer of 2011.

Anthony never gave up trying, and was unable to break through the administration’s stony insistence that they know what they are doing, and their minds are closed.

Anthony is a teacher, and he believes in education, so he keeps reaching out. I think even Anthony now realizes that this administration has no intention of changing course, no matter what the evidence.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Race to the Top

Should the U.S. Government Monitor People Like Me?

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2013 //
81

I recently learned that the Obama administration “monitored” me.

Two years ago, blogger Mike Klonsky tweeted that the U.S. Department of Education had a secret task force to watch me. He was ridiculed by Secretary Duncan’s press secretary in response. But now the Assistant Secretary for Communications acknowledges that he monitored me and others.

It’s no secret that I never thought much of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top. RTTT was released not long after I realized that George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was a failure. I thought President Obama would ditch high-stakes testing and federal sanctions and chart a new course.

He didn’t. He built on the foundation of NCLB and made the stakes even higher by tying teacher evaluations to test scores. So I referred to Race to the Top as “NCLB on steroids” or “NCLB 2.0.”

I met Secretary Duncan in the fall of 2009, and we spent an hour alone talking. I talked about the failure of NCLB, the flaws of high-stakes testing, the risk of sacrificing the arts, history, and everything else because of making test scores so important. He smiled, he was charming, he took notes, we had our photo taken together. He is very, very tall. But nothing I said made a difference.

Now I learn that the Department of Education “monitored” me. Did they have the right to do that? I am not a terrorist. I don’t lead a secret organization. It’s just me, a critic of their policies.

Who else was monitored? What does it mean to be monitored? I don’t know.

It just doesn’t feel right when the government, with its vast powers, uses people to watch and monitor critics. It reminds me of Nixon’s “Enemies’ List.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, U.S. Department of Education

The Attacks Begin

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2013 //
62

Because of my new book, which won’t be available until September 18, I fully expect the corporate reform attack machine to come after me. They have invested a lot of energy in charters, vouchers, merit pay, stripping teachers of tenure, collective bargaining rights, pensions, etc. despite the lack of any evidence that these strategies improve education. It makes them angry to be reminded that their plans have failed again and again.

So I was not surprised when I heard that Secretary Arne Duncan’s former Assistant Secretary for Communications lashed out at me in an article on the Huffington Post. I decided to ignore it.

But others did not. Paul Thomas wrote a response here.

Susan Ohanian called it “a whiny rant.”

Read the comments following his article.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Ravitch, Diane

U.S. Department of Education Abandons Federalism

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2013 //
32

There is a sacrosanct principle that has informed the actions of the U.S. Department of Education throughout its 33-year history: federalism. That is, a recognition that the federal government has limited authority, and that states and localities have the primary responsibility for education. George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was a direct assault on federalism because it asserted the power of Congress and the Department of Education to tell states and localities how to measure “progress” and how to reform schools. Since no one in either Congress or the Department of Education knows how to reform schools, this was a bad but costly joke. And not funny.

Arne Duncan made the assault on federalism more intense by promulgating Race to the Top. RTTT offered a huge financial lure to states willing to abandon their authority and accept Duncan’s untried “remedies.” Most were hungry enough to do so, because in a time of financial crisis, money talks.

Duncan’s worst idea was evaluating teachers by test scores. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that the teachers in affluent districts get big gains and look effective while those who teach needy students do not get big gains and look like ineffective teachers. Duncan doesn’t care. He has his idee fixe and he is sticking to it, regardless of how many teachers-of-the-year get fired.

Now he has found a new way to undermine federalism. Frustrated by California’s stubborn refusal to join Duncan’s Race to Oblivion, he was able to find a group of superintendents (mostly trained by the unaccredited Broad Academy) who want federal money. So Duncan has bypassed the state, the entity that has legal jurisdiction over these districts, and has formed a direct relationship between the federal government and the coalition called CORE (California Office to Reform Education).

Read this post to learn more about this special “partnership” that cut the state out of the transaction. You will see familiar names, well known in corporate reform circles. They are eager to do what Duncan wants them to do, while ignoring the state of which they are part, which has wisely steered clear of Duncan’s mandates.

The saddest part of all this is that Duncan was a failure in Chicago, yet now he has brought his failed ideas to become national policy. After eight years of his “leadership,” what will be left of American public education? Who will want to teach?

Categories California, Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education

Ed Berger Gives a Test to the “Reformers”

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
3

Blogger Edward Berger has a test for those who claim to be reformers.

What do you know about teaching? How long did you teach? What gives you the authority to tell teachers how to teach? And that’s just the beginning.

He concludes that most reformers are quacks.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Testing

Mark Naison: The Fatal Arrogance of Our Elites

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
41
http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2013/08/to-nations-elites-teachers-are-losers.html
To The Nation’s Elites, Teachers are “Losers!”

There is a reason that people like Bill Gates, Chris Christie, Rahm Emmanuel, Jeb Bush, Andrew Cuomo, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg and yes Barack Obama will never really listen to teachers voices. And that is because, in the competition for money, power, and position, which is what is all the that really counts to them, they see themselves as winners and teachers as losers. Regarding themselves as examples of what talent and ambition can achieve, they look at someone who spends their life in the classroom as lacking in drive and imagination, and therefore undeserving in having a voice in shaping the way we train the next generation of citizens and workers. Whether or not they will say this in their speeches, they certainly say it to one another, in their private meetings, and high powered policy seminars. It is why the only teacher training organization they really trust is Teach for America, because that organization shares their view that really talented people would only remain a teacher as a passage to a more rewarding career. Unless you understand this– you will never understand why editorial writers, television personalities, corporate leaders, and elected officials systematically exclude teachers voices, and why the policies they ultimately support prove disastrous on the ground. Every section of the American Elite is poisoned with a fatal arrogance, and getting through to them with sound arguments is well nigh impossible. They only understand and respect power.

Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/
Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teach for America TFA

Will LA Mayor Choose Corporate Reformer to Advise Him?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
3

This Los Angeles parent explains why parents are alarmed by the prospect that the new mayor Eric Garcetti might choose Thelma Melendez, one of Arne Duncan’s deputies as his advisor.

She writes:

“In making this appointment, the Mayor should follow his creed to lead by listening and consider first and foremost the concerns of public school parents, the only “special interest” group whose only concern is children. In so doing, he can resist appointing a staffer who will advance the so-called “reform agenda” which tends to view schools as business franchises in need of a quick corporate turn-around.

“Two-thirds of public school parents reject reform policies including an emphasis on standardized testing, closure of struggling schools, shifting resources from traditional schools to charters, narrowing curriculum, reducing teacher pay and benefits, and budget cutting. This was revealed in a national poll of public school parents (including those at charters). Conducted last month, it reflects the same views Angelenos have already demonstrated at the ballot box….

“Parents know the “reform agenda” itself needs reform. The highly political movement, largely funded by business plutocrats, has become as inflexible and oppositional as the unions it points to as the root of all educational evils. Parents are caught in the middle. We want reform, but reform that helps our children, not an imposed agenda that eviscerates neighborhood schools. Reform that aligns city resources to support and to strengthen local neighborhood schools along the Community Schools model makes sense. Mayor Garcetti succeeded at this kind of political leadership as a city councilman when he helped direct anti-poverty grant funds to Mount Washington Elementary School’s new community center and library.

“Taking a cue from both local elections and the overwhelming evidence from the recent parents’ survey, the mayor should appoint an education deputy who will support public schools. That means professional development over teacher bashing, improvement of neighborhood schools over increased competition, and broadening quality curriculum over teach-to-the-test.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Parents

Arne Duncan: Will He Resign?

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
88

In his comments at a press conference about the collapse of the New York test scores, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said,

“Too many school systems lied to children, families and communities,” Mr. Duncan said. “Finally, we are holding ourselves accountable as educators.”

Since he used the term “we,” it means that he too is accountable for the lying and debacle in New York, where it was revealed that 70% of the students couldn’t pass the Pearson-made Common Core test that Duncan funded.

Does he really mean “we”?

If he holds himself accountable, will he resign?

After all, he has been Secretary of Education for five years, and he can’t escape accountability.

New York adopted the  Common Core and the tests because it won Race to the Top funding, Duncan’s signature program.

Duncan pushed Common Core. Duncan pushed the testing.

Duncan is right. He too is accountable for the children’s low scores.

Now, what will he do about it?

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Duncan, Arne, New York, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »