This is my analysis of the strike, posted on the website of the New York Review of Books.
Archives for category: Duncan, Arne
Jersey Jazzman calls out the conservative pundits who, in an effort to embarrass Chicago teachers,try to show how awful student perormance is in that district and paint it in the worst possible light.
If they are casting stones, you kinda wonder why they don’t throw them at Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley, whose policies determined what happened in the schools.
What they do is akin to blaming the war in Iraq on the soldiers, not the policymakers.
A reader sent this today:
Interview of Chris Hedges today by Amy Goodman. Opens with comments on Chicago teacher strike, as excerpted below:
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, you know, the tactic is clear. And, you know, the secretary of education, Duncan, is behind it. And that is essentially the stripping away of—you know, of qualified teachers. We’re watching it in New York. You know, the mayor of New York is very much a part of this effort. The assault on the New York City teachers’ union is as egregious as the assault against the Chicago Teachers Union.
And it really boils down to the fact that we spend $600-some billion a year, the federal government, on education, and the corporations want it. That’s what’s happening. And that comes through charter schools. It comes through standardized testing. And it comes through breaking teachers’ unions and essentially hiring temp workers, people who have very little skills. This is what Teach for America is about. They teach by rote, and they earn nothing. There’s no career.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/11/chris_hedges_on_9_11_touring
Norm Scott, a retired teacher who is a blogger and film producer (“The Inconvenient Truth Behind ‘Waiting for Superman'”), wrote a provocative explanation of the Chicago strike and its political implications.
He says that President Obama can’t support the Chicago teachers because they are striking against his Race to the Top policies. And he can’t oppose the teachers because he needs the votes of teachers in the election. So he supports the kids.
Count on Stephanie Simon of Reuters to get the story that eluded every other reporter.
She is the one that got the inside story on Louisiana, TFA, and for-profit investors.
Now she has the scoop on Chicago.
The strike in Chicago is not about money.
It is a national story.
It’s about the survival of public education.
Read her story.
The nation’s leading anti-testing organization has issued a call to its supporters to turn out and welcome Secretary Duncan if he visits their communities on his cross-country bus tour.
Tell him why his teach-to-the-test policies are failing. Tell him why high-stakes testing is bad for the quality of education. Tell him that children need time to play and dance and sing, not just take test prep. Tell him that it is wrong to ditch physical education and the arts and recess for more testing.
Greet him warmly. Of course, the tour starts in Silicon Valley, where the edu-entrepreneurs are heavily represented.
Here is the FairTest message.
Give Arne’s “Bus Tour” a Warm Welcome
Once again, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is running a “back to school” bus tour, starting in California on Sept. 12 and winding east to DC (see http://www.ed.gov/blog/topic/bustour/ for full schedule).
FairTest encourages assessment reformers to give Duncan the “welcome” his destructive policies deserve. A handful of people is sufficient to make a big impact. You can leaflet the locations where Duncan and his surrogates stop, challenging their policies while educating the media and the audience. The National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing provides a succinct critique of federal testing policies (see http://www.fairtest.org/national-resolution-highstakes-testing)
The tour starts in the Redwood City/Silicon Valley, California area. Other stops include: Sacramento, California; Reno and Elko, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; Rawlins, Rock Springs, and Cheyenne, Wyoming; Denver and Limon, Colorado; Topeka and Emporia, Kansas; Kansas City and Columbia, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri ; Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Evansville, Indiana; Lexington, Kentucky; Charleston and McDowell County, West Virginia; Roanoke and Richmond, Virginia.
If Duncan’s bus tour is visiting your region, please help make the public aware of the growing grassroots resistance to high-stakes testing. Feel free to call on FairTest at any time for assistance in your important work.
Andrea Gabor got an email from the principal of Brockton High School.
She and the teachers succeeded in turning around their school without firing 80% of staff.
They did it the old-fashioned way, through team work.
But Arne likes mass firings.
Arne Duncan reminded us In his speech at the Democratic National Convention that President Obama opposes teaching to tests. Duncan didn’t say whether he agrees. It’s hard to take this sentiment seriously now that so many states are evaluating teachers by student test scores, at Duncan’s urging.
When this practice is one day acknowledged to be bogus, we will remember who imposed it.
Meanwhile Governor Dannel Malloy, who has specifically endorsed teaching to the tests, was made chairman of the National Governors Association’s education and the workforce committee.
As someone once said,, hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
At the Democratic National Convention, Arne Duncan renounced many of his own policies.
He came out in opposition to teaching to the test, although his own Race to the Top demands it (he never mentioned Race to the Top.)
He denounced the millionaires and billionaires who are supporting the charter school movement and privatization of public education (he didn’t mention that either).
He didn’t mention that he wants education colleges to be graded by the test scores of the students of their graduates.
He didn’t mention merit pay, into which his Department of Education has pumped nearly $ billion.
He didn’t mention the proliferation of for-profit schools.
He didn’t mention that he campaigned with Newt Gingrich to rally support for Race to the Top.
He didn’t mention that he called Bobby Jindal’s choice for state commissioner a “visionary leader,” who now promotes vouchers and the disestablishment of public education.
We should be grateful, I suppose, for what he did not mention.
Mark Naison has written a passionate plea: It is time to start suing to stop the harm inflicted on children, teachers and schools.
The political parties have abandoned them and use well-honed PR rhetoric to paint abandonment as “reform.”
The media swallow the rhetoric.
The foundations have an open wallet for those who are destroying public education.
The Republicans want to intensify the harm. Arne Duncan boasts of bipartisanship with a party that hates public education.
Naison says it is time to go to the courts to prevent further damage to America’s children and its education system.
Any public interest law firms listening? ACLU? Anyone?
Diane Ravitch's blog 