Politico reports that Arne Duncan stubbornly clings to his belief that teacher quality can be measured by test scores and lashes out at those who disagrees. This despite the fact that several states have dropped it, several courts have suspended or ended it, and it worked Nowhere. Of course, his boook went to print before the release of the RAND-AIR study of the total failure of the Gates $575 Million program to use Arne’s VAM approach. But, the study is out, and you would think he might backtrack. But no.

Also, before the recent finding that the effect of the LA publication of teacher ratings meant that the richest families scooped up the teachers with the highest scores and the poorest kids got those with the lowest scores. And Arne forgot, but we won’t, Roberto Riguelas, the LA teacher who committed suicide after his rating was published. The LA ratings, by the way, we’re made up at the request of the LA Times and had many flaws.

Duncan accuses Lamar Alexander of “lying” or wanting to cover up poor teacher performance, but Alexander was right. The feds have zero authority to foist half-baked—and in this case, harmful and expensive—ideas on the states.

“HOW ARNE DUNCAN SEES ‘LIES’ IN EDUCATION: Arne Duncan, one of the most outspoken Education secretaries to hold the job, is out with an incendiary new book about the “lies” he says the public is fed about education and student potential.

— Duncan’s 200-plus-page read, “How Schools Work,” published Tuesday, tells how the former secretary attempted to dispel these “lies” and sell education reform while at the helm of both the Chicago Public Schools and the Education Department. The book is peppered with anecdotes spanning decades, some of them very critical of other education players. A few of the highlights are below; more from your host here.

— ‘Bare-knuckle politicking’: That’s how the Chicago native describes multiple interactions with elected officials and his attempts to “insulate” his education reform work from “political attack” and “stay above the political fray.”

— Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) figures in one anecdote. Duncan says that he was left “stunned” when Alexander refused to back the administration’s pursuit of policies that tied teacher evaluations to student test scores and higher standards. “This was the Tea Party talking, pure and simple. It was as if he’d been captured,” he writes of Alexander, also a former Education secretary, and governor of Tennessee. “Senator Alexander’s stance was one of the least principled things I’d ever heard from a politician, and it showed zero political courage.”

— Alexander said in a statement to POLITICO that Duncan came to Washington to “create a national school board” and that he came to reverse that trend. “Arne and I have a difference of principle, not politics. I believe that teacher evaluation is the holy grail of education and, as governor, helped Tennessee become the first state to pay teachers more for teaching well. As U.S. Education Secretary, I challenged every state to create voluntary national education standards and accountability systems. But I told Arne on the first day he walked into my office that Washington, D.C., has no business telling states how to evaluate teachers and what education standards to set,” Alexander said.

— ‘Teacher accountability was the third rail’: That’s how Duncan described the controversy he faced around the issue, not just from Alexander, but also from teachers unions and Democrats. He writes he was “shocked” that, when conceiving the Race to the Top grant program, he found states like California and Wisconsin banned school districts from using student test scores to measure teacher effectiveness.

— “What was the lie at the center of these laws?” Duncan writes. “Was it that good teaching was immeasurable? Or was it that some teachers … preferred to claim that they couldn’t help the kids who most desperately needed their help?”

— The idea that teacher quality is the most important variable remains up for debate — a recent report on a Gates Foundation initiative that attempted to prove as much claimed its effort was largely unsuccessful. But in his book, Duncan remains committed to the idea. “The simple fact is that quality teaching matters more than anything,” he writes.”