Obama picks school-privatizing union-buster for Education Secretary
Arne Duncan and Neoliberal Racism
As the Chicago public school teacher Jesse Sharkey notes, "In the past couple years, Duncan has been turning public schools over to private operators - mainly in the form of charter and contract schools - at a rate of about 20 per year. Duncan has also resuscitated some of the worst ‘school reform' ideas of the 1990s, like firing all the teachers in low-performing schools (called ‘turnarounds'). At the same time, he's eliminated many Local School Councils (LSCs) and made crucial decisions without public input...Charter schools and test-score driven school ‘choice' have been the watchwords of Duncan's rule in Chicago".
University of Illinois at Chicago education professor Kevin Kumashiro notes that Duncan's Chicago policies have been "steeped in a free-market model of school reform" that feeds the drop-out rate, increases segregation, and does little if anything to increase student achievement. "Duncan's track record is clear," says Kumashiro: "Less parental and community involvement in school governance. Less support for teacher unions. Less breadth and depth in what and how students learn as schools place more emphasis on narrow high-stakes testing. More penalties for schools but without adequate resources for those in high-poverty areas."
Privatization, union-busting (charter and contract schools operate union-free), excessive standardized testing, teacher-blaming, military schooling, and the rollback of community input on school decisions - these are the interrelated hallmarks of private school graduate Arne Duncan's six and a half years at the helm of CPS. It's all very consistent with the legacy of his predecessor and mentor, the roving urban schools chief and leading privatization enthusiast Paul Vallas.
It is little wonder that Duncan recently won the support of the leading Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks....
Yes he can! And especially after billionaire oligarchs and Wall Street have pre-selected the USA's newest cosmetic leader.
The USSA: still backsliding on democracy after all these years,
The Duncan Doctrine: The Military-Corporate Legacy of the New Secretary of Education
Obama's Public Education Policy: Privatization, Charters, Mass Firings, Neighborhood Destabilization
Despite the unpopularity of school privatizations and the wholesale replacement of public schools with charters wherever this has been tried, the administration of the First Black President seems able to push the corporate line on privatizing education almost without significant public challenge from large sectors of black and progressive America, including what remains of traditional civil rights-style organizations and teachers unions....
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse
This is deeply troubling, for many states which do not want charter schools or have found the experiment to be less than adequate and in fact damaging to kids and funding, for traditional public schools will now be forced to choose stimulus money over policy, a form of economic extortion and increased federal and corporate control over decision making, especially at a time when many of these states are literally financial insolvent. This is another example of how disaster politics operates, only this time the disaster is not a natural disaster but an economic disaster that threatens public policies.
On Education, Obama's First Term Is Bush's Third
In Ontario, we have the Ministry of Education under Liberal cabinet minister Kathleen Wynne thinking of taking over the operations of school boards whose students under-perform according to the ministry. Compared to the Conservative Harris régime and its minister, John Snobelen, Kathleen Wynne is a veneer of niceness. Everything that the Conservatives implemented has hardly been modified by the Liberals. We still have mass standardized testing. The government is now threatening to take over "under-performing" school boards.
I remember hearing Annie Kidder from People for Education state that a minimum level of student performance cannot be improved over the long run. It's easy to get an increase of students meeting the curriculum expectations from 65 to 70 percent. It is much more difficult to go from 90 to 95 percent. I will guess that it is impossible to go from 97 to 102%. I will add that if more students are able to achieve the curriculum expectations on the standardized tests, sooner or later, someone will think about increasing the difficultly of the expecations. The magic 100% in student performance will never be achieved.
Am I against standardized testing? No. I do think that giving standardized tests to random students will achieve the same data. It could also prevent teachers teaching to the tests which is happening now. Students are taught to answer questions based on key words in the questions and answer according to a particiular format (APE-answer, prove, and explain) which will increase the level marks on the tests. By giving tests to random students, the classes can concentrate on the curriculum rather than test preparation. One set of random tests used now are the PISA tests which test random students in reading, mathematics, and science. Canadian students perform well internationally.
Well put, Skinny Dipper. But, if you're concerned with the veracity and efficacy of standardized tests (as I am), and the inherent cynacism of the system that administers them, then which students do you think would be picked at random?