If Arne Duncan Were Serious About Civil Rights
Yesterday corporate foundation stooge, Arne Duncan, was marched out to declare a commitment to civil rights enforcement that was absent during the reign of Bush II. And yet Duncan seems intent to apply a civil rights litmus test that even Bush would approve of, one that could not have been imagined by Gandhi or King or anyone else beyond the education policy roundtable of the corporate foundations: instead of looking to see if school systems are complying with Civil Rights Law, Duncan wants to use "outcomes" i. e. test scores to measure a school or system's level of civil rights compliance. Really, I'm not joking:
Rather than just determining whether a district complies with the letter of the law in certain areas, the department will look at what the outcomes are for students, Duncan said in the conference call. “This is really about us trying to close achievement gaps,” he said.To say the least, civil rights scholars like Gary Orfield are a bit skeptical of an Administration that, thus far, seems immune to