Arne Duncan's Twitter Town Hall: Orwell would be Proud
George Orwell might well be proud to see how Arne Duncan has risen to the challenge of using language to disguise government actions. Watching the Twitter Town Hall yesterday was an exercise in frustration. Unfortunately, the Department of Education has released only tweets that digest his responses down into little nuggets, so to hear what he really said requires careful listening. I took some time to take down some of what was said in the first five minutes, when interviewer John Merrow focused on No Child Left Behind and the process Duncan is setting up to grant waivers.
Merrow: Why is (NCLB) still the law of the land? It expired in 2007!
It should have been reauthorized a while ago. I desperately hoped Congress would reauthorize and fix it in a bipartisan way.
It is too punitive, too prescriptive, dummied down standards, narrowed the curriculum. Congress