Arne Duncan’s endless supply of ‘game changers’
Education Secretary Arne Duncan (By Jacquelyn Martin-Associated Press)
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has something of an affinity for the phrase “game changer.” Just how much is chronicled in this post by Matt Farmer, a Chicago trial lawyer and parents who is a member of the Local School Council at Philip Rogers Elementary School. This appeared on thethirdcity.org website.
By Matt Farmer
A lot of my friends are public school teachers. They’re scattered throughout the country, working in classrooms from New York to California. And as students head back to school, many of my teacher friends are already wondering how their local districts plan to “change the game” this year.
Talk to enough veteran teachers and you’ll get an earful about the annual roll-out of new initiatives and assessments that get handed down to them in August, only to serve as the educational “flavor of the month” until the following year, when those programs are supplanted by a whole new set of acronyms, benchmarks and buzzwords. (“I’ll take Rigor for $600, please, Alex.”)
Why, these teachers wonder, does the game keep changing?
Look no further than Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. School superintendents from Maine to Montana know that the 6’5” small forward from Chicago is “a big fan” of