Arne Duncan Goes After "Armchair Pundits"
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke publicly of Diane Ravitch in an interview in 2011, where he said: "Diane Ravitch is in denial and she is insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country who are proving her wrong every day,"
Yesterday he expanded a bit on this sentiment. Though he did not mention Ravitch by name, he seemed to have her in mind when labeling his critics "armchair pundits" who are "so supremely confident in their perspective that they have simply stopped listening to people with a different viewpoint."
I do not want to be guilty of this, so I listened closely to Secretary Duncan's talk. Here is some of what he said:
Secretary Duncan:
Also inhabiting this bubble are some arm chair pundits who insist our efforts to improve public education are somehow doomed to fail, either because they believe the government is incapable of meaningfully improving education or because they think education reform can't possibly work since the real problem with schools is that so many children are born poor. In blogs, in books, in tweets, some pundits even say our schools are performing just fine and that fundamental change isn't needed or that we have to
