Secretary of Education Arne Duncan doubled down on his “white suburban moms” comment concerning the Common Core Standards. Duncan at first said opposition to the Common Core State Standards was interesting because “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
It is the kind of condescending attitude one expects from education privatizers. But when confronted with such an amazingly arrogant statement Secretary Duncan only apologized for the “clumsy” phrasing, not the sentiment. Then he went on a long diatribe about economics and education that made it clear Duncan had not been properly educated on the subject.
[American children] are competing for jobs in India, China, Singapore, South Korea – that’s the competition we all need to come together and help our students be successful there. And the best way to do that is to grade teachers.
Fail. Actually two failures. First, that’s not how economics works. Second, there is no evidence “grading teachers” leads to higher standards.
On the first point, the notion that economic success is a result of education, let alone the result of scoring well on formulaic tests like the Common Core is without merit. America’s economic dominance was/is not the result of a superior educational system but the fortunate result of the second World War that literally blew apart the industrial bases of major economies in Europe and Asia – leaving America, and to a lesser degree the Soviet Union, the only major economies still intact.
In the aftermath of World War II the United States had roughly 50% of world GDP. This was not the result of superior study but wartime production and all the country’s major competitors being in ruins. This