Arne Duncan, Instructional "Shifts" and the Bad Old Days
The moment for teacher leadership is now...and I absolutely promise my support.
Arne Duncan, yesterday.
Hmm. I'd be a little less dubious about the Secretary's absolute pledge if I hadn't heard him makevirtually the same statement three years ago, July 2011, at yet another National Board for Professional Teaching Standards conference in Washington, D.C. At the time, his "teacher leadership" approach centered around paying "good" teachers more--six figures, in fact--a planned applause line that fell as flat, that day, as an unexploded scud missile. Evidently, the moment for "efficient" teacher leadership consisting of larger classes but "better" teachers has passed.
Arne Duncan's current take on "leadership," in the teaching profession: Go forth and lead your colleagues into promoting the Common Core standards and teacher evaluation systems based on aligned assessments. Although he was smart enough to mask the language:
[Duncan] acknowledged that many teachers have felt overwhelmed by, or not included in, efforts to raise expectations for students (read: the Common Core State Standards, which Duncan did not once actually name in his 30-minute presentation) or to establish new teacher-evaluation
