Thursday, July 10, 2014

NEA Repudiates Arne Duncan, Demands America Pay Closer Attention

Arne Duncan, through regulations of the U.S. Department of Education, has made the granting of federal waivers from the most onerous penalties of the No Child Left Behind Act contingent on states’ evaluating school teachers based on econometric formulas derived from students’ scores on the state standardized tests required by No Child Left Behind. This despite a warning from the American Statistical Association that such formulas are likely to be unreliable.

Arne Duncan called what happened in New Orleans after the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of the city and paved the way for the firing of all of the city’s public school teachers and the subsequent charterization of the entire school district a great opportunity. Duncan said: “The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster.”

Back in 2010, Arne Duncan lauded the so-called “turnaround” of the high school in Central Falls, Rhode Island, a restructure based on firing the principal and all the teachers.

The U.S. Department of Education makes grants to Teach for America, a program that provides—through five-week summer training—a crash-course, alternate route to teacher certification for college graduates who are otherwise untrained as teachers. TFA teachers commit for 2 years, not for an entire career.

Last month, Arne Duncan celebrated the California decision in Vergara, in which a local judge found due-process protections for teachers unconstitutional. (The case has been stayed while on appeal.)

Arne Duncan once announced at a meeting I attended: “Good charters are part of the NEA Repudiates Arne Duncan, Demands America Pay Closer Attention | janresseger: