Replace Arne Duncan with Secretary of Education Bill Gates
The National Education Association annual conference approved a national campaign for equity and against "Toxic Testing." It seeks to end the "test, blame and punish" system that began under President Bush and which has grown worse under the Obama administration. As outgoing NEA President Dennis Van Roekel says, "The testing fixation has reached the point of insanity," The delegates then called on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to resign.
Hopefully the AFT national conference will do the same this month.
In a supportive and witty analysis of the stand taken by the NEA, Diane Ravitch observes that the replacement of Arne Duncan would be a "game-changer" in only one way. It would rid us of Duncan's continued use of the term, "game-changer." Whether he is advocating for test-driven accountability, his test-driven Race to the Top, or Common Core and its testing regime, these risky gambles are touted as "game-changers."
As Ravitch reminds us, any replacement "would have to be acceptable to DFER, Stand on Children, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the other reformers." And, that gets to the real reason why the Obama administration, which teachers and our unions helped elect and reelect, has spread the insanity to the point where schools are reduced to test prep factories. The Billionaires Boys Club in general, and Bill Gates in specific, are really in charge of our nation's education policy. We've had a "barrage" of weird ideas, based solely on the hunches of elites, and Arne Duncan coerced states into making them the laws of most of the land.
After Bill Gates was impressed by a briefing with non-educators pushing their pet theory on rewarding and punishing teachers, the strange idea of value-added Replace Arne Duncan with Secretary of Education Bill Gates | John Thompson: