Recognizing Real Leadership For Education Progress: Mayor Bill de Blasio
What’s wrong with this picture?
During the nation’s back-to-school season, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been touring states in a bus to “highlight the champions of reform.”
At one stop, where he spoke to an audience of parents at a Nashville, Tenn., middle school, he challenged the National PTA, according to reporters for Education Week, to “make education a presidential campaign issue.”
Good idea. But when the secretary offered to the audience an example of an ideal candidate, he pointed to a Republican.
“Duncan pointed out that Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, is one of the few politicians who has followed through on promises of being ‘the education candidate,’” reported Lauren Camera.
Sadly, there are too few leaders in the Democratic Party who would qualify as education champions. But there is one very clear example. Not only is he a Democrat, but he is an unabashed progressive. And if Arne Duncan really wants to find politicians who “walk the walk” of real education reform, he can find an example of authentic progress coming not from Republicans, but from the left wing of his own party.
But first to dispense with the Haslam-hysteria that has overcome the Secretary.
Haslam Is No Education Hero
Duncan’s proof of Haslam’s supposed accomplishments and ability to “walk the walk” (Duncan’s words) of education progress is the “state’s recent academic gains. Tennessee’s students made the biggest improvements in the country in math and reading on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Duncan said the increased scores are a direct result of the state implementing the Common Core State Standards.”
Crediting Tennessee’s NAEP scores to adoption of the Common Core is a huge leap of faith for sure, especially since the state has backed out of using Common Core-aligned tests created by one of the two national consortia endorsed by Duncan.
Also, Tennessee is chronically one of the nation’s poorest performers on NAEP, so it had the most ground to gain in comparison to other states. And for every state Duncan can identify as a “top performer” on the NAEP assessment, one can find at least one state or more that has excelled in NAEP score gains without adopting the measures Tennessee has exemplified.
A more recent and comprehensive gauge on Tennessee student achievement – the state’s own assessments – shows that student performance levels have barely budged at all, even Recognizing Real Leadership For Education Progress: Mayor Bill de Blasio:
