Arne Duncan and the Fairy Tale of Educational Reform
Hansel and Gretel fell for the witch’s promise. Don’t fall for Duncan’s and Obama’s promise on less testing. Don’t think the US Department of Education and NGOs will lessen their involvement in state educational development and delivery. Duncan tells PBS his plans for public school students. It’s just more of the same top down centralized control of education and continued meddling of the USDOEd.
Who will decide just how much testing is appropriate and what testing should be used? Think it’s your state agency or school district? Think again:
GWEN IFILL: Well, it’s not just Washington. A lot of the movement to opt out of these tests started in local school districts and around the country with parents, with teachers.
How much of that will be satisfied by Washington saying do less?
ARNE DUNCAN: Well, I think there are two sides of this coin, folks who think we just need to do more and more testing. I think that is wrong. Folks who think we shouldn’t do any assessments, that’s equally wrong.
And there is a commonsense middle ground here. This is very much a civil rights issue. Historically in this nation, we swept under the rug the horrific disparities in outcomes, the horrific achievement gap between black and white students and Latino and white students and poor students and wealthier students. Too much testing is bad. Walking away from assessment is equally bad.
But let’s find the commonsense middle ground. I think that’s what we’re all striving to do and to do together.
GWEN IFILL: It doesn’t sound like you have figured out where that sweet spot is, Mr. Casserly.
MICHAEL CASSERLY: No, we really haven’t.
And part of our goal here was just toArne Duncan and the Fairy Tale of Educational Reform » Missouri Education Watchdog:
