Arne Duncan’s Misguided Policies | janresseger

Arne Duncan’s Misguided Policies | janresseger:

Arne Duncan’s Misguided Policies

Last Friday after U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan submitted his resignation as of the end of 2015, I heard President Barack Obama describe Duncan: “Arne’s done more to bring our educational system, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 21st century than anybody else.”  It is worth considering carefully what the president’s words mean in the context of the priorities, programs, and operation of Duncan’s Department of Education.

In a recent and very moving New Yorker piece about the significance of the closure of New York’s storied Jamaica High School, his alma mater, Jelani Cobb considers education reform in the context of history: “Like ‘busing’ and ‘integration,’ the language of today’s reformers often serves as a euphemism for poverty mitigation, the implicit goal that American education has fitfully attempted to achieve since Brown v. Board of Education.  Both busing and school closure recognize the educational obstacles that concentrated poverty creates.  But busing recognized a combination of unjust history and policy as complicit in educational failure.  In the ideology of school closure, though, the lines of responsibility—of blame, really—run inward.  It’s not society that has failed in this perspective.  It’s the schools…  The onus shifted, and public policy followed.  The current language of education reform emphasizes racial ‘achievement gaps’ and ‘underperforming schools’ but also tends to approach education as if history had never happened.  Integration was a flawed strategy, but it recognized the ties between racial history and educational outcomes.”

School policy ripped out of time and history: in many ways that is Arne Duncan’s gift to us — school policy focused on disparities in test scores instead of disparities in opportunity — a Department of Education obsessed with data-driven accountability for teachers, but for itself an obsession with “game-changing” innovation and inadequate attention to oversight — the substitution of the consultant driven, win-lose methodology of philanthropy for formula-driven government policy — school policy that favors social innovation, one charter at a time.  Such policies are definitely a break from the past. Whether they promise better opportunity for the mass of our nation’s children, and especially our poorest children, is a very different Arne Duncan’s Misguided Policies | janresseger:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES 'No confidence' in Duncan/King

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES 'No confidence' in Duncan/King:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 'No confidence' in Duncan/King

"No Confidence" in Duncan/King.

Jeanette Deutermann, Public school parent and founder of Long Island Opt Out

“Throughout his term in New York, John King was notorious for his complete disconnect from parents, teachers, and school officials. His blatant disregard for concerned parents and educators fueled opt outs to historic numbers. Our only hope is that this bizarre move by the White House will have the same effect across the country, spreading the Opt Out movement to every corner of the nation.” -- NYSAPE

John King

"It's [Duncan's]an incredible agenda and I'm proud to carry it forward.” -- Politico

Pres. Obama on Duncan resignation

"He's done more to bring our education system -- sometimes kicking Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES 'No confidence' in Duncan/King:

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer » Missouri Education Watchdog

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer

A dossier of sorts was compiled by a police officer on an Connecticut citizen organizing an anti-Common Core informational session.  Maybe the police officer didn’t like that the dissenter is a Republican or is a ‘birther’.  Is dissent by a citizen with such credentials considered patriotic or a threat to the State?

From Greenwich CT and Bob Horton: Police captain confused ‘service’ with ‘surveillance’:

One day in late August, local political activist Arthur “Cort” Wrotnowski placed flyers on car windshields in the Island Beach ferry parking lot, hoping to drum up a crowd that would listen to his take on the perils of the Common Core, the controversial federal and state educational reform initiative.

His flyers were not compelling enough to get people to give up the outdoors on one of the last beautiful Friday nights of the summer; only two people attended the early evening event at Town Hall on August 28. But the one-page notice did catch the eye of Greenwich Police Captain Mark Kordick, head of the Detective Division and an almost three-decade veteran of the force. He immediately drafted an email to School Superintendent William McKersie, informing the schools chief of the anti-Common Core meeting. That set off a chain of events that resulted Thursday in First Selectmen and Police Commissioner Peter Tesei starting an investigation into Captain Kordick’s behavior.

At issue in the investigation are questions about the proper role of police in civil society, and whether Captain Kordick’s actions went beyond acceptable police behavior.

In an email sent over his signature as Captain of Detectives, Kordick told McKersie about Wrotnowski’s plan to hold a public forum in Town Hall “in the event your office wanted to send an official (or off the record) representative to attend the public event.” He attached a scan of the flyer and identified Wrotnowski as “among other things, (he is) apparently both an anti-Common Core activist and participant in the anti-President Obama “birther” movement.

McKersie replied that he and his staff knew of Wrotnowski’s opposition, but would not be sending a representative to the event, off the record or otherwise.

The head of detectives sent a second email to McKersie, after the anti-Common Core confab, with this 

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Bill signed encouraging study of Latino deportation :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Bill signed encouraging study of Latino deportation :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Bill signed encouraging study of Latino deportation

(Calif.) In 2005, California – via legislation – apologized for its role in mass deportations of Mexican-Americans that occurred during the Great Depression.

Late last week, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that encourages state education officials to include this little-known event – estimated to have violated the Constitutional rights of as many as 1.2 million American citizens of Mexican descent – in K-12 history course lessons.

“With our state being the home to so many successful Mexican-Americans, our children and all Californians should be aware of the injustices that took place so long ago,” Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia of Bell Gardens, who authored the bill, said in a statement.

The signing of AB 146 comes as candidates vying in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign have made immigration reform is a hot-button issue. Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed to stop President Barack Obama from granting a reprieve to some of the 11.4 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the country is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

Garcia said her bill would encourage that “the ‘Mexican Repatriation,’ the unconstitutional deportation that occurred in California’s 1930s of over one million U.S. citizens and lawful residents of Mexican descent, be included in student history textbooks and courses of study.”

Prompted by the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing economic depression, the federal government – seeking to create jobs for what it termed “real Americans” – undertook a program of forcing an estimated one to two million people of Mexican descent living in California, Texas and surrounding states to return to Mexico, despite estimates that as many as half were U.S. citizens.

Throughout California, the Immigration and Naturalization Service conducted massive raids “on Mexican-American communities, resulting in the clandestine removal of thousands of people, many of whom were never able to return to the United States, their country of birth,” according to the state’s 2005 ‘Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program.’

Work to update California’s 17-year-old history-social science standards is underway but stalled in May when, overwhelmed with nearly 1,000 suggestions, the group tasked with the work – the Instructional Quality Commission – decided to delay the process until the necessary troop of academics and policy experts needed to sort through the submissions and make recommendations can be hired. That work so far has not been funded by either the Legislature or the governor.

Brown also signed several other education bills into law last week, including:

• AB 329 by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber,D-San Diego, makes instruction in general sexual health education mandatory in all K-12 school districts, expand the topics covered in the course and update curriculum content on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention education – required in schools since 1992.
• SB 695 by Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, requires that when the state’s K-12 health curriculum framework is next revised, the IQC consider including comprehensive information on sexual harassment and violence for grades 9 to 12 that includes instances that occur among peers and in a dating relationship, a discussion of prevention strategies, how pupils report sexual harassment and violence, discussion of the affirmative consent standard (yes means yes and lack of a verbal response does not indicate consent) and a discussion of legal aspects of sexual harassment and violence under state and federal law.
• SB 111 by Sen. Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, which expresses the intent of the Legislature to provide up to $65 million in the 2015-16 fiscal year to public school districts on military bases in order to meet a 20 percent federal matching share requirement for school construction grants from the Office of Bill signed encouraging study of Latino deportation :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Donald Trump's mass deportation actually happened during Great Depression | MLive.com http://bit.ly/1Mb99uG

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Value-less Data

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Value-less Data:

PA: Value-less Data

It's autumn in Pennsylvania, which means it's time to look at the rich data to be gleaned from our Big Standardized Test (called PSSA for grades 3-8, and Keytsone Exams at the high school level).

We love us some value added data crunching in PA (our version is called PVAAS, an early version of the value-added baloney model). This is a model that promises far more than it can deliver, but it also makes up a sizeable chunk of our school evaluation model, which in turn is part of our teacher evaluation model.

Of course the data crunching and collecting is supposed to have many valuable benefits, not the least of which is unleashing a pack of rich and robust data hounds who will chase the wild beast of low student achievement up the tree of instructional re-alignment. Like every other state, we have been promised that the tests will have classroom teachers swimming in a vast vault of data, like Scrooge McDuck on a gold bullion bender. So this morning I set out early to the states Big Data Portal to see what riches the system could reveal.

Here's what I can learn from looking at the rich data.CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Value-less Data:


From the Vault: PVAAS in 2009





In one of my many side jobs, I'm a columnist at a local paper. After some of us were sent off for training in PVAAS back in October of 2009, I wrote this piece. This is where Pennsylvania was with this business six years ago.

(News-Herald, October 22) This week I was schooled by the state about more awesomeness that is Pennsylvania’s System of School Assessment (the PSSA tests). This latest big vat of coolaid was served up, ironically, in the Hemlock Room at IU6. When the state lowers itself to send consultants to instruct the poor hicks who toil in local school districts, there is always lots to learn.

For those of you still following the PSSA’s, we are down to the crunch. Remember, No Child Left Behind mandates that in four years, every single American school child will test above average. Since this is only slightly more likely than pigs flying out of Ed Rendell’s nose, the ever-benevolent state has leapt to the rescue with—more statistical tools!

The number crunching is called the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System. “Value Added” is a useful term from the manufacturing world. Simple explanation: If I take a ten cent piece of sheet metal and turn it into a two dollar widget, I’ve added a buck ninety’s worth of value.

What that principle has to do with testing or educating students is not clear, unless the state means From the Vault: PVAAS in 2009

Reactions to Arne Duncan’s departure illustrate national divide over education - The Washington Post

Reactions to Arne Duncan’s departure illustrate national divide over education - The Washington Post:

Reactions to Arne Duncan’s departure illustrate national divide over education

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s announcement on Friday that he plans to step down later this year was greeted by a range of reactions that illustrate how deeply divided the country is over the Obama administration’s education policies.

Former California congressman George Miller, a Democrat who worked closely with Duncan as chairman of the House education committee, called Duncan’s departure “a huge loss,” and said no one has been more committed to improving the education of the nation’s most disadvantaged children.

Gus Morales, a Massachussetts teacher and member of the Badass Teachers Association, a fierce critic of Duncan’s policies, called him “one of the most destructive people to hold the title of Secretary of Education.”

[Duncan, a close Obama friend, to leave Ed. Department with mixed legacy]

Taking over the Education Department in December will be John B. King Jr., a former New York state education chief who has as many fervent supporters and critics as Duncan. Like Duncan, King supports charter schools, Common Core standards and teacher evaluations tied to test scores, and speaks often about the need for greater equity in the nation’s public schools.

Here’s a roundup of reactions to Duncan’s departure:

Chris Minnich, executive director of Council of Chief State School Officers:

Secretary Duncan has been a champion for students across the country. It has been an honor to work with him in the pursuit of better outcomes for all kids. He is a sincere, committed leader who has been a partner with state chiefs in advancing student achievement for all kids. I wish him the best in his future endeavors, and I look forward to working with John King to ensure a seamless transition for states and students.

Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, which had called for Duncan’s resignation:

The National Education Association wishes Sec. Duncan well in his future endeavors.

NEA and Sec. Duncan have always been in clear agreement  that we need to strengthen public education and make sure all students have the opportunity to succeed. He has made important strides in the promotion of early childhood education, college affordability and teacher leadership.

We’ve also had our disagreements. There is a lot to be done to ensure the success of all our students, including fixing overtesting and making sure every child in every ZIP CODE has a quality education.

Teach for America CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard:

To borrow a favorite phrase from Arne Duncan, leadership matters Reactions to Arne Duncan’s departure illustrate national divide over education - The Washington Post:

World Teachers Day Highlights Educator Shortage - NEA Today

World Teachers Day Highlights Educator Shortage - NEA Today:

World Teachers Day Highlights Educator Shortage

The world needs more school teachers. A lot of them. Almost 26 million will need to be recruited to provide every child with a primary education by 2030, according to a report from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).

Filling these positions with high quality educators is critical to reaching the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, which are the focus of this year’s World Teachers Day event. Education International, with its affiliates and partners worldwide, including the National Education Association where president Lily Eskelsen Garcia is Education International’s Vice President of the North American and Caribbean regions, celebrate World Teachers Day every year on October 5.

“Every year on World Teachers’ Day, we celebrate educators and the central role they play in providing children everywhere with a quality education. Today, as the global community comes together around the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, the role teachers play has never have been more important,” says a Joint Message on the occasion of the World Teachers’ Day (WTD)” signed by UNESCO, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Education International (EI).

Of the 17 Sustainable Development goals, Goal 4 seeks to provide every child with complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education by 2030. But there are millions of children who don’t attend school around the world, and universal primary and secondary education will be unattainable if aid fails to reach those who need it most, says the UIS report. Today, an extra 2.7 million teachers are needed to reach the 59 million children excluded from education and accommodate them in classrooms with no more than 40 pupils per teacher, according to UIS data.

There are 96 countries who are still struggling to achieve universal primary education. According to UIS projections, only 37 countries (39%) will have enough primary teachers in classrooms by 2020 and the share will rise to 56% by 2025. However, 33 countries (34%) will still not have enough teachers to achieve Universal Primary Education in 2030.

There is a mounting shortage of quality teachers, unequal distribution of trained teachers, and inadequate or non-existent national standards for the teaching profession. The poorest regions and schools and the earliest grades – those most in need – are often the most affected.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics estimates that to achieve universal primary education by 2030 countries will need to recruit a total of 10.9 million primary teachers.

The shortage is also impacting the U.S., according to new research from theEconomic Policy Institute, which reports that the number of teachers and education staff fell dramatically during the recession, and has failed to get anywhere near its World Teachers Day Highlights Educator Shortage - NEA Today:

Special education teacher: Why it’s ‘idiotic’ to force my students to take standardized tests - The Washington Post

Special education teacher: Why it’s ‘idiotic’ to force my students to take standardized tests - The Washington Post:

Special education teacher: Why it’s ‘idiotic’ to force my students to take standardized tests

The top picture is from November of 2014 and the bottom picture is from January 2015. Both pictures are from the same student.

This is the remarkable story of the challenges facing one special education teacher in New York City whose days are difficult not only because of the nature of her job but also because the system used to evaluate her and her colleagues uses the scores of tests her students are required to take — but sometimes can barely understand. Her story is not singular; many special education teachers in New York and across the country face similar issues that often go unappreciated within school communities.

The teacher is Chanel M. Quintero, who works in New York City’s District 9, one of the poorest congressional districts in the country.  Quintero has been a classroom-based teacher but this year works on a school-wide basis, with tasks that include working with students in crisis and helping teachers implement behavior plans.

Last year, she said, her class was comprised of students with autism, speech and language impairments, emotional disturbances, and intellectual and learning disabilities. Many came from transient homes and shelters, and their lives were affected by instability and abuse. A few were almost completely nonverbal and several were chronically absent. Skill levels of students ranged from pre-K to third grade. Among the things she worked on with her students was toilet training and making eye contact when speaking to another person. For much of the school year she was pregnant, and when she ran into some health issues,  she chose to keep working to help her students.

Quintero’s school is located in the South Bronx, a few blocks from Yankee Stadium. Her school houses kindergarten through fifth grade and is comprised of both general education and special education classes. General-education class sizes currently range from 28 to 31 students, and the school offers both self-contained classes (which are legally mandated to have no more than 12 students and 1 teacher) and Integrated Co-Teaching (which means one general education teacher and one special education teacher) to meet the needs of students with special needs who have Individual Education Programs, called IEPs. Self-contained special-education class sizes currently range from 10- 14 students. Of the 713 students now at the school: 23 percent have special needs, 24 percent are English Language Learners, 68 percent are Hispanic, 28 percent are black, 1 percent is Asian, and 1 percent is  white.

Quintero’s story is best told in her own words. She wrote the following about Special education teacher: Why it’s ‘idiotic’ to force my students to take standardized tests - The Washington Post:

‘Workers’ or slaves? Textbook maker backtracks after mother’s online complaint - The Washington Post

‘Workers’ or slaves? Textbook maker backtracks after mother’s online complaint - The Washington Post:

‘Workers’ or slaves? Textbook maker backtracks after mother’s online complaint

Mothers of teenagers are used to getting frustrating text messages, but the one that Roni Dean-Burren received from her 15-year-old son last week wasn’t about alcohol, dating or money for the movies.

It was about history.

Her son, Coby, had sent her a photo of a colorful page in his ninth-grade McGraw-Hill World Geography textbook. In a section titled “Patterns of Immigration,” a speech bubble pointing to a U.S. map read: “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.”

“We was real hard workers wasn’t we,” Coby retorted in a subsequent text.

The image alarmed Dean-Burren, who was an English teacher for 11 years at the Pearland, Tex., public high school that her son attends. Now a doctoral candidate in the University of Houston’s Language Arts program, she has spent much of her life thinking about the power and dangers of nuanced language. The motive behind the textbook’s choice of words seemed clear.

“This is erasure,” Dean-Burren said in an interview with The Washington Post. “This is revisionist history — retelling the story however the winners would like it told.”

In calling slaves “workers” and their move to the United States “immigration,” she noted in viral Facebook posts Wednesday and Thursday, the textbook suggests not only that her African American ancestors arrived on the continent willingly, but also that they were compensated for their labor.

Texas mom shows odd wording in her son's textbook

Play Video1:14

In a viral Facebook post, Texas mom and former teacher Roni Dean-Burren shows her teenaged son's geography textbook, which describes enslaved Africans as "workers." (Facebook/Roni Dean-Burren)

Coby Burren is a ninth-grader at Pearland High School near Houston. (Danyeal Dean-Grays)

McGraw-Hill Education sought to redress these implied untruths in aFacebook announcement Friday. While the geography program “meets the learning objectives of the course,” the publishing company’s statement said, a close review of the content revealed that “our language in that caption did not ‘Workers’ or slaves? Textbook maker backtracks after mother’s online complaint - The Washington Post:

Union's chosen four could take majority on St. Paul school board - StarTribune.com

Union's chosen four could take majority on St. Paul school board - StarTribune.com:

Union's chosen four could take majority on St. Paul school board

School board challengers back contract proposals. 

Teachers unions are strong, but in St. Paul, muscle is being flexed in new ways.

Rather than simply work on behalf of candidates, the St. Paul Federation of Teachers teamed with parents this year to coordinate and bankroll a Caucus for Change movement that challenged incumbents and lifted four political newcomers to prized DFL Party endorsements.

Now, contract talks are underway between the teachers and the school district, and as candidates enter the final weeks of the election, the union could soon find itself with maximum leverage: a new majority on the seven-member board already endorsing its contract pursuits.

At Hallie Q. Brown Community Center recently, the four candidates heard speakers promote union contract proposals, and when commitments were sought, they replied in the affirmative, with an “Amen, brother” thrown in for good measure. The federation is on a roll. Not everyone, however, is enamored of what Superintendent Valeria Silva acknowledged recently to be smart organizing.

“My concern is we have one group, our largest union, that has basically been allowed to dominate the public discussion,” board Chairwoman Mary Doran said.

In 2014, hundreds of teachers and parents rallied for what would be a $33 million, two-year teachers contract that, it turns out, the district could not afford.

This year, the union, responding to what federation Vice President Nick Faber said were concerns from parents about unanswered e-mails to board members and a lack of staff support for ambitious classroom moves, launched the Caucus for Change movement that helped deliver DFL nods to first-time candidates Zuki Ellis, Steve Marchese, Jon Schumacher and Mary Vanderwert.

Helping to fund the effort has been the American Federation of Teachers, which contributed $50,000 to Local 28’s political fund.

Two organizers worked full time this spring with caucusgoers.

Now, the federation is going all out with weekend door-knocking for the Union's chosen four could take majority on St. Paul school board - StarTribune.com:

PSSAs: Emphasis on standardized testing has gone too far:

PSSAs: Emphasis on standardized testing has gone too far

For a few years, measuring education performance using standardized tests was all about making “adequate yearly progress.”

But don’t look for any “progress” in the newest crop of Pennsylvania standardized test scores — and not just because the scores are all lower.

Even the Pennsylvania Department of Education admits “it is not useful to directly compare students’ scores on the new assessment to students’ scores from previous assessments.”

That’s because the most recent test is radically different than the test given the year before. Further, halfway through the process, the department changed the “cut score,” making it even harder to score well.

Or, as Pottsgrove School Board President Justin Valentine said at a recent board meeting, it is like being “told a home run is 305 feet and having them change it to 350 feet in the middle of the game.”

This was all done to align the test — the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA — with commonwealth’s new “core” standards, a variation on the national core standards being implemented, with some controversy, nationwide.

School officials throughout the region got the word out before last week’s release of the scores that parents should be prepared for lower scores because of the changes. But a growing movement in Pennsylvania also questions whether the emphasis on tests — “how did my school do?” — has become more about reputation than actual learning.

Or, about the community’s challenges than about the opportunity schools provide to overcome those challenges. In a policy brief published last year, Ed Fuller, executive director of the Department of Education Policy at Penn State’s College of Education — wrote that school profile scores are more closely tied to things like poverty and a parent’s education than to school effectiveness.

“The SPP scores are more accurate at identifying the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school than at identifying the effectiveness of a school,” Fuller wrote in his brief which matched data about the economic demographics of students with their school’s scores.

Standardized tests are also big business.

“Strength in Numbers,” a 2012 Brown Center on Education Policy report for The Brookings Institution, updated in June, found that states spend about $1.7 billion on testing.

Six major national vendors dominate that market with Data Recognition Corp., used in Pennsylvania, ranking as the second most expensive, with an average cost of $39 per student, the report found.

In the period from 2009 to 2012, Pennsylvania spent more than $32 million per year testing just under PSSAs: Emphasis on standardized testing has gone too far:

Arne Duncan's on His Way Out: Does That Help or Hurt ESEA's Chances? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Arne Duncan's on His Way Out: Does That Help or Hurt ESEA's Chances? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Arne Duncan's on His Way Out: Does That Help or Hurt ESEA's Chances?

Education advocates, school district officials, teachers, and the rest of the edu-universe have been waiting for a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to make it over the finish line since 2007.

And it looked like a bill was close—both the House and Senate passed legislation to revise the law, and a conference committee had begun its work. (The Senate bill is bipartisan, the House bill is Republican only.)

Then, we had two blockbuster resignation announcements in two weeks. First, Rep. John A. Boehner, the Speaker of the House, said he was stepping down in October. And now U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has also announced he's leaving office, in December.

That's on top of the impending retirement of Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, announced over the summer.

So parlor game time. Is this good for ESEA prospects? Bad for ESEA? We asked some experts.

Bad for ESEA: "The reality is for it [ESEA] to go through, everything has to go right. For it not to go through, only one thing has to go wrong," said Andy Rotherham, a partner at Bellwether Education who has been tracking the views of "Insiders" on ESEA and other issues for a monthly survey for years. (It's a good read, check out the latest version.) "This confuses an already confused environment."

Good for ESEA: "This helps," said a Senate GOP aide, who predicted the rewrite would be finished by the end of the year. "It makes the whole thing less toxic. ... There's always been this fear that no matter what we did Arne would just ignore it and subvert the law, and now he's not going to be there."

And Mary Kusler, the director of government relations for the National Education Association, thinks Duncan's decision could provide a shot of urgency.

"Certainly no one was expecting Secretary Duncan to leave at this time," she said, "But the reality is that this is now the third departure of a significant player. It adds emphasis to the need to get this done now."

Some advocates are optimistic that Congress could act quickly and finish the bill before Boehner leaves town, as part of a big push to clear out the legislative underbrush. But November, they say, might be a more realistic time frame. 

Neutral: "I don't know that it changes anything," said Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust. "I'm still quite optimistic we're going to get this done. I'd still put it probably over a 60 percent chance. I think members of Congress really, really want to reauthorize this law."

Assistant Editor Liana Heitin contributed to this post. 

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Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12. Arne Duncan's on His Way Out: Does That Help or Hurt ESEA's Chances? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

SCOTUS plantiff: 'I dared to stand against union politics' | Washington Examiner

SCOTUS plantiff: 'I dared to stand against union politics' | Washington Examiner:

SCOTUS plantiff: 'I dared to stand against union politics'

When the Supreme Court announced in June that it would hear the case of Friedrichs v. California Teacher Association, it sent shockwaves through organized labor. The case involves whether the nine justices should overturn a 1977 precedent called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that allows public sector employees to be forced to support a union as a condition of employment. About half of the 14 million people in unions nationally are public sector employees. Overturning Abood could result in millions of them dropping their membership. Lead plaintiff Rebecca Friedrichs spoke with theWashington Examiner about her involvement in the case.

Washington Examiner: So what is your background? How did you get into teaching?

Friedrichs: I started dreaming of being a teacher when I was a kid. I just always loved working with little kids, so that's what got me into teaching. It has been a very rewarding career. I've enjoyed it very much.

Examiner: Why California? Why not somewhere else?

Friedrichs: Well, I was born and raised in California. My whole family is here. I teach about 30 minutes north of where I grew up. It's the same county.

Examiner: You had to know when you were accepting a teaching position that it was a unionized workplace. How did you feel about that at the time?

Friedrichs: Actually, I didn't know that until I was student-teaching. I had no Idea. When I went into college and decided to become a teacher nobody ever mentioned it. I had no idea I would be entering a unionized workplace. Once I had finished my bachelor's degree and was working in student teaching, it was my master teacher who educated me about teachers' unions.

The reason she told me was because … next door to us there was a teacher who was, in my estimation, abusive towards her students. She was very impatient and would yell at them all of the time. She would grab them and look at them in the face and scream at them. They were little 6-year-olds and I was terrified of her, and I was 22 at the time. So I asked my master teacher, "what can we do about this horrible situation? Can't we talk to the principal about this?" That's when she sat me down and talked to me about unions and teacher tenure and how difficult they made it for districts to rid themselves of teachers who have become ineffective or, in this case, abusive. So that was my first time learning SCOTUS plantiff: 'I dared to stand against union politics' | Washington Examiner:

5 Questions With ‘The Prize’ Author Dale Russakoff

5 Questions With ‘The Prize’ Author Dale Russakoff:

5 Questions With ‘The Prize’ Author Dale Russakoff

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on “Oprah” in 2010 that he was donating $100 million to the city of Newark to improve its schools, longtime Washington Post reporter Dale Russakoff decided to follow along and see what happened next. Over the next four years, she talked with teachers, parents, students, administrators, politicians, donors — just about every major figure in the story, in Newark and beyond — to build a deeply researched, nuanced and thoughtful report.

The result, her book “The Prize,” has just been published to widespread acclaim. In it, Russakoff details the missteps and controversies that plagued the reformers from the beginning — starting, perhaps, with their decision to announce the gift on national television before telling anyone in Newark about it. Even with an additional $100 million in matching funds, the largesse seems to have done shockingly little to improve the quality of Newark’s public schools.

Anyone who’s interested in how to improve urban schools — and how not to — will find a wealth of information and insight in “The Prize.” By focusing deeply on one city’s issues, the book illuminates many of the problems that all cities face.

Dale Russakoff, author of “The Prize.”

Russakoff sat down recently with Learning Lab to discuss her book and what she learned in reporting it. An edited version of that conversation follows.

The Newark schools had $200 million to spend, and yet by the end of your story it seems that too little has changed. What do you think they could have done differently to get better results?

I think that they had a fixed idea of how to do it, and I think they thought it was all about fixing the systems and not about addressing what the needs are in the classroom. In fact there was an email very early in the process, when they were all communicating about this gift, and it said, “MZ’s money is not going to the classroom.”

And it was just a given. Because that would be a waste — that would go down a rathole, so let’s fix the systems. And consultants can figure out everything else.

What they were doing was kind of from the top down. They wanted to change the system and create a perfect system to create a model that could then be transferred to cities across the country. And I think that that’s trying to figure out “How do you fix the whole system?” without thinking about children.

Although you note that most people on all sides had good intentions, what made it so difficult for them to work together productively?

They actually came to Newark with an idea that because the system was in such disrepair and so dysfunctional that the people in the district didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t know how to improve education. What they came in with was the idea “We have to fix this,” and, in effect, to the people of Newark, “We have to fix you.”

And I think that was not only rude and insulting, it wasn’t smart — because there are so many people in the schools who are gifted and who continue to try every day, in spite of being trapped in a failing system. And those are the people who are dying to have a chance to fix the system.

Had those people been involved, I think that they would have had better ideas for what needed to be done. And they also would have been able to speak to the whole community about why this is important, as opposed to the community feeling like these are foreigners, these are aliens who’ve come to try to do something to us rather than with us.

I think that’s been a real problem in the education reform movement. And I think there are people in the reform movement who know that and are trying to change that and trying to make this more of a bottom-up, as opposed to a top-down, movement. Because the recognition is that if you do this topeople, no matter what happens, when you’re gone, it won’t be sustained anyway. So what have you accomplished?

[Zuckerberg’s gift] was announced on “Oprah,” and nobody in Newark knew about it before Oprah’s 5 Questions With ‘The Prize’ Author Dale Russakoff: