One Thing Is Certain, Duncan Must Be Dumped
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I'm Old School. I celebrate compromise. I believe our handshakes must be good, contracts must be honored. Especially in the effort to improve schools, the politics of destruction are wrong.
I don't believe in drawing lines in the sand, except in extreme cases. I used to teach my students to respect the political principle of the "loyal opposition," where "my opponent is my opponent, not my enemy."
Politics is supposed to be a contact sport; elbows are thrown, but it is wrong to take your opponent's knees out. And, when a player celebrates an injury inflicted by a cheap shot, he should be benched.
This has been an incredibly confusing week for anyone seeking to deescalate the scorched earth assault on teachers. At this point, only two things are clear. I was wrong in hoping that we are close to deescalating our reform wars. Second, Arne Duncan must be fired.
The Sunday Washington Post documented the Gates Foundation's rush toward Common Core standards and testing, and how it was enabled and vastly accelerated by Duncan's Race to the Top. It raised some tough questions about the role of economic elites and the democratic governance of our schools.
The Post told the same story that was documented by Steve Brill when Gates and Duncan brushed off warnings from education researchers, and RttT funds were used to coerce states into changing their laws and adopting value-added evaluations.
Duncan then adopted policies that were even more grandiose. Seeming oblivious to the spirit of constitutional democracy, he began granting waivers to the discredited One Thing Is Certain, Duncan Must Be Dumped | John Thompson: