Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama?

A few years ago, someone coined the term “zombie policies” to describe policies that fail again and again, yet never go away. One such zombie is “merit pay,” which has never succeeded yet never dies an ignominious death or loss of reputation.

I mention this because our current education system is hampered by at least 20 years of zombie policies, beginning with No Child Left Behind, then Race to the Top, then Trump’s fervent support for privatization.

In 2010, when my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing abd Choice are Undermining Education” was published, I participated in a debate with Carmel Martin, one of the key strategists of the Obama Department of Education. She defended every aspect of the Bush-Obama approach: high-stakes testing, closing low-performing schools, charter schools, evaluating teachers by student test scores, and so on.

A year or so later, I was invited to the White House Executive Offices to meet Obama’s top education team: Melody Barnes, chief of the White House domestic policy CONTINUE READING: Jan Resseger: Will the Biden Administration Revive the Failed Policies of NCLB and Obama? | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

When this originally ran at Forbes.com, there was still some qujestion about the premise. Since then I've updated it with new info from DeVos herself.

For many conservatives, one of the greatest sins perpetrated by Obama’s secretary of education was using the powers of his office to bypass the legislature. Arne Duncan oversaw Race to the Top, which was instrumental in pushing Common Core and other preferred policies into schools across the country. Now Betsy DeVos is using nearly identical tactics to push for her own favorite educational ideas.

Race to the Top was a $4.5 billion program that was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a stimulus package meant to help reverse some of the effects of the Great Recession. States would have the opportunity to get education grants, but they would have to compete for the money by showing how closely they could adhere to the administration’s goals of college- and career-ready standards, high stakes testing, teacher evaluation, and data collection. The administration had tried and failed to get these goals passed into law through Congress. The financial pressure of the Great Recession and the looming penalties for the unachievable goals of No Child Left Behind (100% of students scoring above average on the Big Standardized Test) gave Duncan leverage to bypass Congress entirely. And rather than providing funding for all schools in all states, the program picked winners and losers.

Many conservative critics argued that RTTT and the waivers that followed were illegal. The backlash CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Has, In Fact, Become Arne Duncan 2.0

2010 Education Reform Bowl