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Educators Praise Obama’s Choice of Duncan as Ed. Secretary |
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The leaders of education unions today praised President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Arne Duncan, superintendent of the Chicago school system, as education secretary in the new administration. AFT President Randi Weingarten, Jill Levy, president of the School Administrators (AFSA), and National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis Van Roekel said Duncan has shown genuine commitment to the key priorities for an incoming education secretary.
In a statement, Weingarten says:
There may be times when we will differ, but we believe we will agree fully that America’s students and teachers need an education secretary committed to focusing on real solutions for closing the achievement gap and providing every child with a rigorous, well-rounded education that prepares him or her for college, work and life.
Levy adds in her statement:
As the Chicago schools’ superintendent, Arne Duncan led several key initiatives, including increased recruitment and training of school principals and assistant principals, expansion of early childhood education, and strengthening of math and science education to better equip students to meet the many challenges of a competitive global environment. We are also pleased that the new secretary will have important access to the president and has proven himself as an excellent administrator.
Van Roekel says the appointment “could be the beginning of a promising new period for public education in this country.”
Arne Duncan has said before Congress that funding for [No Child Left Behind] should be doubled within five years, and that the law must be amended to give schools the maximum amount of flexibility possible. For too long, federal education policy has been about teaching to the test, and Duncan could use his new position to move beyond those failed policies, and provide every child with 21st century skills.
All three emphasized the importance of education to our nation’s future, with Weingarten saying:
The decisions we make today about education affect our children’s future as well as the health and well-being of our national democracy. This is a moment when our public schools face serious challenges, now exacerbated by steep budget cuts that often take the most severe toll on the most vulnerable students. We must invest, not divest, in our children’s education.
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According to n excellent article in The Nation by Alfie Kohn, Duncan favors the corporate model for education as well as furthering the ridiculous standardized testing craze. It is utterly bizarre that the teacher’s unions don’t stand up against the destruction of our public education system by corporate CEO type administrators or call for the repeal of the disastrous No Child Left Behind Act. Is someone profiting off all those private testing companies’ contracts? This looks and smells like a complete sell out!
This appointment is not about reform or change or even about improving education. Please read education expert Alfie Kohn’s article “Beware School Reformers” (written before the appointment) for a reality check. Here’s an excerpt:
The favored contenders include assorted governors and two corporate-style school chiefs: Arne Duncan, whose all-too-apt title is “chief executive officer” of Chicago Public Schools, and his counterpart in New York City, former CEO and high-powered lawyer Joel Klein.
Duncan, a basketball buddy of Obama’s, has been called a “budding hero in the education business” by Bush’s former Education secretary, Rod Paige. Just as the test-crazy nightmare of Paige’s Houston served as a national model (when it should have been a cautionary tale) in 2001, so Duncan would bring to Washington an agenda based on Renaissance 2010, which Chicago education activist Michael Klonsky describes as a blend of “more standardized testing, closing neighborhood schools, militarization, and the privatization of school management.”
Duncan’s philosophy is shared by Klein, who is despised by educators and parents in his district perhaps more than any superintendent in the nation [see Lynnell Hancock, "School's Out," July 9, 2007]. In a survey of 62,000 New York City teachers this past summer, roughly 80 percent disapproved of his approach. Indeed, talk of his candidacy has prompted three separate anti-Klein petitions that rapidly collected thousands of signatures. One, at StopJoelKlein.org, describes his administration as “a public relations exercise camouflaging the systematic elimination of parental involvement; an obsessively test-driven culture; a growing atmosphere of fear, disillusionment, and intimidation experienced by professionals; and a flagrant manipulation of school data.”
Duncan and Klein pride themselves on new programs that pay students for higher grades or scores. Both champion the practice of forcing low-scoring students to repeat a grade–a strategy that research overwhelmingly finds counterproductive. …
Duncan and Klein, along with virulently antiprogressive DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, are celebrated by politicians and pundits. Linda Darling-Hammond, meanwhile, tends to be the choice of people who understand how children learn. Consider her wry comment that introduces this article (“If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet.” ): it’s impossible to imagine a comparable insight coming from any of the spreadsheet-oriented, pump-up-the-scores “reformers” (or, for that matter, from any previous Education secretary). Darling-Hammond knows how all the talk of “rigor” and “raising the bar” has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color. Her viewpoint is that of an educator, not a corporate manager.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081229/kohn
Just beware, Obama has endorsed vouchers.