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Obama Slam-Duncans Education
Hey, you Liberal Democrats. You may have won the election, but you're getting CREAMED in the transition.
Today, President-elect Barack Obama stuck it to you. He's chosen Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.
Who? Duncan is most decidedly not an educator. He's a lawyer. But Duncan has this extraordinary qualification: He's Obama's pick-up basketball buddy from Hyde Park.
I can't make this up.
Not that Duncan hasn't mucked about in the educational system. Chicago Boss Richie Daley put this guy in charge of the horror show called Chicago Public Schools where Duncan turned a bad system into a REALLY bad system.
And Obama knows it. Indeed, although he plays roundball with Duncan (who was captain of the Harvard basketball team), State Senator Obama was one of the only local Chicago officials who refused to send his kids to Duncan's public schools. (The Obamas sent Sasha and Malia to the Laboratory School, where Duncan's methods are derided as dangerously ludicrous.)
So, if The One won't trust his kids to Duncan, why is he handing Duncan ours?
The answer: Duncan is supported by a coterie of teacher-union hating Republicans. The vocal cheerleader for the Duncan appointment was David Brooks, the New York Times columnist; the REPUBLICAN columnist.
Hey, didn't those guys LOSE?
The problem with Duncan is not party affiliation. The problem is education philosophy. And Duncan is a Bush baby through and through, a card-carrying supporter of the program best called, "No Child's Behind Left."
At the heart of the program is testing. And more testing. Testing instead of teaching. When tests go badly, the solution is to push the low-test-score kids to drop out of school. If triage isn't enough, then attack their teachers.
Here's how Duncan operates this Bush program in Chicago at Collins High in the Lawndale ghetto. Teachers there work with kids from homeless shelters from an economically devastated neighborhood. Believe it or not, the kids don't get high test scores. So Chicago fired the teachers, every one of them. Then they brought in new teachers and fired THEM too when, surprise!, test scores still didn't rise.
The reward for a teacher volunteering for a tough neighborhood is to get harassed, blamed and fired. Now THAT'S a brilliant program, Mr. Duncan. But Duncan's own failures have not gotten HIM fired. As long as his 20-foot jumpshot holds, he's Mr. Secretary.
In no other cabinet department is the lack of expertise, lack of accomplishment, lack of a degree in the field found acceptable but in Education.
But what horrifies me more than Duncan's lack of credentials is Obama's kowtowing to the right-wing clique crusading against the teachers' union and progressive education. The ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories Duncan promotes, "Teach-to-the-Test," forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create a future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and - voila! - millions of lower-income kids are trained on the cheap to function, not think.
Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills are left exclusively to privileged little Bushes at Phillips Andover Academy or privileged little Obamas at the Laboratory School.
For the rest of America's children, instead of hope, we'll have hoops.
- Posted in
107 Comments so far
Show AllThe USA has long had a complex love/hate relationship with education. It extols it's virtues, yet "brainiacs" & "geeks" are bullied daily in the school yard. It is a vital ingredient to competing in globalized economy, but the profession of teaching is derided as a dumping ground for "losers" and the pay is reflective of that. Unless America adopts some of the practices and attitudes of nations with higher achievement; higher teacher pay, tougher teacher and student standards, & a longer school day and year, then the USA will begin to fall towards the laggards of the Third World. How Obama's selection for Education Secretary will perform remains to be seen.
www.wunderman-comics.com
The United States has 50 states with their own education systems, plus DC. The USA has had a long love affair with text book manufacturers and more recently test makers=Leave No Child Behind. So we don't have to repeat everything, folks can go down to comments below under Palast's other article on picking the new head of Ed. and "Don't Trust 'Reformers'". The US has a long love-mostly hate relationship with intelligent kids/adults (maybe just born of fear of "difference"). And bosses hate unions. I also had the feeling Obama is playing "Chinese menu":one from column A (housing guy from NYC), etc. Pols like having friends in their Administration,too. Under Bush, "cronies".
In Appalachia we have moonscapes and schools so old and outdated ( here in KING COAL country ) we can't even power up the latest technology our kids deserve. THE COAL INDUSTRY ships the coal to China to power their country and schools. www.wisecountyissues.com In my opinion anyone at Education will be an improvement.
We seem to have forgotten that american leaders, whether in business or government, are never accountable. They are always busy making those beneath them accountable. Politics and money trump integrity over and over again in america. It is a cesspool of corruption. Even major disasters like Katrina have not changed things. What will?
I've long known the struggle for public education in the United States is one of the nastier arenas in the class war capitalism has been conducting against the inner city and rural poor most of my adult life. Obama's appointment only offers documented evidence of who and what we're fighting. So bring it on, smart guys. The "education reform" phonys are about to find out that the real education reform movement hasn't been sitting idle all this time. This isn't over until we stop talking and fighting, believe you me.
Why is Obama's selection of Duncan a surprise? Stop listening to what he says and watch what he does. His choice of Duncan, his votes in the Senate (FISA, the war funding, etc), and his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan are those of a neoliberal corporatist, not a progressive. The only thing that the suckers who voted for his so-called "change" platform got for their vote was Bill Clinton without the fat and libido. No doubt they will be supporting the next conman promising change in 2012.
Trust Obama is wearing thin. This sucker voted for him because the alternative was too horrific.
Me too.
Gore Vidal said that back in the day the kids at Exeter were trained to run the country for the kids at Groton who owned it. Today, a kid on the wrong side of town can go to jailhouse-prep, while the Harvard boy gets good grades for "reform." Each of the commentators before me has made points more relevant to education than anything we will hear from "reformers."
The so-called "love-hate relationship" with education in this country is mostly a myth. Very few, if any, choose to be stupid, but thanks to the propaganda masters, some have been made to "fear" intellectualism.
If "our" government truly wanted an educated populace, they would, of course, hire the best people available at all levels; clearly, however, it is the government which fears education the most, because the more who can "see behind the veil," the more likely the power to steal, lie and repress will diminish.
BO wouldn't have "won" if he wasn't corporate-approved, and he will continue to do what he's told no matter how much "surprise" is expressed by his cultists.
As a substitute teacher in a rural part of the country, I can say this. School, family, jobs, the military, the corporate elite are all headed for a meltdown.
Recently in the midterm progress reviews, 75% of the 8th grade students has 3 F's or more in the class.
Can you blame it all on the teacher? No. These kids come from dysfunctional families, and their only way 'out' is the military. So they become the perfect fodder. Not educated enough to have choices (to even have a dream that they can accomplish more than the minimum), and the military marketing is persuasive.
Soon half the country will be military/police/security employed while the other half will be the target of investigations if they don't support the new economic paradigm.
"Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care."
--Jimmy Buffett
All,
I am not sure about his other credentials or any of the other ins and outs of it, but I don't think he is a lawyer, as the article says. I think he has a B.A. from Harvard in sociology.
This was the Republican plan all along...and they've been putting it in place for the last 30 years. The last thing they want from a class of indentured servants is too many questions, let alone incisive ones! Test scores are a way of "disqualifying" students from entering the upper (even middle) rungs of society. The ivy blue boys are merely protecting their "franchise." Withholding education is one of the many "weapons of mass destruction" against the American citizenry.
Get away from the "not enough funding" argument, which is exactly another way that the republicans control this issue by feeding into that "frame."
Having said that, we have to turn away from "organized" education by turning children (and adults) into lifelong autodidacts. The internet is the largest and most accessible university in the world! It is the only antidote to mediocre public education-- in fact, there is no reason not to include a 2-year college curriculum into middle/high school years---as is done in most advanced western countries and which is called a "baccalaureat"!
It's high time to create a nation of CRITICAL, ANALYTICAL THINKERS as opposed to the Wizard of Oz model of simplistic regurgitators being anointed with diplomas.
This was not just a "Republican Plan". It is the Corporate Globalist Plan, which is facilitated by both the Republicans and Democrats, with too few exceptions in either wing of THE PARTY. This cannot be blamed solely on the mean old greedy Republicans. And you will see Internet Neutrality erode even faster under the Obama machine. It's time for an end to the neurotic thumb-twiddling for "hope" and "change". The government is pretty much gone. What's left is an absurd charade, unless one happens to be hopefully anticipating a feudal/fascist global government.
This appointment broke my heart. I am coming to the sad conclusion the most telling public comment Obama has made is referencing himself a "mutt." Indicated is a shaping inferiority complex, perhaps throughout his life. It appears he has struggled to "fit in" by conforming, not challenging. There is nothing of the rebel here; he has striven to blend in like all the good suburbanites in the opening to the Showtime series Weeds. Yes, he is clearly bright, but intelligence is technical or creative. Obama's knack appears the technical, the ability to function systemically, not challenge the system. Exactly the talent for the "mutt" struggling to blend with the "purebreds." He is a sad, pathetic character, like Bill Clinton, the abused child always catering to his perceived abuser. In a time calling for a Harry Truman, someone who understands the public because accepting himself, we have the insecure, those who do not understand the public because not accepting themselves.
Isn't Arne Duncan's nomination the "last straw" for anybody who harbored any hope for change from an Obama administration? In the campaign he criticized No Child Left Behind and then appointed one of the more egregious practioners of that agenda to leave no child's behind intact, as Palast so well put it. Google and look up the 34 minute video on Renaissance 2010, Chicago's version of the NCLB electric chair for public education. So what else has Obama promised? He won't "have any lobbyist" in his White House. He's already chosen Daschle for HHS who, though technically not a lobbyist, was a "consultant" for a lobbying firm with many health care corporations as clients; and his pillow partner wife is still an airlines lobbyist. He's already chosen Carol Browner, Clinton's EPA person, to the new climate "czar" post (what's with it with all the czars?), and she is a proto-lobbyist connected with several "consultants" to energy businesses during the "civilian" part of her revolving door career from government to business and back to government again; not to mention that her husband, a long-time congressman from New York, is explicitly a lobbyist with his own firm among the top lobbies on K Street? He's promised to be a very environmentally friendly President, then passed over for Interior Secretary several good progressive prospects to light on "centrist" (to be generous) Ken Salazar, who is little more than a "drill baby drill" Palin-clone when the drilling is anywhere outside Colorado. But wait a minute, he's just waiting to assume the presidency for his true progressive colors to emerge. So I'm being pre-mature in my judgments; better to give the guy "a chance." Or would that be a hundred chances?
I disagree with your conclusions, but want to humbly say that I think that was a great post.
Thanks, now please let me know how you "disagree with my conclusions" and we can "talk." I'll try to be as respectful of your conclusions.
.The last straw hell, that came much earlier for me. Unlike far too many I guess, I actually listened carefully to the oh so demagogic speeches of candidate Obama, speeches filled with airy and impassioned phrases but absolutely devoid of substance. I listened to the way his positions began to alter after obtaining the nomination and embarking on the campaign itself. All the while I noted how so many "progressives" were drinking the Obama kool aid, though I understood that, after eight years of Bush/Cheney, folks were begging for a hero to lead them out of the wilderness.
I thought, frankly, that the re-appointment of Bob Gates to Defense might, at last, puncture the balloon of faith, but apparently not. I wonder what it is going to take for Americans to awaken to the truth of the two party sham of a system? But wait, folks, Obama hasn't even taken the oath of office yet, I am being way to harsh here. Well, you study on this list of appointments, you look up the records of those he has surrounded himself with, and you find the path to progressivism among the trees of status quo. I certainly cannot.
Oh, and don't blame me, I voted for Ralph.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Reminds me of the joke, looks like crap, tastes like crap, good thing I didn't step in it.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
also voted for Nader
GEE ! I thought liberals were "smart" but instead they play go-along-get-along like abused wives ! Quit begging for big government to help you as they'd rather say FUCK YOU ! Take your kids to another country with better education and then come back with them when they're grown up. Then there'll be room for real education REFORM !
I left my usual vote for a third-party candidate behind to vote "against" Mr. Bomb-Bomb-Iran and his cheerleader. I guess this is the painful price. Hope it buys us something in terms of ending the war, closing Gitmo, or green technology.
Sad.
I left behind my own "usual vote" for every Democratic nominee from Stevenson to Kerry to vote for a third party candidate (McKinney).
I too am sad, genuinely sad, for all my progressive friends who did as you did in this election, and voted against Mr. Bomb-Bomb-Iran in the only way (for Obama) that they thought they could stop Mr. B-B-I by voting for Mr. Might-Bomb-Iran. Sad that they (and I) have to cling to a forlorn "hope" that "something" good might come from a presidency in which HOPE was presented as a joyous possibility if not an inevitability with Obama's election. Many will still go to D.C. on January 20 to "celebrate," but how do you celebrate such a piteous remnant of hope that is all the "transition team" has left for us?
Those who held their noses and voted for Obama and now feel betrayed, I'm sorry but you can't say you weren't warned about voting for the lesser of two evils.
Even with truthful information it is hard to make the right decision, much less with the 'filtered' information we get from the media, including Common Dreams.
Yes, Obama will do a few 'right' things, but the status quo won't be changing.
And if we are going to prevent or minimize the impending catastrophe (environmental, economic, food supply, militarism etc) the status quo will have to change.
I guess what we have here is a SNAFU (situation normal, all f*cked up)
"The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same." ~Marie Beyle
Don't hold yer breath, dude!!
You guys got screwed, blewed, and tatooed.
Too bad.
At least we conservatives KNEW that McCain and Palin were pieces of Republican SHIT and that they were going to bone us. You guys actually thought Obama could make a difference.
Howzzit feel now?
Phyllis Schlafly,
how good to hear from you again!
Obama is a sell-out, but the Sec. of Education never matters much. The contempt and derision for teachers and brainy kids is deep in American culture. In Korea, the word for "Sir" or "Mister" or "Madame" is the same word as "teacher". Educators and scholars command the highest respect, or they did historically. You can't change attitudes with a change of ceremonial bureaucrats.
jonabark
I hear there is actually a hot market in Korean Parents. They're worth their weight in A's.
Dear Shanmarie: I don't care if Arne Duncan is a convertible with a pull out throttle. He's a class enemy, and his shit's going to get peeped. It's on.
What a hateful condemnation of my president. Well, on CD the Obama hate-fest should find fertile ground.....did you all vote for Ralph Nader? Pride your righteous selves on your corazon de alma.....congratulations, you are so so smart.....right? By the way oh better than other people, I have a question...has Ralph divested his investments in cluster bombs via Fidelity Magellan????????????????? Cause check this Ardee, Sir, we see ourselves in the mirror through our pupils, on 400 mic's of L' and other Heroes-Barack Obama has no money in MUNITIONS-but you worship Ralph to the altar while he kills children for a return on his investments.
Doubt me? Google Ralph Nader Fidelity Magellan Cluster Bombs. Merry Freaking Christmas.
What the hell does this article have to do with Ralph Nader? Is that what you're going to say the next four years every time Obama is criticized for doing something, appointing someone to something, that makes the rightwingers swoon in ecstasy? "Oh, it's all you self-righteous Nader lovers' fault! If Nader didn't have [alleged]investments in cluster bombs (so say some Nader-hating web sites, at least), then Obama wouldn't have to appoint unqualified Republican friends to his cabinet. It's all because of that devil Nader!" I suppose if Obama surges into Afghanistan, and later nukes Iran, and when things don't turn out quite as planned, you can always blame it on Nader.
.I would imagine that this clown's mother was frightened by an independent while pregnant with him....Facts do not matter only the amount of testosterone induced adrenalin he can get his fix with.
Nader is guilty of not greening his portfolio to be sure, he holds about $200,000 in that fund that so enrages our friend above. A fund, of course, holds many differing offerings, and the one in question does have some shares of military industrial stocks among its numerous holdings. They have divested themselves of Halliburton and others yet the truth remains that they do have such stock......
Now back to the topic at hand....
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
I've heard this same BS repeated for over eight years about Ralph and investments in Cluster Bombs. Problem is, nobody can prove this. Yeah, Google this and you won't find anything except other posts saying the same exact same thing without any proof. And having a fund with any one source, like Fidelity Magellan, doesn't reveal what you are actually invested in. I had investments that were bought and sold several times and I couldn't keep up with what was being invested where. And even if his investments were in any of these companies, that was over EIGHT YEARS AGO.
Too bad. The "comments" at this website are as predictable, unuseful, and boring as they possibly can be.
.Too bad you cannot raise up the level....
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
LOL. Great response!
The man behind the curtain gave us the choice of his AIPAC candidates.
What shall we do now? Dante said to Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
OUCH!!!
Screwed yet again!!!
You liberals sure must be getting tired of this nonsense by now!!!
Naw, you're wrong, Greg. The real sell-out move would have been appointing Joel Klein or (gasp) Michelle Rhee, who are the real teacher haters and union-busters. Arne is a crony, so no point there, but he is not a capitulation to the privatizers (major point there) and Obama has put Linda Darling-Hammond in charge of policy review on education--and that's where the real work lies. She's the one who will be giving Obama his real education agenda, and, in the meantime, the bloodbath that was forming up between alleged "reformers" vs. "status quo-ites," both sides predictably oversimplified and miscategorized by the press, has been averted.
Chicago may be a mess, but so is every other urban district in the country, and lots of the smaller ones besides. It's going to take collaboration, synergy, and a lot of hard work to move our dying behemoth of a public education system out of the tarpit and back up onto dry land again--way beyond the usual whining, carping, and blaming. Wake up, Common Dreams, we may all have to work together to get this done--and schools may be the one arena where we can all agree long enough to actually make something positive happen. Seems to me that would be a great example for the kids, teachers, and parents who are now being held hostage by an out-of-date, industrialized, and paralyzed system. Patricia Kokinos, www.ChangeTheSchools.com
Thank you for your post. We talk about "holding Obama's feet to the fire" - Maybe we ought to form a roastie-toastie brigade - and keep our own in there. The education "system" is not a stand alone proposition.
Another point is that as with civic concerns in all areas, we're at the point where shaking off the big brother has to be followed with engagenment. Appointments can change - particularly with an activist coalition constantly pressing critique and documenting failings and options.
This news about Linda Darling-Hammond is encouraging. I like your positive energy. I am looking forward to a time when all of our elected officials feel confident and comfortable putting their own children in the DC public schools or any other large urban school system. That is the acid test of school reform.
Joe
I see nothing wrong with Obama wanting a baller in the WH. I even think he deserves something like this, and that it might improve his administration in that it'll keep Obama relaxed and cool.
I listened to the news conference where Duncan was introduced and he sounded like he was hugely successful in the education field. Obama had all kinds of statistics to back-up his praise. Greg seems to have a whole different perspective. I'd like to see some links to his claims on Duncan
David Brooks, and what school Obama's children attend do not concern me at all...
.Gee, if our new President Elect chose to send his kids to Duncan's alma mater, rather than to the schools under his care, and if the numerous complaints about the Chicago school system are true, then perhaps concerned folks should worry....
If you are serious about wanting links, and half as intelligent as I believe you to be, you could find a thousand in a minute....I did.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
I think I'm only 1/4 as intelligent as you believe me to be.
.That is still pretty high up in my estimation. Especially when compared to some posters here, sheeesh! I do not conflate a shared political opinion with intellectual ability, you have the latter but not yet the former...I'll keep working on that.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
You ask for "some links." The best proof of Duncan's "credentials" to head the U.S. educational system is in what he has done with Chicago's public school system, under the Renaissance 2010 program that he has headed. Among others, Mike Klonsky describes the "beggar's feast" that Chicago schools have become under this program. http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-6z6IhP08cqXp9kfshYQPv87gCfJyFg--?p=206 When film-makers wanted to film a school system killed by the NCLB, they found a great example in Chicago and shot the thirty minute film Renaissance 2010 that you can google and find. I rather think that the Senate committee that considers whether to confirm Duncan's appointment should plan to spend 30 precious minutes of their time to study that preview of what American schools could become.
Obama did swear his allegiance to AIPAC and Israel...so don't squawk...enjoy
the benfits of this extreme liberal like we did during the Vietnam war, with
all those crazy looney lefties. They are mostly lobbyists in training masquerading
as Change agents.
I've always loved Palast's biting sarcasm.
Greg Palast, like many of us on the left, takes a common shortcut and tries to portray education reform as a monolithic left versus a monolithic right. This is simplistic and simply does not apply to public education in this country in which different groupings of Democrats and Republicans both love and hate NCLB and have varying friendly and hostile relationships with the teachers unions. The education reform landscape is bumpy and confusing, peopled with extreme ideologues of many stripes as well as principled alliances between liberals and conservatives.
Education cannot be dismissed this way, especially when the terminology is so misleading; I would have assumed that I would support what is called "progressive" pedagogy only to find that it tends to include things like "constructivist" math and whole language reading, both methodologies that are condemning generations of poor students to academic failure.
There are a lot of things wrong with public education and with the NCLB and its implementation, not everything wrong with the schools can be realistically blamed on that. Anyone who has attended or has children attending an urban school, for example, knows that public schools have always been intractable -- not designed or administered for anything but the convenience of the adults who work there. Right now, I'm trying to get a report on my child's progress towards IEP goals, but the school doesn't want to give it to me because it doesn't fit on a form they have. This is typical -- consistent with their reluctance to teach a dyslexic child how to read -- and can't be blamed on rightwingers; I live in a predominantly Democratic county where the schools commemorate MLK, Jr. and Cesar Chavez.
Accountability is a key requirement for transforming public schools, and the standardized test results have shown that our public schools a) don't know what to do with data, b) try to kill the messenger ("it's the test's fault") , and c) spend more time pointing fingers ("it's poverty", "it's the dysfunctional families", "it's the students' culture of poverty") than examining teaching effectiveness or school leadership or teacher training or school funding.
For example of the shallowness of Palast's article, he says, "Duncan is supported by a coterie of teacher-union hating Republicans."
Well, many people who are not Republicans, including myself, are very critical of the unwillingness of teacher's unions to make it possible for schools to get rid of ineffective teachers. Also, many people (some in these alliances between liberals and conservatives) are trying to change "business as usual" by proposing merit pay for teachers, which is opposed by most teacher's unions. This seemingly radical idea would allow good, effective teachers to be rewarded at a higher level, therefore helping to retain and motivate them. Even "Rethinking Schools" which is a liberal/progressive education org has a series of articles somewhere on their site debating the whole idea of teacher's unions as industrial unions versus professional unions or other approaches. Palast's broad brush doesn't do justice to the complexity of the issue.
In the shallow approach to ed reform, those taking the "progressive" side assume that all teachers are highly qualified, hard-working, committed, effective, etc. etc. Some assuredly are, but many are just so-so and some are terrible. A lot of principals may be effectively leading their schools, but many are just taking up space (and a generous salary.)
A serious approach to education reform has to take into account teaching effectiveness, teacher training, school leadership and administration, school funding, and must include accountability. If we demand accountability from the users of the $700B bailout funds, why are we so up at arms about accountability when it involves our children's future?