Arne Duncan is harming public schools.

Arne Duncan is Secretary of Education for the Obama administration.  What Arne Duncan does not know about education would fill the Gamma Quadrant. That is the charitable view.  It faults him only for ignorance. A darker assessment is that he is pandering to some of the most pernicious opponents of public schools.  Those parties comprise the following: corporations who see huge market potential to peddle their tests, curricula and off-the-shelf charter schools; the very rich who want to privatize public schools and most public services in order to wipe them from their tax bills; the religious right who wants to subvert the public will to keep religion out of the schools; corporate “reformers” and ideologues who want to muzzle their sharpest critics and keep the voting masses ignorant.

This is playing out in what should have been the

sunset-days of the failed No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB or “Nickleby”), the regime left over from the early days of the GW Bush administration.  The guiding premise behind NCLB is that the best way to coax excellence from the public schools is through intimidation and punishment:  Threaten the schools with being labelled “failed”.  Pull their funding or resources if they fail to demonstrate “adequate yearly progress.”  Redirect district resources to testing and more testing to enforce mandates.  Focus on “accountability” of individual teachers and school districts.  De-emphasize the importance of externalities like poverty, community support or parent involvement.  De-emphasize professional development and innovation.

A patch or fix to soften this big-hammer approach has been to allow the states to apply for Nickleby waivers.  Under Arne Duncan, a waiver is most likely to be granted if there is still clear observance of the principle of accountability.  Oregon has unilaterally imposed “achievement compacts” on each of the school districts. The local “compacts”, to be accepted by the state, must include some device to tie teacher evaluation to student performance on state tests.  

I guess Oregon’s formula has been found wanting by the Department of Education.  Oregon has been declared to be at “high risk” of losing its waiver.  Oregon has just advanced a Matrix Model to address whatever deficiencies had put the waiver in jeopardy.  Oregon waits.

The wait is over in Washington state.  Their waiver has been revoked.  I understand this is because the state of Washington has steadfastly refused to tie teacher evaluation to  standardized test results.

Why the Obama administration is supporting those who would kill public education - or suck it dry - is an important question.  The validity of presuming widespread inefficiency and incompetence in teaching - the “accountability” premise - is a hot-button issue.  But the most important consideration is only recently being aired.  The victims in this crossfire are the students.

I presume older students do not like high stakes standardized tests. Their teachers can be excused if they are cynical about mandated testing in their schools.  Whether or not their personal evaluations are tied to student test results, teachers will do everything in their power to optimize those scores. There is more to self-preservation than a personal evaluation.  The teachers will rally to protect their administrators and their districts.  They will teach to the test.  They will displace their own curriculum with content congruent with the tests.  The teachers will sacrifice days of instructional time for prep and administering the tests.  Teachers will pull out their old-tech Plan B lessons because computers are not available during testing season.  Much creative and administrative energy is now devoted to the tests.  This is at the direct expense of the resources that used to be available for the traditional mission of the schools, that of education.

The tests are manifestly harmful to younger students.  The anecdotes are readily available:  very young children, despondent because they are “failures” according to the tests; children who are bullied or teased because they failed the the test; anxiety disorders fueled or caused by anticipation of the tests.  This is contrary to the first objective of every K-12 teacher - to create a safe and inviting learning environment.

The spurious “data” generated by the tests are automatically powerful ammunition for those who are taking aim at the schools.  Inevitably, districts and states are competing because the data identify winners and losers.  Clearly the losers must be - take your pick - taken over by the state, replaced by charter schools, stripped of their current staff, closed and their students dispersed, etc. These are not scenarios for supporting or improving our schools.

Incredibly, the most high-profile example of this very destructive competitive model is from Arne Duncan and the Department of Education.  The Race to the Top (RTTT) is a scheme announced by Arne Duncan and Obama in 2009.  States compete for grants on the basis of earning points, especially for adopting performance-based standards and using test scores in teacher evaluations.  Diane Ravitch commented when Portland Public Schools passed on participating in RTTT:

Maybe the school system figured out that the money is not discretionary and that the mandates that come with RTTT will cost districts more than whatever money it brings to the district.

The 2014 federal budget provides $71.2 billion for the Department of Education.  That’s gotta be good for something.  Moving the whole appropriation over to food stamps would have a more demonstrably positive effect on education than what we are getting from Arne Duncan and the Department of Education.