Secretary of Education Arne “Common Core” Duncan cuts and runs.

I guess Secretary Duncan felt that he’d done enough damage to educational standards – and tossed around enough race-baiting comments* – to satisfy him, so he’ll be leaving in December. …What’s that? No, actually, my slams at Arne Duncan are likely going to pass unnoticed, in the wake of this: “President Obama has named Education Department official John King Jr. as acting secretary through the end of his term.” There will be no Senate confirmation hearing for a new Secretary of Education, if Barack Obama can possibly help it.

And Barack Obama might pull it off, if only because the election’s in thirteen months and there’s going to be a new President in fifteen.  Although by ‘pull it off’ I mean ‘won’t be personally hassled;’ Warm Body Acting Secretary King won’t enjoy similar consideration.  In fact… while I don’t agree with many of the arguments in this Slate article and I certainly don’t agree with the tone, author Sarah Carr is correct on one thing: the next real Secretary of Education is going to have to try to figure out how to straighten out the stinking, fermenting mess of distrust and arrogance that Arne Duncan (and Barack Obama!) made out of what once was a mildly promising bipartisan educational policy. Secretary Duncan should have stuck around and started the repair work.

But then: since when has any person associated with this administration acted like a functional adult?  Yeah, I’m kind of blanking on a name there, myself.  Guess it’s true what they say about how fish rot from the head down…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Believe it or not, once upon a time Arne Duncan was considered to be the competent guy in the Obama Cabinet.  That was before we realized that Common Core was the political equivalent of a chlorine trifluoride fire. …Well, maybe it’s not that bad, but it’s remarkable how broad the spectrum is of people who hate that particular educational policy.

7 thoughts on “Secretary of Education Arne “Common Core” Duncan cuts and runs.”

  1. That’s because politicians of both parties are remarkable idiots.
    .
    WHY THE #%$^ AM I HAVING TO TEACH ALGEBRA TO MY SECOND-GRADERS FOR NIGHTLY HOMEWORK?
    It’s nice that you want them to learn how to solve for X, and the transitive property of addition.
    I want a pony and a jetpack.
    I also want my kids to be able to do math, get the right answer, and not have the answer marked WRONG.
    .
    A grease fire is much to nice for any of those involved to die in. Something involving fluorine does sound remarkably appropriate.

    1. My son also get stuff marked wrong–for doing something as outrageous as dividing 26 by 2 in his head. He is in the 5th grade. You’ll find that the homework will not really change as the kid gets older. They are still solving problems the same, time consuming ways. He had to draw 39 dots and circle 26 of them to say what 2/3rds are. As a PhD engineer, what they have done to math is keeping me up at nights. dr James Milgram a math professor at Stanford that was asked to sign off on the standards and refused. He says common core will have kids 2 years behind other nations. He find the methods taught antithetical to how math is actually done. Even the kids in my son’s fifth grade class have questioned their teacher about what the types of methods they have to use. She responds with–this is what the state requires me to do. Does that inspire confidence.

      Having a fed curriculum designed for all 50 states — only written by 3 people none of whom have taught at a k-12 level is crazy. Whatever method you use to set the curriculum for an entire country is going to be flawed as there is no guarantee that the outcome will reflect best standards. It will most likely reflect the aspirations of the most influential members of the panel. And a fed curriculum makes it harder to correct the flaws.

      A federal education curriculum is a bad idea altogether. And yes, this is a federal program. The group that owns the copyright to the standards is federally funded. A federal curriculum is a bad idea. Competition between the states assures the best possible methodologies are used. Ask any athlete what encourages them to be better- competition. Instead of striving for top student performance, school districts are focusing on meeting objectives set by the Fed CC curriculum and the associated tests. We have no data to indicate that this curriculum and tests indicate a better outcome than the previous state standards. But putting this fed program over schools moves incentives from student outcomes to pleasing the powers behind CCSS. Schools need to focus more on students and less on masters in Washington. Parental involvement should be encouraged. We are the biggest stakeholders in our kid’s education.

      1. Instead of striving for top student performance, school districts are focusing on meeting objectives set by the Fed CC curriculum and the associated tests.
         
        This is reminiscent of an apocryphal story from the old USSR: A shoe factory was ordered by the Soviet Bureau of Apparel, Foot Division, to increase its output. The bureaucrats were overjoyed when the next quarterly report from the factory came in — shoe production had doubled! Upon investigation, it turned out that the shoes were all one size … and only for left feet. But they hadn’t violated any rules, and they exceeded their quota!

    2. “A grease fire is much to nice for any of those involved to die in. Something involving fluorine does sound remarkably appropriate.”
      .
      How about roasting in the depths of the Sloar?

  2. The problem Common Core was to address is the same problem NCLB was to address. Unfortunately, from the whole babble of ‘A Nation At Risk’ to now the solution always falls heaviest on those who are not at risk, those who will not be left behind, and those who have the common core knowledge in their back pockets.
    The educational problem is within a certain ethno-economic group within certain geographical and political districts.
    There is nothing a top-down Federal Government solution can do when the recipients reject that solution.
    I think the best bet is to encourage all who are still affected by Shame to behave in a ‘shame’ fashion. It might throw a few more sandbags on the levee.

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