Is Indiana Arne Duncan's next target? Will he label all the state's schools as failing for not..

[madfloridian]

following his demands?

He just did that to Washington state. A school board member there spoke out against Duncan, told him he would NOT declare all schools failures because they were not.

WA state educator to Arne Duncan: Stop saying our schools are failing.

Why is Arne Duncan calling the schools there failing? They refused to grade teachers by student test scores, they refused to raise the cap on the number of charter schools.

Dear Secretary Duncan,

Last week you revoked Washington State’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver, resulting in nearly every school in Washington being considered failing by your Department of Education. This summer, as a School Board Director in Lake Stevens, WA, you’re requiring I send a “failure letter” to parents of any school that receives your funding.

Your reason for revoking our waiver: we didn’t pass legislation you wanted. More precisely, we passed legislation, but it didn’t have the wording (actually, one specific word) you wanted.

Since you’re so distant from us – nearly 3,000 miles by one measure – let me tell you about this other Washington: We have strong leadership in our board rooms, schools, and classrooms; we have professional and effective educators; and our students are capable, confident, and work extremely hard. But don’t take my word for it – our SAT scores, among other measures, speak for us.

Finally he tells Arne Duncan that "You can keep the waiver. And regarding your failure letter – I have little interest in using our Lake Stevens letterhead to tell our students and educators they’re failures, because they are not."

Now Duncan has his officials in Indiana watching to see if they follow his commands.

Arne Duncan wants updates from Indiana on No Child Left Behind concerns

Duncan made the request in phone calls this week with Gov. Mike Pence and state schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz, who detailed her call in an email obtained Friday by The Associated Press. Ritz wrote the email to members of the State Board of Education and staff for the new education agency Pence created last year.

Indiana was one of 10 states to receive a waiver from the landmark education law in 2012. But the U.S. Education Department alerted the state last week that its waiver was at risk following an August 2013 monitoring session that revealed concerns with how the state was working with low-performing schools.

Federal officials also expressed concerns about the state's teacher evaluation system and its decision to withdraw from the Common Core national education standards.

Losing the waiver could cost Indiana control of more than $200 million in Title I education funds. Both Ritz and Pence have said they are committed to keeping the waiver.

One interesting aside note: guess who wrote Indiana's standards on this issue? It was Tony Bennett who failed there and moved to Florida where he resigned.

Why did he resign?

Florida education chief Tony Bennett resigns over how a C became an A

Less than a year into his tenure as Florida’s education commissioner, Tony Bennett resigned Thursday amid a controversy over adjustments he made to school grades last year as Indiana’s school chief.

The Associated Press published e-mails this week suggesting Mr. Bennett tweaked a new A-F grading system in Indiana to favor a charter school run by a major Republican donor – giving it an A instead of the initial C. Bennett said in a press conference that the accusation was “malicious and unfounded” and that he hoped there would be an investigation, but that he was resigning to avoid distraction to Gov. Rick Scott’s education reform efforts in Florida.

Bennett has been a prominent member of Chiefs for Change, a coalition of reform-minded state school chiefs backed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, which put out statements of support for him this week. As an outspoken promoter of a certain brand of accountability, Bennett’s supporters see him under attack by politically motivated opponents.

Bennett fails in his moves from state to state, Arne Duncan has the power given to him by the president to declare all the schools in a given state to be failures.

So I have been right all along. Accountability is only for public school teachers.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Arne's dream of "education".

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. H.L. Mencken

[chervilant]

2. And "pressed" into

factory fodder and service industry drones.

Arne "I play basketball!" Duncan remains a bone of contention for most educators -- calling into question just WHOSE agenda is being fulfilled by this administration.

[madfloridian]

3. That basketball hero stuff is brought out whenever he is getting a lot of criticism.

It does not make him qualified to be in charge of education.

Very true statement of yours:

"Arne "I play basketball!" Duncan remains a bone of contention for most educators"

[madfloridian]

6. That cookie cutter image is assured with testmakers setting the agenda.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Kick

[Jefferson23]

4. Ok, so if a Republican was doing this and not Duncan, it would be called coercion., I think.

The history and the arrogance:

snip*JOHN MERROW: No Child Left Behind, which requires all students to be proficient this year, expired in 2007, but it remains the law of the land until Congress rewrites it. Because not a single state has achieved 100 percent proficiency, all 50 states are breaking the law, or would be, if Secretary Duncan didn’t grant them waivers.

The waivers are, in effect, carrots to avoid the big No Child Left Behind stick.

REP. JOHN KLINE: The secretary is allowed to grant waivers; his predecessors granted waivers.

But what he’s doing is granting temporary, conditional waivers. That is, you get the waiver if you do what I want you to do.

JOHN MERROW: Duncan has granted waivers to 43 states that have agreed to certain conditions, including using student test scores to evaluate teachers.

REP. JOHN KLINE: That’s a terrible way to establish education policy.

ARNE DUNCAN: Previous secretaries have provided waivers to states on various things, so this is, again — legally, folks are happy to challenge this if they want to, but we’re on strong, strong, solid footing there.

And we’re going to continue to partner with states. We are out traveling in the country every week. We talk to teachers, we talk to parents, students, school board members, and hopefully what you have seen is a much better sense of partnership.

JOHN MERROW: When the economy tanked in 2009, Secretary Duncan’s power over education increased dramatically. A desperate Congress approved a $100 billion education stimulus package to keep schools from shutting down, teachers from being laid off. Nearly $5 billion of that was discretionary, meaning that Duncan could spend it as he saw fit.

No previous secretary of education had ever had such power. In 2009, the president announced a competition for the money.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Rather than divvying it up and handing it out, we are letting states and school districts compete for it.

JOHN MERROW: Almost every state entered the race, but few were expected to win.

MAN: We’re nervous.

JOHN MERROW: So, states will get more money if they do this thing that Duncan wants?

ARNE DUNCAN: If you play by these rules, absolutely right.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/arnie-duncan-education-agenda/

This entire enterprise should be seen as an assault on IDEA.

[madfloridian]

5. And no previous sec of ed ever had this much money to play with.

Question: Recently the Obama administration announced the regulations for its $5 billion “Race to the Top” fund. That’s an unprecedented amount of discretionary money. How much was available when you worked in the first Bush Administration?

Ravitch: When I worked at the Department of Education in 1991, we had $10 million in discretionary funds, not $4.3 billion.

10 million during Bush administration, 4.3 billion under Obama.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/5505

[Jefferson23]

7. Coercion, and the model to follow had what level of efficacy that Duncan pursued??

See what I'm saying, the failures always lead back to the policy which makes it near impossible to upholding IDEA, imho.
My main reason why I believe lawsuits can bring this thing down, even if only in part,
could possibly curtail the political force that is sustaining it thus far..although it is great to hear push back on it
from both left and right, we need more emphasis on its failures, over all.


This was a crime: *In the past few days, Chancellor Joel Klein has announced that he is closing nearly two dozen public schools. Some of these schools are the anchor in their communities; some have long histories as gateways for immigrant children. In recent years, the Department of Education decided that it does not like large high schools, so it has been closing them down and sending their lowest-performing students to other large high schools, which then have lower scores and more disciplinary incidents.


How freaking absurd can one get to suggest this was a viable education plan?? Who's needs were being served
and met?? Twilight Zone territory it seems to me.

[Squinch]

8. Every state should take the failing designation, and then they'd have to come up with another

criteria for distributing the money.

[madfloridian]

9. Now there's a thought.

But first you would have to assume the powers that be actually care.

[Squinch]

11. True. That they would look up from their profits from investing in Pearson long enough to notice.

[progressoid]

12. Angry rec.

[madfloridian]

13. I'm grateful for any recs...even angry ones.

Hard to come by sometimes.

[progressoid]

15. Sadly, these education "reforms" don't seem to get as much notice as they should.

Both on DU and elsewhere.

[NobodyHere]

14. With articles like these

It's easy to see why libertarians want to get rid of the Dept of Arne Duncan