Bye Arne

Arne Duncan is resigning as Secretary of Education.  I shed no tears.  His appointment and Obama’s support of him is the most confusing aspect of the Obama administration.  Duncan thought like a Republican and almost singlehandedly ended the debate about school reform from a policy-making perspective.

George Bush took the Texas accountability model to Washington and we got No Child Left Behind as a new moniker for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  This was Republican legislation.  It was disastrous.  It included labeling schools, high stakes testing, etc. etc.  No one in Texas was surprised with what we got at the federal level.  My hope in 2008 was that Obama would fix NCLB.

He didn’t.  I was at first excited by Duncan’s nomination.  He was a school superintendent, after all.  Surely he knew better than to believe in NCLB. But Obama had named an anti-union school reformer to the position of Secretary of Education.  Obama might as well have named George Bush.  Duncan not only supported most of NCLB, he exacerbated the worst of the legislative philosophy with Race to the Top.  Make no mistake, Arne Duncan was a friend to reformers and not to educators or public education.  He drank the Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and ALEC Kool-Aide without a single burp.

Duncan’s appointment left no debate of substance at the federal level.  If Republicans backed the accountability components of NCLB and the newly elected Democratic President appointed a pro-reformer Secretary of Education, where was the debate?  There was none of substance.  Suddenly, Democrats and Republicans seemed to agree on only one issue:  education.  They agreed on standardized tests, they agreed on labeling schools, they agreed on new teacher evaluation systems to bust unions, they agreed on a national curriculum, etc., etc.  It was embarrassing.  The Obama administration sold out, or at least he was bum fuddled by his old Chicago bud Arne Duncan. 

Obama should have named Diane Ravitch as Secretary of Education.  We would have a very different public education system now, a much better system.

No, I won’t miss Arne Duncan any more than I miss George Bush.  Both waged unnecessary war on public education.  They won, kids and teachers lost.