New Orleans -- The country’s top education official criticized Gov. Scott Walker’s confrontational stance with teachers unions at a national conference of education writers Friday.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan pointed out that the Wisconsin Education Association Council had proposed reforms such as performance pay and evaluation reforms, which Walker praised just days before introducing a bill to sharply restrict their bargaining.
“What was stunning to me is where folks are showing vision and courage and being forward-minded, we support those efforts,” Duncan said at the Education Writers Association conference in New Orleans. “For him to go in that direction after the leadership that the union had shown simply made no sense to me. It was nonsensical.”
Duncan also said that, while teachers unions should be challenged and be expected to make changes to the status quo to improve students’ education, they are not the only ones that should be blamed for poor performance.
There also has been a lack of courage by school boards and superintendents to challenge the educational status quo in the country, he said. “It’s easy to point fingers and it makes good stories, but the truth is so much more complex than that,” Duncan said.
There are so many problems with this "defense" that I don't know where to start.
Okay, first, if Duncan was all that concerned with defending the union in this fight, he would have done it when it actually mattered, weeks back when Scott Walker first started this.
That's the first thing.
Next, every time Duncan talks about changing the status quo in public education, he means adding things like merit pay, standardized testing and charter schools to the public school system that actually DETRACT from the level of education, not improve it.
When will education writers challenge Duncan directly and say, "Hey, Arnie, you're full of shit with your reforms. You bring your own corporate-friendly status quo that is so much more damaging than anything you're trying to change, and your defense of the teachers unions is disingenuous at best, completely dishonest at worst"?
Because that's EXACTLY what needs to be said here.
Finally, you can tell that election time is rolling around because Obama and Duncan are starting to talk some anti-testing, pro-teacher talk.
But ignore what they say and watch what they do.
The policies - demonizing teachers, promoting the firing of teachers and the closing of schools, adding tests to every grade in every subject and using those tests to evaluate teachers, and promoting charter schools and performance/merit pay remain in place.
The Obama/Duncan agenda has not changed, even if their words have temporarily pre-election time.
They obviously are looking for the GOTV operations that teachers unions can provide, particularly in swing states like Wisconsin (which Obama needs to win if he is going to continue on with his education deform agenda to dismantle the nation's public schools system into a privatized charter school system.)
Yeah, I was wondering how Obama was going to try to mend fences with the teachers unions after we helped get him in and he turned around and shafted us. Too little and much too late.
ReplyDeleteOh, I bet Randi and Dennis roll out the GOTV operation for him for 2012, claiming that if we don't do this, we'll get some Scott Walker thing at the national level.
ReplyDeleteAs if Duncan and Obama haven't been anti-union and anti-teacher from the start.