Arne Duncan Insults White Suburban Moms, Says Kids Aren't "As Brilliant As They Thought"

I wrote this morning how US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan shows us daily with every word he says how he is an exemplar of the "Best and Brightest" this country has to offer.

Duncan underscored that with this doozy from a speech he gave to state superintendents yesterday:

.@arneduncan says foes of Common Core = white suburban moms who find their "child isn’t as brilliant as they thought" & "that's pretty scary
— Stephanie Simon (@StephanieSimon_) November 15, 2013

And this:

.@arneduncan: backlash over Common Core b/c scores plummet, white suburban moms realize local schools not 'as good as they thought'....
— Stephanie Simon (@StephanieSimon_) November 15, 2013

Do not fear, however - Uncle Arne has a solution for all of this:

to get suburban moms on board w/ Common Core, @arneduncan says remind them their kids are competing globally, need higher standards
— Stephanie Simon (@StephanieSimon_) November 15, 2013

Duncan is playing directly from the Common Core corporate education deformer playbook that Rick Hess exposed to us last year:

When I ask how exactly the Common Core is going to change teaching and learning, I'm mostly told that it's going to finally shine a harsh light on the quality of suburban schools, shocking those families and voters into action. This will apparently entail three steps:

First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes. (In the case of NCLB, these same folks believed their eyes rather than the state tests, and questioned the validity of the latter--but the presumption is that things will be different this time.) Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace "reform." However, most of today's proffered remedies--including test-based teacher evaluation, efforts to move "effective" teachers to low-income schools, charter schooling, and school turnarounds--don't have a lot of fans in the suburbs or speak to the things that suburban parents are most concerned about.

And this brings us to the crux of the matter. After failing miserably to convince suburban and middle-class voters that reforms designed for dysfunctional urban systems and at-risk kids are good for their children and their schools, Common Core advocates now evince an eerie confidence that they can scare these voters into embracing the "reform" agenda. And this conviction has become the happy Kool-Aid that allows would-be reformers to ignore the fact that they're not actually offering to tackle the things (like access to exam-style schools, world language mastery, music and arts instruction, and so on) that suburban parents are passionate about.

Here's the problem Duncan and his merry men and women in corporate reform are facing with this task of convincing suburban moms their kids' schools suck and their kids aren't as smart as mommy and daddy think they are - most people in the suburbs and elsewhere aren't buying it.

That's what NYSED Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch are discovering as they go on their Common Core listening tour from Syracuse to East Setauket and meet crowds that are overwhelmingly anti-Common Core and not convinced in the least that the plummeting Common Core test scores in NY State are emblematic of anything other than that the test scores were rigged to plummet.

Duncan can spew his ed deform playbook propaganda to state superintendents and his fellow ed deformers all he wants.

I'm sure he gets plenty of assurances from these folks that he's right and parents in the suburbs will come around soon enough to his way of thinking.

But the evidence is in already as the anti-Common Core movement grows and grows by the month - parents aren't buying the ed deform snake oil Uncle Arne and his fellow corporate ed deformers are selling and I just don't think insulting "white suburban moms" to get on board with the Core is going to save the sinking ed deform ship.

Quite frankly, the Duncan quote that white suburban moms are shocked to find out that their kids aren't "as brilliant as they thought" can be applied to Arne Duncan and his fellow men and women in corporate ed deform.

They are the "Best and Brightest" this country has to offer and they continue to show that with each delusional statement they make and each delusional program or proposal they put into place.