Arne Duncan: ‘White suburban moms’ upset that Common Core shows their kids aren’t ‘brilliant’

[phantom power]

This is the guy in charge of American education? This guy??

Fuck you, Arne. With a rake.

On Friday, Duncan spoke in Richmond, Va., about the growing opposition to Common Core and their implementation in states around the country before a meeting of the Council of Chief State Schools Officers Organization. Education Department communications chief Massie Ritsch said in an e-mail that he does not believe that there is a full transcript of Duncan’s remarks, but he referred to the following write-up from Politico’s Libby Nelson, who was at the event:

“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary,” Duncan said. “You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.”

Ritsch said in an e-mail that Duncan was observing that the higher standards that states have adopted to better prepare their students for college and careers are revealing that some “good” schools aren’t as strong as parents in those areas have long assumed.

When confronted with the truth through lower test scores and other indicators, the unhelpful response, in Arne’s view, is to say, “Let’s lower standards and go back to lying to ourselves and our children, so that our community can feel better.” The more productive response for a community or a state is to ask, “What can we do to get better, so our students can graduate from high school, succeed in college and be competitive for good jobs?” Because other communities and states are asking themselves that question and making smart improvements to their schools and education systems.

Duncan has slammed Core opponents before. At a Sept. 30 appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, he said that opposition to the Core standards had been fueled by “political silliness.” In June, he told a convention of newspaper editors that Core critics were misinformed at best and laboring under paranoid delusions at worst. Duncan said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/16/arne-duncan-white-surburban-moms-upset-that-common-core-shows-their-kids-arent-brilliant/

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. I'm deducting from his final grade he didn't show his work.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Arne Duncan, yet another total tool in the Obama administration.

Rahm, Arne, Timmy, Larry, Ben, the list just keeps on and on. The President certainly did appoint a lot of folks who have a lot of disdain for regular Americans and those who would like a more egalitarian country or one where schools are helped, rather than punished when they're not doing as well.

[6chars]

3. One of Obama's more questionable appointments

He didn't have the resume for it, but was basketball buddies with Obama and was from Harvard so it was ok. He has been a tool the whole time he's been in office.

[hughee99]

4. Anyone who doesn't understand statistics can tell you

That everyone's kids are above average.

[MH1]

5. Aside from Arne Duncan, the attacks that I've seen on Common Core are mostly or wholly bullshit.

I've seen so many stupid posts on Facebook about what is supposedly wrong with Common Core Math.

Those posts almost invariably make the poster look like a) an idiot or b) at best, grossly misinformed, and someone who posts about shit about which they know nothing, so refer back to a.

[trumad]

6. white suburban moms ?

I can break down that quote in so many ways.

What---no Black Suburban Moms?

No Dads?

This guy is a major tool.

[Igel]

10. And yet what he said is true.

There are black suburban moms. But they're in smaller numbers and less often outspoken when their kids get As in English and then barely pass the standardized test.

Dads tend to not be as involved in complaining to the schools.

Arne's quote has a lot less punch when you make it specific. I guess he could have included the second largest group (that would be Latinos), but then there'd be calls for including the #3, #4, #5, #6 ... groups.

"The reason that there are complaints about common core tests is that the moms who feel themselves privileged and entitled, be they non-Hispanic white, Asian, Native American, black, mixed race, South Asian, SE Asian, Pacific Islander, immigrant or native-born, heterosexual or LGBT or decline to state, whether they're suburban or urban or rural or transitional, resident alien, undocumented workers or others who lack documentation regardless of age or country of birth, whether low SES or high SES, single or married or divorced or involved in non-standard household arrangements ... fail to achieve more than one standard deviation above the mean on a majority of the standardized tests their children have taken and for which normed scores are available in the last 12 month reporting period."

Wow. That packs a real rhetorical punch.

Because if you take offense, you know the undocumented LGBT immigrant from Central Asia who's in public suburban housing has the same kind of claim. We don't want to be exclusionary and ethnicist.(So instead you hit the prototypical group who complains and assume that the rest of society doesn't already have their knives drawn.)

Don't take what's not offered.

[DonCoquixote]

28. charter schools ARE trash, but

There is one bit of truth uncovered, that a lot of these 'white suburban moms" had NO problem when Black or Hispanic kids were berated, labeled and neglected, but now that their darling kids are subject to the same level of abuse, NOW they start bang those same drums they called us savages for drumming, and worse, they know they can be placed in front of the parade, despite the fact they sound and look silly, like musicians that cannot stay in key to save their life.

There is plenty to attack Charter Schools on: the fact that they allow people with no education background to get access to taxpayer money that we have set aside for ourselves, as opposed to some church/corporation/bizarre mating of the two who has ulterior motives of profit and converting kids to religion. There is plenty to attack standardized testing on, namely that is shows no sign of actual education.

However, I will give to give devils their due, and the fact is, whether it is Aids, Unemployment via outsourcing, Gun Violence, lack of Medical Care, or any number of ills, until it affects White Suburbia, suffering is not considered a problem. I say the suburbs speciflically, but if rural folks in Appalachia had the same issues, the suburban people would just smirk.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

7. I'm not a Common Core fan and Arne's useless but there is some truth to what he says.

I wish that same level of forthrightness could be used to assess the value and success of charter schools and such as well as Common Core itself.

[TBF]

8. Perhaps some truth to it but as a suburban mom

in a "good" neighborhood (whatever that is) I can tell you it is still gonna hurt the low income kids more. Constant focus on standardized testing and their "method". Guess who can game that? That's right, the suburban moms. We can pay for tutoring, test prep, tons of supplies for the schools (we do that with fund raisers and flat out donations - funneled through PTA and other activities), brunches for the teachers to keep them happy and enthusiastic. We can fund all of that for our kids/teachers and we do.

Who is helping the low-income kids?

And that is why education should be national, not governed by local school boards and the Pearson Corp (the folks in London making all the $$$ off this testing). Texas alone has paid billions to Pearson LLP.

ETA - and when we nationalize education it should be ideally be headed by a former teacher - not Arne Duncan, basketball player.

[Igel]

12. And yet that particular group is the one that was,

when he said this a year or more ago, driving the public conversation.

It wasn't dads. It wasn't advocates of low-income kids, whose grades are already lower than that of whites, esp. middle-upper income whites. The real outcry is when you have a 5.0 GPA kid who scores less than 1 standard deviation from the median, and below the median at that. "Look at the evidence--a 5.0! And you're saying he's below average?!"

When your kid is below average in GPA and scores below average on the standardized tests, meh. Your outrage is blunted and you have to resort to group comparisons--but you got those even before the test was given, and you have gobs of public policies in place to reduce the achievement gap.

"Who is helping the low-income kids?" Please. A large portion of national and state education policy is geared to the bottom 20%. A lot of the standardized tests are in place because of national ed policy. That it's not having the effect it's intended to have is partly an artefact--there is always a bottom 20%--and partly because it's hard to budge that bottom 20%. So a lot of time is spent documenting how we're helping the bottom 20%--something that takes time and keeps teachers from teaching, but is required because of national ed policy that kids passed down through the state to the local boards. Even as the racial achievement gap closes, that's a statistical artefact on its own--the underlying income-based achievement gap is becoming clearer and wider, but national policy is still race-based.

The question only really works when you look at large urban school districts. (A lot of rural districts are also poorly funded, but we ignore those. Many of them are still largely minority, but we ignore those, too, because.) I have mostly low-income kids in my classes. I teach at a school that until recently was very much not low-income, and still has a majority of above-median income parents. But the low-income, low-achieving kids get concentrated in regulars classes.

[TBF]

13. So what do you suggest? nt

[dsc]

9. I am no fan of Arne but he is dead right on this

for years and years and years and some more years, people had no problem at all when standardized tests caused black kids to fail and drop out in droves, but the second that white, especially middle class white kids started to have consequences then the tests were a problem.

[Igel]

18. Misplaced wrath.

The graph may end in the mid-90s, but the only real news since then is that drop-out rates have largely flatlined except for Latino kids, and that's probably due to a statistical effect. There are far more Latino kids who aren't immigrants and the children of immigrants now and their rates are higher. There was a bulge of immigration in the '80s, and while immigration continued at breakneck speeds immigrants accounted for a smaller and smaller portion of that particular Latino "pie" (chart).

The drop-out rate's declined since the advent of widespread standardized tests, which is to be expected. The tests have two origins--the first is to make sure that low-achieving schools are teaching the minimum they need to in proving a free and appropriate public education instead of just warehousing students. The second is more recent, and more problematic, and that's making sure that every kid is learning at a sufficiently high level to be college ready.

First is good. Second, questionable. Not every kid needs to be college ready. (So it's been redubbed "college and career ready".)

Most of the low SES kids I know that drop out don't drop out because they have low standardized test scores. They sometimes drop out because their grades suck. Most often those two things--low GPA, low standardized test scores--are sprung from a common root, but that varies from kid to kid. (In other words, "dropping out because of low standardized test scores" reflects the presence of a confound. Moving every 4 months for the last 4 years, having a 40-hour-week job, having a father who says education's meaningless and a waste of time, simple lack of motivation or undiagnosed cognitive impairment ...)

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-high-school-dropout-rate-reaches-record-low-driven-by-improvements-among-hispanics-blacks/ probably makes for reasonable reading on a Sunday afternoon.

[Recursion]

34. Native American dropout rates have soared

I agree with your point but I want to add one reservation: the dropout rate has flatlined or continued dropping for every group except Native Americans.

[Kalidurga]

11. I don't like common core

But, the girl my daughter is taking care of is doing brilliantly with it. Which she probably should be since my daughter spends a whole lot of time going over and over the material with her.

[cleanhippie]

19. Why don't you like it?

[Kalidurga]

33. I think it focuses too much on testing not enough on teaching

It hamstrings the teachers and doesn't allow for much room in exploring creative teaching methods. It's conformity over creativity. But, some students do very well with it so I am not going to lobby against it or scream about it being terrible.

[Dorian Gray]

38. Yeah

I have little problem with the actual standards. My big beef is with the hyper focus on testing. It's stunting education.

[Kalidurga]

45. Exactly

I have no problem with expecting high standards from education. Everyone of my children did very well in school. They understood the value of education and we did a lot of extra educational activities as a family. My daughter is the same way with the girl she is taking care of using everyday activities as teaching moments and doing educational activities.

[cleanhippie]

48. That's just the thing, it's about teaching a method.

And most of adults were never taught this method, so we get outraged die to our ignorance of what is really happening.

Don't get me wrong, standardized testing will be the downfall of our educational system, but we should understand jus what is going on here before we rail against it.

That article explains this quite well. You should read it.

[TBF]

14. Interesting to see all the defense of standardized testing in this thread -

I really don't understand it. This is costing us billions of dollars a year and y'all are a-ok with it? Really?

[Rex]

17. We did so much better before the days of standardized testing.

When teachers actually didn't have to worry about Big Biz taking over in the classrooms and ruining public schools in the interest of private corporations.

Those days are gone. Profit counts more than well-rounded students. Same with college.

[TBF]

22. The defenders cannot give me any actual reasoning

so I am assuming Obama appointed Arne so it must be all good. Personally I do see some good in Common Core in terms of establishing standards (and I know this is designed to raise our competence so we can compete with kids from Asian countries for example ...). But the way this is playing out in the schools is that everything is taught towards the test. Is this really what we want? Apparently so according to some of the folks in this thread. Frankly that baffles me unless they hold stock in Pearson LLP (possible) or just support everything Obama does no matter what reality looks like (probable).

[leftyladyfrommo]

31. I was in elementary school in early 50's

And I remember having to take a standardized test every year. It covered everything. Did they stop that at some point? I don't remember having to take those tests once we got to junior high.

[Rex]

32. Dunno was in school from the mid 70s til almost the 90s.

We didn't have to take standardized tests each year, not until my final year in high school.

[gollygee]

40. I had standardized tests every year in the 70s and 80s

It must have been different in some areas from others.

[ProfessorGAC]

41. 60's and 70's Here. I Remember The Same As You

Every year of grade school. Then high school was the entrance exam, the PSAT, the ACT and the SAT.

So, pretty much i took a standardized test every year from K to 11. (I graduated a year early from HS.) My first year of school was 60-61.

[Bettie]

42. Standardized testing has been around a long time

However, it is not used in a useful way at anymore.

When I was in school, we took the standardized tests (I graduated high school in the early 80's), but it was every couple of years and mostly used as a check to where the average was sitting at the time, not the primary method for funding schools.

But, I agree that the big problem is that business has decided that schools need to be, as Thom Hartmann says "profitized".

[Rex]

15. I like Obama, but some of his best friends are egotistical assholes that never admit they are wrong.

Rahm and Duncan being the two biggest.

[Cal Carpenter]

16. No, those are just the parents with some semblance of a voice

in the political realm so you actually hear them.

The disenfranchised are fucked by this too but they have NO VOICE so once again they get discarded as irrelevant.

Asshole.

[madfloridian]

20. Now he's leaving with billions unaccounted for to charter schools. Might run for Chicago mayor.

No one especially cares about all the damage he's done to public education. Every post I've made about him has been mostly ignored. The big media has only puff pieces about him.

He was given about 4 billion to use as he saw fit. And he did. And not being held accountable.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112410269

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027244727

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024338994

[FLPanhandle]

21. To many parents, any school, teacher, or test that shows little Billy isn't a genius is flawed

I've seen it while my own children went through school.

The funniest was a kid who was pretty much dumb as a brick and failed everything. His mom declared "he is just too smart for school".

Standardized testing per se isn't bad. When my daughter didn't test out great in math, we didn't blame the test. We got her a math tutor to help her with her skills and to practice them. She improved dramatically after that.

[hughee99]

23. Well how are the parents suppoesed to know better, many of them only THINK they're above average too

n/t

[FLPanhandle]

25. The only reason those parents didn't all ace the SAT's, was the test was biased, not fair, etc.

Now their precious little "genius" child is suffering the same cruel fate.

[liberal_at_heart]

35. I am so sick of hearing disdain of children coming from Democrats.

[FLPanhandle]

47. It's disdain for parents that think their children are all elite.

And will trash any proof of the opposite.

[PowerToThePeople]

44. Their snowflake is getting slushy.

I would say what I think of those parents but will refrain.

[Orrex]

24. No, this is an attempt at misdirection.

Duncan is trying to deflect criticism of his favored scheme by claiming that such criticism is a reaction to children's lack of success with that system. As Duncan is surely aware, this is a classic ad hominem.

Curiously, most of the complaints that I've heard about this expensive and dubiously useful program are close reflections of my own criticism. But my children are at the tops of their respective classes; how can this be, if criticism is motivated by children's failure?


In short, Duncan is among the worst things to happen to public education in several decades. He should resign and shut his mouth before he does any further damage.

[Octafish]

26. Brilliant kids go to private schools.

Right Arne!

[TheKentuckian]

27. Strange, first I heard that all the closings and firings were in the wealthier suburban areas

and that they would bear the brunt of the hobbling of the public education system.

Smarmy, Bush lackey like, lying fuck. I'm sure there is some kernel of truth in there but like we can see with corn, it can be encased in a log of shit.

[bluestateguy]

29. Common core is stupid. My child will be opted out of all standardized tests.

(My state allows that fortunately.)

Call me a little old-fashioned, but I trust her teachers to assess her performance, her strengths and weaknesses, far better than a lame-ass standard test.

[Starry Messenger]

30. He stepped down this month.

Actually he said that in 2013, but yes. He's a terrible man.

[hifiguy]

36. Clinton, Geithner, Holder, Rahm, this assklown.

What a stellar group of appointees.

We were chumped, had, suckered, flim-flammed and pantsed in the middle of the schoolyard after supporting the man who appointed this collection of crooks and incompetents.

[pnwmom]

37. He's an idiot. My kids were high scorers and high scorers don't benefit from test obsession

anymore than any other group of kids.

Teaching to the test is a terrible waste of classroom time; and evaluating teachers based on students' scores encourages teachers to avoid schools and classes with challenging students. Teachers should get hardship pay for working in the lowest-income schools, and those students should get the smallest classes. Instead, teachers who work with disadvantaged students are penalized by a salary structure that rewards teachers whose students achieve the highest test scores.

The current over-emphasis on testing benefits no one except the profit making test companies, especially UK based Pearson.

[Dorian Gray]

39. This is exactly my problem

I think the standards are fine. (My daughter currently goes to a K-8 montessori, so she doesn't need to follow those standards... disclaimer.) THe standards are compared to the standards at my daughters school by the admin (as well as the standards at other schools in the area), and they are demanding yet appropriate. It's the constant drum beat of testing, starting in K, that's a problem. Kids don't have time to be kids. They don't have time to relax and learn that learning can be challenging but fun.

[pnwmom]

46. My youngest, who got hit the worst by all of this testing mania,

was, on the first day of public school, given a notebook to carry around every day that said, "Failure is not an option." What kindergartner should be worrying about failing?

But, thanks to this stupid school (which had been fine before they went nuts with testing) my kindergartner was. He had heard his older siblings talk about the required exit tests and was afraid he wasn't going to graduate from high school!

We finally gave up and sent him to private in middle school, even though our district is supposed to be one of the best in the state. I keep working on school levies, etc., but I decided not to sacrifice my youngest to the test gods.

[PowerToThePeople]

43. Good job Arne!