Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Duncan Puts Up a Three-Pointer
There’s a clear message emerging from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s early public pronouncements: He’s going to push for higher standards than most states have adopted under NCLB, and that may include national standards (and tests). In pushing the Obama administration’s stimulus priorities in a speech yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, Duncan said a $15 billion “race to the top” fund in the stimulus package would “enable us to spur reform on a national scale—driving school systems to adopt college and career-ready, internationally benchmarked standards.” The money, he said, would provide hefty financial incentives for policymakers to “put in place state of the art data collection systems, assessments and curricula to meet these higher standards.” Duncan’s rhetoric is a sharp break from that of his predecessor, Margaret Spellings, who was content to leave the issues of standards and test quality to the states. If Duncan pushes on the standards issue, he’ll have the benefit of growing support in the Washington policy community for some form of voluntary national standards. He’ll face plenty of opposition from the Left and the Right, however; progressives and conservatives both want to leave the key questions of what students should achieve and how to measure what they learn to local communities—the fact that local educators have tended to expect far too little of many students notwithstanding.
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2 comments:
If the message is so clear, maybe you can clear up his position. I haven't heard his position on the data-driven accountability systems that are now functioning. I support accountability, but the data-driven accountability schemes under discussion are the antithesis of accountability. You know how primitive vlaue added models are, to name just one example.
If Duncan isn't favoring not ready for prime time schemes, then he won't be getting opposition from unions, Dems, and progressive educators. If he simply adopts Diane Ravitch's proposal, he'll get plenty of support across the political spectrum. In fact, I would think that the real proponents of accountability would want him to repudiate existing models. Your work gives plenty of rationale for investing in the future systems - systems that you have described.
I can't see how we can make much progress on real accountability, though, as long as long as we are retaining accountability system that resemble NCLB-type systems. We can say what we want, but as long as accountability models sound like they are comparable to NCLB type systems, we are incentivizing test prep, curriculum narrowing, rote instruction, and the same old failures. I wish it weren't so, but I don't see how Duncan can lead a leap into the 21st century without repudiating the models that gave us a leap back to Taylorism.
NCLB was a waste of time and money. Even state standards' testing is a waste of time and money. It has gotten us nowhere. We are still in the same dilemma: lack of skills for jobs in the real world. American companies have to seek abroad to fill job positions in our own country.
NCLB and state testing has ruined great teaching that had been in place before emphasis was placed on testing. If you are prepping your students for a test for the majority of your teaching time, you aren't teaching what is important - real learning in all areas, not just rote learning for the test.
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