"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Monday, December 29, 2014

Another Duncan-Gates Plan Aims to Undercut Its Own Initiatives

When Obama and Duncan came to Washington, they went throttle up on the Bush-Spellings initiatives that had blown up public education in the U.S.  They embraced the worst kinds of alternative certification no-prep teacher ed programs, gave a hundred million or so to the TFA fascist cult, attacked legitimate university teacher ed programs, helped to make accreditation a joke so that online diploma mills could get their stamps of approval, initiated VAM based teacher evaluation that sent the best remaining teachers in poor schools running for the leafy suburbs to survive the corporate ax, and made "highly qualified" synonymous with test score production.

Gee, wonder why there are no experienced, caring, and professional teachers left in the urban corporate reform schools??

Never fear, though, for Duncan has a new initiative that pretends to address the problem that he and his predecessor created with a vengeance.  And guess what--it has no teeth in it. So things may proceed as planned while pretending to do something about the corporate status quo.

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