Arne Duncan, Extortionist

extortion |ikˈstôrSHən|nounthe practice of obtaining something, esp. money, through force or threats.
In California, where corporate legislators have decided to suspend NCLB testing for one year while they implement a new generation of racist tests using the new testing delivery system, the Common Core, Arne Duncan is on the scene, threatening to withhold Title I money if California moves forward:

The lack of test scores attracted Duncan's criticism.

"Letting an entire school year pass for millions of students without sharing information on their schools’ performance with them and their families is the wrong way to go about this transition," he said in a statement. "No one wants to over-test, but if you are going to support all students’ achievement, you need to know how all students are doing."

Duncan declined to specify what action he would take, and in fact, the federal government has no direct authority over state school systems. But the department controls billions of dollars in federal funds, which can make up about 10% of a school district's budget. This money adds up to about $600 million a year for Los Angeles Unified, according to the district.

"If California moves forward with a plan that fails to assess all its students, as required by federal law, the department will be forced to take action, which could include withholding funds," Duncan said.

Can you imagine, a year without the annual cranial vice attached to everyone’s head?  Could people start to remember what it was like just a dozen years ago, before the annual ritual to kill imagination and thinking? 

Can’t have that.

When Bribes Don't Buy Buy-In, New York Ed Commish Tries the Extortion Route

From the NY Times, by Fernanda Santos:

New York State’s education commissioner threatened on Tuesday to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to struggling schools in New York City and nine other districts statewide if they do not prove by Saturday that they will carry out new evaluation systems for teachers and principals.

Officials and union leaders in each district must first agree on the details of the evaluation systems, like how much weight students’ standardized test scores will have on the annual ratings that teachers and principals receive. Compromise has thus far proved elusive.

Of the 10 districts, which are the only recipients of the federal grants in New York, only Rochester and Syracuse as of Tuesday had submitted proposals for the state’s review, the commissioner, John B. King Jr., said in a statement. “When the ball drops at midnight on New Year’s Eve,” he said, “the money drops off the table, and it will be difficult to get it back.”

For New York City, it would mean losing roughly $60 million for 33 schools whose graduation rates and test scores put them among the state’s worst.

The money, known as school improvement grants, is supposed to help the schools lift their results through a series of changes, like replacing principals and at least half the staff members; giving teachers extra time for training and preparation; and extending the school day. In New York City, it offers, in essence, an alternative to the most common approach to dealing with failing schools, which has been to close them.

And there might be more at stake. Dr. King said Tuesday that the 10 districts could also lose their shares of the $700 million in federal financing that New York State won through the Race to the Top competition, because carrying out an evaluation system in struggling schools is among its requirements.

The Race to the Top program requires a new statewide teacher-evaluation system, and the methods used in the struggling schools could shape it, because districts are unlikely to want competing processes.

The State Legislature passed a bill last year calling for new evaluation systems, but the unions and the Board of Regents have been battling in court over the role of standardized test scores.

In response to Dr. King’s threat on Tuesday, New York City’s schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, released a statement saying that city and teachers’ union officials had been in discussions for months and were all “cognizant of the deadline.”

The two sides are scheduled to meet on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the evaluation system, and the union’s president, Michael Mulgrew, said Tuesday that there was still hope for a deal.

The school improvement grants have been the subject of increased scrutiny in recent weeks, after Dr. King and the chancellor of the Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, visited several of the beneficiary schools and then expressed their frustrations over the way the money was being used.

In biting remarks, Dr. Tisch called the schools “warehouses” for struggling students, who were pushed there after the city shut the schools they used to attend.

Tennessee, the Oligarchs' Poster State for Corporate Education Reform

Mr. Superlative, Arne Duncan, announced last week that Tennessee will likely be the first state granted a royal waiver from the child and school crushing NCLB testing targets that guarantee an 80-90 percent failure rate in most school communities across America by 2014.   I was in Tennessee at the time recovering from foot surgery when a friend there called with the news.  Having just that day been working on a book project that extends a case study of Tennessee’s valueless value-added testing scheme devised by the Dr. Strangelove/Wizard of Oz of testing, Bill Sanders, the irony was just too sweet.

Tennessee could not be better positioned to become the poster state for embracing Duncan’s federalized extortion racket aimed to bend every community to the corporatized visions of Bill Gates and Eli Broad. Bend or break, take your pick.  After all, Tennessee has its own homegrown oligarch as governor, the soft spoken Bill “Pilot Oil” Haslam, who has allowed Gates and Broad to put in charge of Tennessee schools a major cult leader from Teach for America, Kevin Huffman (former spouse of Eduwitch Michelle Rhee).  Even though one in four Tennesseeans remain illiterate, the state is and has been a fav of the corporatistas judging Race to the Top and other tax-supported ventures of the U. S. Chamber of Horrors’ Business Roundtable.  

Having just received last year the biggest chunk yet ($500 million) from the RTTT bribery scam, Tennessee is already in eager pursuit of fulfilling all the criteria required to earn a waiver from Adequate Yearly Progress demands: 1) uncapped status on charter expansion, 2) uncapped expansion of centralized pre-K to Retirement testing systems, 3) bonus pay and teacher evaluation based on test scores, and 4) embracing the worthless turnaround strategies devised by the Gates and Broad technocrats who remain clueless about schools or learning.

We shall see how many states rush to get in line to now do for no money what large RTTT bribes could not make them do before.  We shall see how many parents and teachers and students just say no to the testing madness this coming year.  The movement is born and moral action now requires the sacrifice that comes with civil disobedience and non-violent resistance.  The game is over, the talking is done.  It is time to act and demand that educators be put in charge of educating our children for the most trying time in the history of our civilization.  The fools and thieves of Wall Street have ruined the world’s economic systems—we shall not allow them to ruin our children any further.