Some of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet picks have been truly inspired. Hillary Clinton has proved herself an excellent Secretary of State. Hilda Solis is a progressive hero at the Department of Labor. Even one of the token Republicans, Ray LaHood, has been a pleasant surprise as Secretary of Transportation, promoting mass transit more strongly than I ever imagined.
And then there is Arne Duncan.
Obama’s Education Secretary is a no friend to California schools, seeing his role as one of forcing right-wing solutions down the throat of our public schools. Duncan wants to use over $4 billion in “Race to the Top” federal education stimulus funds to force states to adopt a long-held wishlist of school reforms promoted by the center-right.
California has resisted this, as have states like Washington. So Duncan’s plan is to shock doctrine California schools, by using the crippling financial crisis many schools face to force the state to adopt new policies that voters and legislators have rejected in the past.
It should be no surprise that Duncan found a fellow traveler in the shock doctrine in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is calling a special session to push the Legislature to adopt the “reforms”:
The package of bills heading to the Legislature would also increase the ability for parents to transfer their children to other public schools and “reward teachers who are consistently doing the toughest jobs.”
The bills also include merit pay for effective teaching – a practice historically denounced by teacher unions.
The Obama administration “won’t allow any state to compete in the Race to the Top if we have laws that restrict linking performance with teachers,” Schwarzenegger said in a morning press conference. “We are ready to lead in the race to the top. This is what California is known for.”
It comes as no surprise to any of us that Arnold wants to shock doctrine public schools. But it is a real shame that the Obama Administration wants to do so as well. There might be a case to be made for merit pay, charter schools and teaching to the test (though I would probably never be convinced of it).
But there is no case to be made for insisting upon these radical measures at a time when education is struggling to provide the basics – teachers in the classroom, textbooks on the desks, custodians to clean the facilities, buses to carry the kids to and from school. Arne Duncan and Arnold Schwarzenegger are merely adding insult to injury, a partnership that will do little good for our schools and is likely to instead leave a legacy of decay.
Namely, the position of the Obama Administration seems to be that when public education is suffering, they should twist the knife and pour a little salt on the resulting wound.
The Obama Administration might be a friend of public education, but so far, I’m not convinced.
A lot of us are interested in charter schools for our kids so that they can have something else besides teaching to the test, especially for children with special needs, like my daughter, who has Asperger’s syndrome and would be miserable in a massive traditional public middle school. We can distinguish flexibility with respect to curriculum, which charter schools can provide and I support, from charter schools as a way to break teachers’ unions or transfer taxpayer dollars to private for-profit corporations, which I oppose.
I knew that Obama was a proponent of merit pay and charter schools, but holy moly. This cloak and daggers, kick ’em while they are down, dirty politics is beyond the pale.
This move to put all this “Race to the Top” stuff into regulation without stakeholder input and congressional participation lacks transparency and honesty. I expect more from the Obama Administration. An indecent proposal in good times is still indecent in bad times, especially since it is one-time money that only equates to about one cent for every dollar that has been cut from education in the past 18 months.
Secretary Duncan wants us to sell our soul for such a pittance? He’s counting on our desperation to outweigh our vision for the future. California is automatically being penalized in this federal grant game. All because teachers don’t want to be judged by student scores on tests that don’t reflect the multiple measures and authentic assessments used in classrooms across the state.
Does education need reformation? Heck yes. But this isn’t the way to do it.