MSNBC (7/19, Resnikoff) reports that Lily Eskelsen Garcia, who will become president of the National Education Association on Sept. 1, has spent the two weeks since her election “preparing for a major battle over U.S. education policy” with both “forces on the right” and the Obama Administration on the key issue of standardized tests. Garcia said, “We must measure what matters and put students’ needs at the center of the system once again. ... We can no longer allow politicians who have never stepped into a classroom define what it means to teach and learn.” MSNBC says this puts Garcia in “direct conflict with Arne Duncan, Obama’s secretary of education” and “perhaps the nation’s foremost proponent of using test scores to judge teacher performance.”
South Carolina Paper Praises Duncan For Bucking Unions On Teacher Protections
An editorial in the Charleston (SC) Post and Courier (7/18) praises Education Secretary Arne Duncan for “daring to take on” teachers unions, which are seen as traditionally being powerful supporters of the Democratic party. The piece notes that the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have recently directed “bitter criticism” at Duncan over his “efforts to advance meaningful changes in America’s public school system.” The piece notes that both unions have criticized Duncan over his support for the Vergara ruling stripping California teachers of job protections, but argues that Duncan is correct in hailing the ruling “as an overdue step toward holding teachers responsible for the quality of their work.”
US Students Demonstrate Limited Financial Literacy On International Test
The AP (7/10, Kerr) reports that according to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “only 9.4 percent of 15-year-olds were able to answer the most difficult questions on an international test of their financial knowledge and skills,” while over one in six US students failed to demonstrate even basic financial literacy. Noting that US students scored in the middle of the pact of other countries, the AP reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan said “American schools can do better.” The piece quotes Duncan saying, “Our economy is changing so much and the idea of young people going into the world of work, staying with one job for 40 years, having secure pension and retirement, those jobs are basically gone.”
TIME (7/10) reports that the OECD report painted US students as “distinctly average,” and quotes Duncan saying, “Young people, to be successful, to secure retirement, to take care of their families, and to not be in poverty, have to have a level of financial literacy that 30, 40, 50 years ago maybe wasn’t required. Today it’s an absolute necessity.” Time reports that Duncan called for “improved mathematics education, which the study found, along with reading, is very closely linked to financial literacy.” Diverse Education (7/10) also covers this story.
Common Core Debate Analyzed
A Scripps Howard News Service (4/3, Kambhampats) article gives a primer into the origins of and the controversy surrounding the Common Core Standards. The piece touches on how classroom instruction is different under the standards, the role of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in creating them, and how they were a response to concerns “that a large number of high school graduates need remedial college help.” The piece notes that President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “signaled to states that they should embrace these standards or similar if they hoped to win a grant through the Race to the Top program in 2009.” The piece explores states’ adoption and implementation of the standards and describes the growing backlash and controversy surrounding them.
US Students Above Average In Problem Solving Skills
PBS’ NewsHour (4/2) reports online that the Programme for International Student Assessment has released the first results of “a new, international test of problem-solving skills given to 15-year-olds,” noting that the report shows that “American students performed just above average.” Noting that the test was administered alongside the “traditional” math, science, and reading PISA tests, the article says that when those results were released, “Education Secretary Arne Duncan called US students’ middling results on the traditional exams a sign of the country’s ‘educational stagnation.’” The article briefly describes the “open-ended interactive problems” on the test.
ED Releases Report Touting Race To The Top’s Success
USA Today (3/26, Jackson) reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan released a report on Tuesday saying that the Race to the Top program “benefits 22 million students and 1.5 million teachers in more than 40,000 schools.” Noting that ED’s report says that “eighteen states and Washington, DC, have received a total of $4.35 billion in grants,” USA Today quotes Duncan saying, “The most powerful ideas for improving education come not from Washington, but from educators and leaders in states throughout the country.”
Duncan’s Support For Later High School Start Times Noted
Holly Yettick writes at the Education Week (3/19) “Inside School Research” blog that a recent report from the University of Minnesota “has helped to awaken a nationwide movement to start school later so students can get more sleep,” noting that the report indicates that starting high school after 8:30 a.m. can improve academic performance, boost attendance rates, and reduce “teenagers’ car crashes in the areas surrounding schools.” The piece notes that interest in moving back high school start times got a boost from Education Secretary Arne Duncan last fall, when he suggested that “secondary schools start later so students can get more sleep.” Yettick quotes Duncan saying, “There’s a lot of research and common sense that lots of teens struggle to get up ... to get on the bus. I’d love to see more districts, you know, seriously contemplating a later start time.” The New York Times (3/14, Hoffman) also mentions Duncan’s support for the concept at its “Well” blog.
Common Core Faces Myriad Criticisms
The AP (1/6, Elliott) reports on the “relentless warnings” from Common Core critics, who “say they were written in private and never tested in real classrooms, and that educators aren’t familiar enough with” them. Moreover, critics also cite the “multi-billion dollar price tag” that come with the standards. Opponents also pan the unfamiliar classroom content, but supporters say that such “worries are overblown and miss nuances” of the standards. Critics also “argue that states were pressured to sign onto the Common Core standards to get federal economic stimulus money to keep teachers on the job.” The article notes, near the end, that Education Secretary Arne Duncan “has little patience for the criticism,” noting that he has pushed back against accusations that the Common Core constitutes a “federal takeover of the curriculum.”
California BOE Member Defends Common Core Testing Switch
In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle (11/15, Cohn), California Board of Education member Carl A. Cohn writes about the law recently passed in California to provide “a one-year respite from the state’s 15-year-old standardized testing program” as the state transitions to Common Core-aligned tests, and he laments that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is “threatening to withhold at least $15 million – and potentially billions more...as a punishment.” Cohn criticizes ED officials for issuing a “high-handed threat,” and calls on ED to reverse its position on the issue.
Concerns Over Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Influence On Education Policy
Education Week (11/6, McNeil, Sawchuk) reports that there are growing concerns about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s influence on education policy partly “because so many policy actors,” including the US Department of Education, “have amplified ideas it espouses.” The Race to the Top competition “and federal waivers conditioned on similar principles are credited with influencing most of the states to revamp their teacher-evaluation policies, often in ways that mirror the Gates agenda.” Additionally, several top ED officials came from the foundation, and Education Secretary Arnie Duncan “lured many to work for him from other private-sector organizations that receive significant funding from Gates. “Brad Jupp, a senior program adviser on teacher initiatives at the Education Department, said the foundation should be credited “for influencing us, but there were many other factors that influenced us,” adding, “We share common goals and share some theories of action.” The article also says Jupp “praised the foundation’s teacher-quality focus, saying its work built a logical argument for focusing on teacher effectiveness.”