Comments on Duncan

This is the second in a series of four speeches that Duncan is making. The first was to academic researchers last week. He will be addressing charter school advocates next week, and the National Education Association in July. Each is dealing with what he sees as being one of the four major areas in which national reform is needed:

1. data tracking
2. national standards and assessments (this week's speech)
3. turning around low performing schools
4. teacher and principal assessment

While this speech largely focuses on the idea of national standards, he does briefly deal with each of the other issues.

The federal government right now is putting a great deal of money into tracking student information. Secretary Duncan wants to use this data not only for tracking how students are doing but also "to know which teachers are producing the biggest gains and which may need more help." What are those gains? Easily trackable ones, so far, which means nice, neat round numbers in standardized testing. And what sort of help? So far, about the only help he's offered teachers who aren't producing those big gains is to speak of them losing their jobs.
As for low performing schools, note how that immediately becomes about opening more charter schools. We don't fix the schools we have--schools which take everyone. We just rid ourselves of them entirely and start new with no unions, new buildings, and our pick of students. Yes, Secretary Duncan, we do have a "moral obligation to those kids" and your answer doesn't fulfill it.
Teacher assessment very quickly becomes about tying teacher performance to student performance on, yes, those pesky tests again. Remarkable. Do teachers have a great deal to do with how students do on tests? Of course. Do they have everything to do with it? Not at all. You are guaranteeing a nation that runs on these tests if you do this, and you will drive even more of the bright, creative people you need in the teaching profession out of it if you do this to teachers.
As for the bulk of the speech on assessment, there is a great deal of attempted reassurance here: these are going to be your standards, he assures the governors. These are going to be your tests, he says.
Massachusetts Ed Reform started with "our" standards, written by teachers. It quickly declined into being all about a test that had very little to do with the standards at all, and even less to do with quality education.
I'm not opposed to national standards, as it happens. Everyone really ought to learn American history and algebra and essay writing. I have to say, though, that I don't think it's going to be very easy to write standards, and I very much have my doubts that it's going to be done by educators.
Having it done by the nation's governors, much like having it done by state legislators, is certainly a mistake.