he is.....malevolent glint in hard-staring eyes and fake smile trying to soften the rapacious countenance.....

awwwk! I don't usually comment on pictures or appearances, but this picture does the same thing to me as pics of GWB.....but even W never had that deliberate of air of sadistic satisfaction....

and, you're right, madf, this guy needs to be fired.

That picture also looks like it's very painful for him to smile, like he'd rather be smirking while flipping the bird at us.

Why did Obama pick him and Penny Pritzker to begin with? Because they have Chicago ties, maybe?

We always look for something that makes our position look the best.

I'm sure Barbara Bush has some very cute pictures of W as a 2 month old that we don't see. I'm sure Arnie is a really sweet person, once you get to know him. Otherwise, why would that nice almost brown guy in the Oval Office have appointed him.

Looks (especially cherry-picked) aren't a good argument here.

here on DU, madfloridian. It's one of the bright spots about DU for me left. It's great to see DU used for its intended purpose, and harkens me back to the original DU, which at the time was the web's premier liberal website, long before there was a Kos or FDL. Keep up the good fight, and take care!
John

Can not tell you how much those words mean. Gets discouraging so often. Thank you.

I know there is great controversy about it all.

Can I assume the testing is a way to fire teachers who have tenure?

Has to have something to do with attacking working people, I just know it does, right?

... in the interests of profiteers.

BTW this charter school thing has to be stopped, completely.

Somehow

Her little boy is a good student, but became extremely nervous because of the testing. Her little girl did not get good scores in one are and became very nervous.

The testing is harming many, many children.

sooner the better.

though there is some very heavy competition for that title.

seemed particularly stressed......in fact the only people who were incredibly stressed at her school were the opt-out crowd, who apparently quickly tired of having their children home with them... then they complained to the school administration that the children weren't being given enough to do during the day when they were opting out of the test.

my kid's teachers are on the younger side.... it was my understanding but many of the older teachers were pushing for opt out, fearing the test scores would jeopardize their jobs. these are teachers with tenure and a Union.

my daughter's best friend's mother has filed a complaint against one of those teachers....we'll see how it turns out.

the right to be included in the standardized tests....up until this year children like my daughter could be opted out by their own school districts by nature of their IEPs. that move by many school districts across the country helped over inflate grades while keeping specialized programs nearly completely unaccountable. Arne Duncan changed that policy so the children like my daughter would be included.

so tell me again precisely why testing children like my daughter are a waste of time and resources?

how are standardized tests helping her? Is her school/program getting more money because of it? Is she learning more because of the tests?

me an apology for implying that disabled children like my daughter are a waste of time and resources?

Let me tell you exactly how standardized testing helps my daughter...her science teacher...who started off the year giving her easy work because of her IEP, and would not budge no matter what I asked her to do, finally started giving my daughter level appropriate assignments when she realized that my daughter would be included in the standardized testing and there was no way in f****** hell I was opting her out. I guess the science teacher thought my daughter was a waste of time and resources until she realized that she actually counted.

by the way my kid took second place in the school science fair.

I said standardized tests are. More specifically, the tests that are used primarily as a tool for funding (NCLB) rather than what they were intended to do: help teachers and parents determine their children's strengths and weaknesses. But even Arne admits that is limited. “State assessments in mathematics and English often fail to capture the full spectrum of what students know and can do,” he said.

I'm glad you saw a change in your daughter's education, but as a whole, using standardized tests to improve teacher's effectiveness is flawed.

I come from a family of teachers and have have seen the over use of testing bog down the system.

upped her game and actually taught her. Because she knew my daughter was taking those tests.

Because the teacher in question was tenured, and protected by her union, my complaints at their beginning of the year were not addressed seriously. I don't begrudge her her tenure, or her union, nor do I want them changed. But my kid didn't get treated fairly until the fear of the test hit this one.

Of course.....I also spoke to the other parents in the class. No one in that Science class opted out.

Nationwide, parents of disabled children are fighting against the new standardized tests. And teachers of all levels of experience are leading the way against the tests, your transparently manufactured smear against teacher unions, notwithstanding.

(BTW -- should you be allowed to post on DU, given your attacks on unions?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/12/video-kids-with-severe-disabilities-taking-mandatory-standardized-test/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/23/blind-severely-disabled-boy-forced-to-take-standardized-test/

http://neatoday.org/2014/03/05/high-stakes-testing-for-disabled-students-a-system-gone-horribly-wrong/

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-04-26/news/os-ed-backtalk-disabled-kids-test-042613-20130425_1_learning-disabilities-association-disabled-children-disabled-students

Ok, continue with your anti-union propaganda.

my child. I do.

Are we at the top yet?

...of the dung heap.

Remember Citizen! Corporate Standards Must Be Met!

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

PRISON!

Should teacher be evaluated? Should schools be assessed? If no, why? If yes, how?

Schools should be assessed only if factors like the socio-economic staus and natural aptitudes of the children are considered. Children whose parents are well educated tend to do better in school than children whose parents are not well educated. Thus, the "best" schools tend to be in areas in which many parents are well educated. And those happen to be the areas in which more affluent people live.

We should make higher education cheaper and more accessible to more people. That will raise the standards in our schools. Our problems in education are problems in our culture and our economy and not in our children. Our schools merely reflect our culture and our economy.

Arne Duncan needs to go. He should either be fired or resign. He is incompetent to understand the problems of children in our schools.

What do you think, DG?

Should teachers be evaluated? If yes, how?

Should schools be "assessed"? If yes, how?

Do you think standardized tests can provide accurate measures of our children's progress? We've had standardized testing for how many years now? And, how do our students rank internationally?

Do you think standardized tests can provide accurate measures of our teachers' abilities? Just when did this nation's teachers become the reason our schools are failing? What about the copious amounts of research that point to poverty as a key factor in our children's education?

BTW, I know from personal experience that standardized tests are not accurate measures, and I'm confident I'm not the only teacher who can say that. Also, I have tremendous respect for madfloridian, and I appreciate her advocacy for teachers and for our younglings.

While tests may not be an absolute measure of performance, do they not provide a benchmark to assess progress? there has to be some objective accountability. Of course my point of view is colored by my own experience, I attended public schools in which teachers were not at all accountable. I get so angry when I think back to how little effort they put into teaching us. Many would just spend the entire period off in the teachers lounge or something...they would just leave us to fend for ourselves. This went on in middle school and high school. It was just shameful. Of course we were just a bunch of poor, black kids. Kids who were judged incapable of learning, because our parents lacked money, education and power. I would never trust public schools with my kid. He's been in private schools since kindergarten where at least teachers don't feel they deserve a paycheck for just showing up. Yes, I am quite embittered by my experience. We wanted to learn, but were so badly shortchanged because no one was watching. Flame away!

is built into the standardized tests most teachers despise. And, I remember my assistant principal making a snarky, racist comment about "those students" not being able to learn math--she meant the Latino children who comprised the majority of our student body! In her mind, Latino children were "judged incapable of learning."

And, yes, tests are used quite effectively by teachers to assess the progress of their students. Teachers are best able to assess their students using tests they've created to reflect what they've covered and what their students should have learned.

I cannot speak to your personal experiences with public schools. I know that racism and poverty are key reasons why public education fails a significant number of our younglings. Copious amounts of research point to both these variables as important determinants of students' "achievements." Arne "I Play Basketball" Duncan has access to this research, yet he chooses to vilify teachers and make us solely responsible for the failure of public education. Much easier to hand the public an easy target, rather than addressing the fundamental challenges presented by poverty.

Teachers are evaluated, as they should be. However, testing is not a true evaluation for teaching ability. Some students do not learn material in the time frame that standards have set. For example, the developmental age for a child to learn to read is 4-8 years old. That is a big range. That means a child that learns to read in second grade (age 7) is developmentally in an acceptable range BUT does not meet the common core standards for reading. This does not mean that the child has been somehow failed by his or her teachers. Rather, in my district the child gets support from the classroom teacher as well as a reading teacher. The student's abilities are not a reflection on the teacher's.

Likewise, the PARCC is developmentally inappropriate. The questions that my third graders were forced to answer were more appropriate for fifth grade (which I have also taught). The test is timed, which is also inappropriate (students could take as much time as was needed when they took MCAS). There is NEVER another time that someone has a short amount of time to plan, write and edit some writing besides tests. Articles, speeches, college papers, letters to the editor, and even this post may have a deadline. However, the writer has an opportunity to stop, reflect, and edit. This is not as easily done on high stakes tests with a time restriction. And I believe it is not a true reflection of a student's best work.

I believe that testing should be done twice a year. The first test should be in September or whenever the district begins the school year. Schools, and by schools I mean teachers, should be given the scores for each student. This would give us a tremendous amount of data. The students should then be tested again in the very late spring. The goal would be to look for growth in each student. I would like to see a test that is not geared to trick students, or punish districts, but to actually assist in and support their education.

Make no mistake, this current push that we have seen is to privitize education. WE will NEVER have 100% of a school population meeting all the standards. Not all children will, or should, attend college. We need to make sure that there are good career paths for students who do not want to, or could not succeed in, college.

As I said in my post, there are a lot of factors in student learning that go beyond what happens in the classroom. All teachers should be (and in Massachusetts are) evaluated on performance. However, the performance of a student will vary. Tests are not the most complete indicator of student learning or of teacher ability. This practice of assessing everyone based on test scores is just nuts.

Such a poor choice by the Obama administration.

To those on the right who want to abolish the DoE. Arne needs to resign, but with less than two years left in Obama's term it will be nearly impossible to fix all the problems.

This is the one area where I think Obama REALLY screwed up.

It works.

We learn best when we are relaxed AND focused.

Stress is the enemy of learning.

The tests have to go. They just produce stress and too much competition for both children and teachers. They are the last thing we need.

Besides, do charter and private school students have to take the same horrible tests that public school children have to take? If not, why not?

not subjected to the ridiculous stress and where they actually learn to think critically.

It's no mistake that public schools have deteriorated to what they are today. The elite very much want the masses to receive EXACTLY this kind of "education". They just don't want their kids to receive it, and that is very telling and they should be shamed nationally for it.

Send your kids to public school and *then* tell me how they should be run. At that point, I'll consider your opinion along with the rest of the parents'.

Not many of us want to see "Strange Eyes" Arne Duncan. I cannot tell if he's smirking or affecting a patronizing stare at his supposed audience...

People with no lips are usually mean.

to assert that "the tests are 'just not a traumatic event'..." I'm confident that makes all the concerned parents whose children ARE stressed out feel SO much better!

Remember when he said opposition to nonstop testing was due to mommies being angry to find out that their kids weren't so bright after all.

He has the kind of confidence that only very ignorant people have.

They haven't a damn thing to do with any of the issues, serve to make people who comment on them look bad, and also?

Remember that in this world, for everyone who you insult, there's someone else unrelated who looks just like them who you insulted as well.

Seriously, shit like this:

Tests are nowhere! They are about memorization, regurgitation and jumping through hoops. Anyone who has prepared for and taken the GRE or SAT should know this. Even the test prep books say it's more about understanding HOW to take the test than the actual content (the science of eliminating obviously wrong answers, etc.)

Someone posed the question: Should we assess teachers? Well, you can't do that if you don't allow them to teach, instead of teaching to a test. Studies show that writing in longhand on paper is the best method for retention and conceptualization. Every one of us learns differently. Teachers have the most difficult task there is, coming up with a way to grab the interest of at least 20 different students and their different ways of learning. And since we know that writing is the best way to gain and retain knowledge, essays and papers and close readings should be the way of learning, and tests should be abolished. If I were an education czar, as it were, one of the concepts I would try to implement is having students transcribe portions of what they are learning. It's amazing how much of the information and the concepts jump out at you when you do this. Reading, writing and reflection is how we learn best, along with incorporating visualization for those who learn better that way. This is more in line with what Finland is doing, and they are number one in the world in education. And of course, they pay their teachers at least as well as administrators, if not better. We are so brainwashed with measuring everything! It has to stop - unless of course you subscribe to what George Carlin was telling us the corporate overlords want - "workers just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork"

This article sums the dilemma up nicely, I think...

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14820-why-johnny-cant-read-or-win-wars

sleeze

The amount of new material that gets covered during the spring (prime testing season) is tiny compared to what they do during the fall. These kids are taking the standardized state pass-'em-or-die tests and another standardized test (either Stanford or Iowa) every year.

They don't just take the tests, they take practice tests before the real tests, and then look at the results and have review packets, and, and...

It's a waste of time that does nothing to benefit the actual student, so far as I can see.

is always a good strategy.

So now it is everyone's fault but his own.

... and I have worked extensively with kids. I know for an absolute certainty that federally-mandated testing is a colossal failure on every level, and it most certainly DOES stress kids out, Duncan, you jerk.

All of this testing was born out of No Child Left Behind, that cynically misnamed abomination that Bush the Lesser rammed down the nation's throat. From the git-go it was designed to force schools into failure so the Neocons could justify privatizing public education.

Far too many alleged Democrats have guzzled the Neocon Kool-Aid with regard to privatization schemes, and it enrages me to see such an obscene betrayal of the 99% by politicians that are SUPPOSED to be working for us, not against us.

which leads me to remind her it's important to eat protein for breakfast because it helps one to think better. And I ask if she knows why she's taking the tests and tell her it's just to see if kids are learning what the teachers are teaching. And if they aren't they can adjust their teaching methods. And if she expressed she felt anxious taking it, I'd tell her many people feel anxious taking tests. Just get a good night's sleep, good breakfast, do your best and that's it. The test is to be taken seriously but isn't a matter of life and death. And if she said, yeah but she feels really stressful, I'd say, "Boo hoo!" She feels stressed when she has to give a speech in class or runs cross country or they perform on a stage. Heck, video games can be really stressful. Life is stressful. So I just don't get the resistance to Common Core and its goal of raising educational and teaching strategy standards.

Before I had children, I taught a year in a British oil company school in Thailand. The kids were mostly British with several French, German, and Dutch children ages 5-13. The kids were reading fluently at 5. At 5!!! On every level for all ages their vocabulary, history, math, etc. were well ahead of ours and that's when I saw American education standards as lacking. It wasn't that the teachers were better than ours but they were trained to have higher expectations for the kids and the kids lived up to the them.

It's a proven fact that kids live both up to expectations or down to them (especially their own).
It's proven that kids perform much better on tests or far worse depending on what teachers and adults tell them they can do. I personally think all the uproar is about the insecurities of their parents and teachers and not about the kids' stress.

The companies that make them do so in secret. In effect they set the curriculum, only no one knows what it is.

been taught.

Pearson’s tests were unbelievably bad, the worst I’ve seen, and the reality of using tests designed to rank students is something we haven’t gotten our heads around.”

There are at least three lessons are to be learned from this fiasco: one, it was Pearson, not the educators, that decided what students should know; two, Pearson’s standards will cause massive failure wherever they are used; three, as many panelists noted, teachers did not have the training to teach the standards.

And there is one more lesson: if the standards themselves are developmentally inappropriate–if the tests expect fifth-graders to learn material that is appropriate for seventh graders, failure is inevitable. Unless, that is, Pearson and the State Education Department decide to lower the cut scores to give the illusion of progress.

....“In fact, among the CCSS supporters who spoke (and really– did you think NYS would fill this committee with people who didn’t love the Core), there was a recognition that the implementation is a hash and the tests are a bogus joke. Yes, they haven’t figured out that what we’ve got is exactly what the Core were designed to give us, but at least they recognize some of the suckage, and not simply from a practical political calculus angle (and remember– everyone must take calculus now). This is undoubtedly part of the reason that CCSS enjoys the kind of support in NYS usually reserved for politicians who cannot keep their private parts off the internet.

“It’s an illuminating batch of reportage, well worth your time to read. Because you may not live in New York, but wherever you are in America, you’re still living in the United States of Pearson.”

ever appointed by a Democratic president?

Short answer: Junk the tests and common core.

Its delusional to think a test will equalize education nationally.

If they use the tests to fire teachers, entire buildings will be emptied annually. Good luck bringing up test scores if no one knows anyone else!

Yes, Duncan is threatening federal intervention if states fail to put an end to the massive testing boycotts. No one is sure what form that intervention may take. Some fear economic reprisals. But I worry about an Iraq-style invasion.

...A lot of people may not know this, but the DOE Inspector General's Office has its own well-equipped military wing and Duncan has shown that he's not afraid to call out his troops against community residents. In 2011, his troops made an armed assault on at least one wrongfully-suspected student loan deadbeat.

In a statement to FoxNews.com, Education Department Press Secretary Justin Hamilton confirmed that its Office of Inspector General executed the warrant with the presence of local law enforcement authorities.

...Hamilton declined to comment on the specifics of the case, citing an ongoing investigation.

"We can say that the OIG's office conducts about 30-35 search warrants a year on issues such as bribery, fraud, and embezzlement of federal student aid funds," the statement continued.

Hamilton referred all further inquiries to DOE's Office of Inspector General. Catherine Grant, OIG's spokeswoman, declined to provide a copy of the warrant served on Tuesday.

An official with the U.S. Department of Education returned phone calls to News 10 Wednesday morning, saying the search warrant is part of a criminal investigation and not because of unpaid student financial aid loans.

However, the official would not say why the department is investigating the Wrights.

At 6 a.m. Tuesday, Wright said he woke up to what he thought was a S.W.A.T team breaking down his door. As Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts, he said the officers barged through his front door.

....U.S. Department of Education spokesman Justin Hamilton said the agents that served the search warrant were with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), not local S.W.A.T.

OIG is a semi-independent branch of the education department that executes warrants for criminal offenses such as student aid fraud, embezzlement of federal aid and bribery, according to Hamilton. The agency serves 30 to 35 search warrants a year.

person to champion there.....a guy who helped steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money.

And he complained his house got raided? Too bad.

Instead of someone who actually has education experience.