Sometimes I have nothing to add to what I think is a must read article. Ravitch hits it out of the part with Arne Duncan’s Legacy.
…
When Obama was elected, many educators and parents thought that Obama would bring a new vision of the federal role in education, one that freed schools from the test-and-punish mindset of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind. But Arne Duncan and Barack Obama had a vision no different from George W. Bush and doubled down on the importance of testing, while encouraging privatization and undermining the teaching profession with a $50 million grant to Teach for America to place more novice teachers in high-needs schools. Duncan never said a bad word about charters, no matter how many scandals and frauds were revealed.
…
That’s just a teaser for the long list of just how much damage has been done to public education during Duncan’s tenure. Read it and weep.
…The next president and the next Secretary of Education will have an enormous job to do to restore our nation’s public education system from the damage done by Race to the Top. We need leadership that believes in the joy of learning and in equality of educational opportunity. We have not had either for 15 years.
Nothing would have been better than the federal, costly something of the past decade and a half. Can’t we ever get rid of these destroyers?