MEDIA WATCH: Education Week adds to Duncan puffery and piffle on First Anniversary of the appointment of Barack Obama's teacher bashing privatizing Secretary of Education
[Editor's Note: The following was originally posted at www.susanohanian.org and is getting additional posting here]. NCLB Outrages
On December 17, 2009, Chicago Schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan (above right) was expecting to be at the final meeting he would attend of the Chicago Board of Education before leaving for Washington, D.C. to become U.S. Secretary of Education following the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States the following month. Duncan became angry during the December 17 Board meeting and walked out rather than lose his temper as speaker after speaker denounced his school closing and union busting policies. Duncan's expectations for a smooth, even laudatory, Board meeting were based on the fact that on that day he was profiled in a Page One story in The New York Times. The Times story included a photo op with Barack Obama at one of Chicago's Potemkin Village schools, the "Dodge Renaissance School of Excellence." One reason for Duncan's walkout was that speakers were exposing the fact that school like Dodge, which was cited by President Obama for "turnaround" had been carefully consrtucted media events. Dodge was one of the first three schools to be "renaissanced" by Arne Duncan, the Dodge changes being put into place from June 2002 through September 2003. Behind Duncan are two of the key players in Duncan's ability to destroy more than 50 African American public schools and fire more than 1,000 African American union teachers from Chicago between 2004 and 2009. On the left is Chicago's "Chief Education Officer" Barbara Eason-Watkins, and in the rear is Board of Education member Peggy Davis, a lawyer for Commonwealth Edison. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Ohanian Comment: The opening sentence gives you a snapshot of the duplicity involved in the whole piece, revealing as it does Education Week's ongoing friendly handshake on the dismantling of public education. My god, even the Chicago Tribune is more critical than this.
Duncan Carves Deep Mark on Policy in First Year
By Michele McNeil A year ago, Arne Duncan was known as a long-serving urban district chief who had used his collegial management style to push innovation and close failing schools in Chicago.
This week, he enters his second year as U.S. secretary of education pursuing a similar national policy agenda that could place him among the most influential leaders in his department’s 30-year history. Empowered by up to $100 billion in economic-stimulus aid for education — and the support of President Barack Obama, whom he has long known — Mr. Duncan has pressed hard on such priorities as charter schools, teacher performance pay, common academic standards, and turnarounds of low-performing schools.
He has used his bully pulpit to assess blame for a K-12 system he sees as marred by mediocre student performance, dismal graduation rates in some cities, and stubborn achievement gaps between minority and white students. . . . (— Michele McNeil, Education Week, 2010-01-20)
Ohanina Comment: Education Week does not permit posting of full articles. If you can stand reading the rest of this puff piece, go to the url below. Coverage of "critics" of Duncan is a disgrace. A disgrace but not a surprise.
