The mismatch between Duncan's words, actions

11-24-2010

Guest blog by Anthony Cody/Washington Post

Secretary Duncan, You may recall we spoke on the phone last May when I was part of a group called Teachers' Letters to Obama that organized ourselves to share our concerns and ideas with your administration. Unfortunately we never heard back from you (as I describe here). In your post [Monday], you wrote, "We in education spend too much of our time and energy focused on issues that divide us. We forget how important it is to move forward on what we agree on." The trouble I have is that we are truly confused by a mismatch between your words and your actions. This makes a real consensus impossible, and forces us to continually return to the core disagreements we have with your policies. My question to you is that you frequently tell teachers of your conviction that we need to move away from "teaching to the test." Yet you are aggressively encouraging states and districts to: * Pay teachers based on the growth in those test scores. * Evaluate teachers based on those test scores. * Close schools or fire principals or teachers based on those test scores * Evaluate the "effectiveness" of teaching credential programs based on test scores. (more…)

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