Arne Duncan or Size Matters

Dana Goldstein reports on her confab with the current Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who said:

"I don't know the specific numbers, what's real and what's just positioning on both sides. But class size has been a sacred cow and we need to take it on."


Echoing Bill Gates, Duncan suggested paying highly-effective teachers $20,000 to $25,000 more for teaching up to five additional students, and giving parents the choice as to whether their kids are placed in such classrooms. He acknowledged that small classes are currently very popular among parents. "These conversation's haven't been had," he said. "I don't think parents have been given the choice. It's provocative...but we're talking about selectively raising class sizes amongst your greatest talent."

Do you remember when firing people in the pursuit of increased profits went from firing people to downsizing the corporation to rightsizing the corporation to outsourcing and so on?  Remember how it was hard-headed MBAs trained in how "business" operates best that stripped away the business socially useful function of job creation acted as "consultants" destroyed various business and then retired rich. Sort of like Mitt Romney. Neither Arne Duncan nor Bill Gates have ever taught a course; neither has any in-depth experience with matters educational both are or were successful in the world of business who have used either basketball networks or personal wealth to elbow their way into a discussion. 


A big point in Ravitch's admission of error and her recent attempt to expose the nonsense of the Conservative and Neoliberal model of education reform is that people like Duncan and Gates, who -- to repeat -- have no real understanding of teaching, bully and ignore teachers in the interests of their pet, if not quack, theories of educational improvements. It would have be nice, in other words, if Goldstein or any other educational reporter would ask Duncan or Gates how closely they are consulting with working teachers? What role do they see for teachers in the "conversation" about class size? How do they plan on including teachers' voices? And so on.  Who cares what Duncan and Gates thinks about education?