Would You Want Arne Duncan to Back Your Campaign? We Know Where You're Coming From

I saw the name and I flinched. The prototypical blast from the past: Arne Duncan.

The former, some would say notorious, Secretary of Education is backing the conservative candidate in Wisconsin's race for Superintendent of Education, Deb Kerr.

The much better choice is Jill Underly, so let's get that said right away. Deb Kerr is a pile of contradictions topped with some pretty dicey financial management skills. We don't need that in that position.

So I'm wondering why someone like Arne Duncan would back her. It's clear that the decision is political, with the expansion of vouchers the not-too-hidden undercard.

Milwaukee became the poster child for school vouchers four decades ago. The union, among many others, predicted that the system would evolve into two-tiers--one for the well-heeled, mostly white; one for all the others, children of color. So let's recognize that rubber stamp right now.

But vouchers weren't, and aren't, directed at kids. They were directed at the union's so-called monopoly, since at the time, it held what amounted to a union shop over the employment. That is, you didn't have to join the union, but because it represented you in negotiations, you were required to pay most but not all of the dues regular members paid.

That, of course, is only fair. But in its infinite wisdom, the Republican-led state legislature made collective bargaining for the teachers' unions basically irrelevant. It then followed with a classic right-to-work law, which allowed "free riding," or people to be bargained for without paying dues.

Along with that devastation came a tsunami of nonsense propaganda, blaming the unions for poor performances by kids, since the "monopolistic" system produced sub-standard teachers, at least teachers who couldn't be fired at the drop of a hat since they were protected by due process provided by contract.

That meant, in the ridiculous over-generalization, that you could do practically anything wrong or bad and not get dismissed for it. That, also, was nonsense (especially considering the boilerplate, three-year probation system in nearly every teacher's contract, untouchable by the union but mostly unevoked by school administrators), but what was put into place was a system of arbitration in which an arbitrator would have to say definitively yes or no whether an employee was liable for dismissal.

And again, the cynical analysis by conservatives is that arbitrators were liberals and fell in favor with educators, many of which were also liberals. So they kept their jobs and the conservatives felt trapped.

So, with George W. Bush, the president who gained office because people rioted in Dade County and succeeded in shutting down the ballot count in 2000, they got what they wanted: a lawyer-proof, disingenuous law aimed at eliminating union defense of what they thought would be real progress: a law that would judge a school's progress with standardized testing, and a withdrawal of funding--a form of "tough love"--if a school proved inadequate, which all of them eventually did because 'adequacy' was only defined by a rate of 100% of students meeting, and we all got tired of hearing this phrase, "adequate yearly progress." That law, of course, was named No Child Left Behind.

Ted Kennedy, the former defender of teachers' unions and the previous system, caved to the pressure to support it because of the promise of a bushel of the money that he believed poor kids really needed. So did the NEA, in a move which I still believe to be a terrible mistake. In the wake of 9-11, though, the air was filled with the need to get along with people, even though the drawbacks of the proposal were clear. Again, we were playing nice, and nice and two quarters get you a phone call. But that promise had a trap door attached; the money was a one-time deal, and Kennedy discovered it too late. He got hopping mad, but the law stuck, mired in inertia, and six years later, it was still raging, still devastating schools and robbing kids of resources.

I was in a meeting with him and California Representative George Miller, who had guided some of the original bill from the House side, in 2008. The members of the Executive Committee were handed questions beforehand, so as not to offend, I guess, with something like, "How the hell could you have done this, you knucklehead?" Mine was supposed to be a softball: Would you keep the name of the law in a new version, or change it?

Miller wanted to keep it. He said it looked more absurd by the day, and made the Republicans look worse. Kennedy demurred.

So the idea had quickly become teaching to the test in English, Reading and Math, leaving state legislatures to do the same mischief to systems in which Republicans had also taken control. All kinds of shenanigans ensured.

Bush left office in 2009, followed by Barack Obama. The NEA's pick for his Secretary of Education, a lady from Stanford, went ignored. Obama was just as obsessed with test scores and their validity, and by that time, the teachers in more than one system had committed their surreptitious acts of rebellion, in the name of gaining monies that would otherwise be denied, by discovering the answers to test scores and getting them to the kids. That, of course, was a national scandal. I said, over and over again, to anyone who was listening, that that result was only to be expected, that people sometimes did acts of defiance for good reasons, that empathy for kids, especially kids of color, had no bounds.

One of those cities was Chicago, in which Arne Duncan had knifed through the bureaucracy, discovered a cheating scandal, and stopped it cold. Which, of course, is a natural thing for a law-abiding person to do, especially one who supports a law that's a bad idea in the first place. Obama, himself from Chicago, took notice and hired him as Secretary of Education.

I used to teach a process called Future Problem Solving to a group of so-called gifted and talented kids (though I'm not sure they took all the right ones) in Cedarburg. The main question that everyone's supposed to be pointing toward was, "What's the Underlying Problem?" Because, of course, you can't solve a Big Fuzzy Situation if you don't know the underlying issue, which isn't always easy, because if it was, someone else would have solved the problem by now. You have to know how to state it so that people understand its parameters.

Barack Obama thought the underlying issue was getting the tests to indicate the inadequacies of the kids. Barack Obama was wrong. He couldn't have been more wrong if he tried. 

The problem was not the testing. The problem was the absurd weight that the tests had gained.

There have been standardized tests for decades. But they got put there to judge the individual child's progress, not to judge the entire school or an entire system. There are way too many other variables contained in doing that.

But Obama's Department of Education, led now by Duncan, doubled down on the testing results and introduced an incentive-based funding mechanism called Race to the Top. It tried to get systems to see testing as an inspiration, leading to better funding instead of robbing them of it. It tried to draw them into the same trap with honey, not vinegar. But the effects were the same.

It was trying to tell a married couple to stop fighting because they'd feel better. Okay, fighting's never good, but if you don't get to the root cause of the fights, whatever they are, the fights will still begin. As will wars. As will discussions of standardized testing. And they'll only get worse. One of the basic, core causes of today's political polarization are these attempts to manipulate the system to gain power, not improve education.

The testing couldn't possibly be an inspiration or mechanism for positive change. The testing had failed from the start because of its inherit drawbacks, which included overtesting which doubled down on the previous failure and became a clandestine kids' style of evaluating teachers. That's a nightmare, incredibly unprofessional, and downright vindictive.

But all along, Arne Duncan remained steadfast in his support of the process. He was also probably the most skilled politician and phrase-turner that I've ever seen--including Obama himself, incredibly articulate but not always quick on his feet--managing to talk his way out of the most direct, damning questions in a way that left you vaguely informed but largely unsatisfied. Early in his term, he allowed the NEA-RA to confront him on issues attached to his plan. 

I remember the indignant attitude among the members in the large group: They wanted him, through pointed questioning, to admit that somehow, someone had led him astray and, since he had been appointed by the first Black president, his attitudes were misguided and he would come around to back the union's position. 

But that Black president was no one's automatic ideologue.  He wanted to improve schools, sure, but he was a policy wonk on the topic, not the reflective philosopher that he wishes to portray himself in other areas. Duncan had been put there for a reason, and he would fulfill it. A master of deflection and redirection, he handled the situation so smoothly it left just about everyone gasping and empty.

That's the Arne Duncan who's supporting Deb Kerr. He's truly the wolf in sheep's clothing, which is what vouchers have been all along. His support, and that of state senator Lena Taylor, is a last-minute (this past weekend and the election's tomorrow) attempt to cut down Underly's base of support in Milwaukee. 

I would counter that with these questions: Did what they support really work? Is Milwaukee a better, stronger school system than it was twenty years ago? Do you want to continue driving down this bad road, leading to deconstruction of a system without a plan (they STILL don't have a plan) to reconstruct it?

Vote for Jill Underly. You'll get someone who sees kids as kids, not test results and pawns in a jaded system.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark