The No Child Left Behind law requires that 100% of children in public education are proficient in math and reading (in English) by 2014. The law is absurd, something recognized even by those with minimal contact with reality in the fantasy bubble of D.C.

Yet here we go, marching off like lemmings--and that's a royal "we." Every time I hand out number 2 pencils to comply with the state, I am complicit. You are, too. It's a wonderful word that sounds safe but exposes sins. Say it aloud:

Complicit--has a Snapesian quality to it, no?

Arne has offered us a plan to disincentivize our way out. If your state agrees to his plan, one that will cure poverty, end racism, and save corporatocracy democracy, your school will be exempt from the 100% pass requirement built into NCLB.

All you have to do is agree to Race to the Top--more tests, more central control, more privatization, more chaos.

Look behind the curtain and see the folks sitting around the impossibly shiny mahogany table--the powerful and the pale, soulless smiles for the camera, all acting in the name of good, the name of God, the name of greed.

This is a naked power grab by a man who called Katrina "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans," thought firing all the teachers at Central Falls HS was "doing the right thing for kids," and who has confounded the needs of corporations with the needs of a functioning democracy.

Say hello to Eli and Billy when they calls to say congrats this morning. Go ahead, wink at Michelle. A few teachers grumble when you take shots at our unions, but that's not where our hearts lie.

When you hurt our kids, our grumbles become growls, we become tigers.

I teach children what extortion means. When a child says "I'll be 'good' if..." that's extortion.

 I don;t play that game with children, I won;t play it with Arne.

READ MORE - Arne the Disincentivizer

Students sing, clap, and dance about solids, liquids and gases. They learned the solar system through song. It's just one example of how having clear standards for students drives innovation in a school. 

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, talking about his children's school

Arne really doesn't get science, but he's got a pocketful of money, so his words carry some weight. I wiled away a perfectly good morning reviewing science terms for our state's test, time better spent doing science.

I've got no beef with children singing or clapping or dancing. I'd like to encourage more of this, pursuit of happiness and all that. (Jefferson was no dope.) But it's not science.

How clear standards drives this kind of nonsense escapes me--I'm still naive enough to expect a modicum of cogency from our national  leaders.

***

Memorizing the planets is not science. Knowing that the planets are lit by the sun is not science. Spouting off that the sun converts hydrogen to helium is not science.

Instead of memorizing planets, follow one for a few weeks, or even a few months--watch how it wanders around against the background of stars. If you "know" that planets revolve around the sun just because someone told you that, you're not fit to be a citizen in this great experiment called America..

Instead of knowing that planets are lit by the sun, take a peek at Venus. Watch its phases for a year or two. Galileo did this over 400 years ago using a crappy telescope. Or look at a ring's shadow cast on Saturn.If you don't have that kind of patience, you're not fit to be a citizen in this great experiment called America.

Instead of claiming you know anything about the composition of the sun, learn about spectroscopy. Helium was discovered on the sun decades before it was found on Earth. I can say this in class, and kids will write it down, and no one challenges me. If you don't have that kind of skepticism, you're not fit to be a citizen in this great experiment called America.

Arne doesn't care if you're a fit citizen. He wants you to better the economy, to go work for one of the many transnational corporations that would cringe at our Constitution if we dared make it matter again.

If all of us who teach remembered why we teach, for whom we work, and why we're "public," Arne would be as potent  as Bumble the Abominable Snowman after Hermey's dental work.

If a child needs a song and dance routine to learn science, it's probably not.

You can listen to a few songs for free if you click on the album cover.
Arne managed to cheapen both science and art in one speech.

READ MORE - Arne's abominable approach to science

"The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale."

Joanne Weiss, Harvard Business Review

Ms. Weiss is the Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The empress not only has no clothes, she's apparently flaunting it.

I don't know how I missed this....
The woodcut is from here, but I suspect it's in the public domain by virtue of age.

READ MORE - Naked truth

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Rochelle Hendricks is our acting Education Commissioner. She got the job after the prior commissioner Bret Schundler spoke the truth about what happened in Jersey's bungled Race to the Top application, an application originally made in good faith and supported by our union. She has been Commissioner less than three months.

New Jersey's largest teaching union holds its convention for the next two days. The folks that go to teachers' conventions are mostly, well, teachers.

Not administrators.
Not union officials.
Not politicians.

Teachers. Thousands and thousands of teachers.

The Commission was invited to speak to the teachers, as every Commissioner before her has, and she refused.

"When the NJEA is willing to work with the Christie administration as a true partner in an effort to reward good teachers instead of protecting bad teachers, when the NJEA is willing to modernize the tenure system and improve the quality of education in our urban districts, I look forward to working with you."

Really?

Why not slide on down the Parkway and say hello to us. The teachers. You can walk right past the table of NJEA union officials and talk directly to us.

It's been a long while since you taught, comfortably ensconced in one of our wealthiest districts (where some folks still spell Rumson with a "v"). Put away your Christie's scepter for a day and come mingle with us.

Stoop a day for the kids you so righteously defend. Get to know us.

That's how functioning government works.

Alice and the Red Queen are in public domain.
The photo of Rochelle Hendricks is from nj.com.

READ MORE - 'Divide a loaf by a knife -- what's the answer to that?'

Only by moving beyond basic skills and bubble tests can children develop the critical thinking skills that will one day give them the ability to compete successfully in our increasingly global, increasingly competitive international economy.

Arne the Scarecrow

No more BUBBLING!
Let's cut through the bullschist and
put the children to work at something useful TODAY!

Photo from The Great ReDression, a fabulous website for clothes horses of a different color.

READ MORE - No more test bubbles!

What's the point of a microscope if a child does not know that every drop of water in the small pond behind the middle school holds hundreds of critters?

What's the point of looking at pictures beamed from the Hubble Telescope if a child has never gazed at her own stars above a dark meadow on a moonless night?

What's the point of financial literacy if a child does not know that everything essential for life comes from from the grace of an ultimately unknowable universe?

What's the point of education?

Not everything worth knowing is testable, and a lot of testable items are, frankly, not worth knowing. I'm not convinced Mr. Duncan, a graduate of Harvard, grasps this.

***

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Richard Feynman

The dolphins are back in the Delaware Bay.

They are wild, they are big. You can hear them chirping and clicking if you stick your head in the water, a bit dicey in early spring.

Critters three times my size are swimming just off the beach, that left the land to return to the sea.

How do you teach about the dolphin? How do you describe the swirl of water as a young one dives under your kayak? How do you capture the sound you hear in late August as you bob underwater listening for their chatter?

How can I do better than just point and say look! Look!?

And if I teach a child to look, to learn, to know something by observing, how can that be tested?

It does not matter if a child knows the name Tursiops truncatus. It does not matter if a child can tell me the average weight of an adult male, or how many pound of fish it eats, or where it spends its winter. All of that means nothing, nothing, until the child sees the beast slap its magnificent tail 40 yards off the beach, this wild grinning beast that chose to return to the sea.

READ MORE - Testing, testing, 1...2...3

“ I am an Ariel Student. That means that I AM THE BEST. The way that I show that I am the best is through: Good schoolwork, good behavior, good manners, and by being a good friend. That’s what it takes to be an Ariel Student.”

Ariel Community Academy Student Pledge

I left medicine so I could teach public high school.

Arne Duncan left professional basketball so that he could run the Ariel Education Initiative, the philanthropy efforts of a private corporation founded by John. W. Rogers, Jr., that makes money by manipulating money.

Mr. Rogers got stock certificates for Christmas and birthdays. He went to school at the same school as Arne, University of Chicago Lab School. He founded Ariel Investments at age 26.

Ms. Jewel Lafontant, a trustee of the Howard University who sat on the Board of Directors for both Mobil and Revlon, was one of the original investors. She had a lot of friends, friends who invested in Ariel.

Ms. Lafontant was John's mother.

John Rogers, Jr., comes from privilege. Arne Duncan comes from privilege. Their educational philosophy reflects this. Kids from privilege do better, on average, than those who do not.

The obvious, data-driven message? We need more rich and powerful (RAP) mothers. To this end, Arne Duncan and John Rogers are expected to announce the RAP Initiative by the end of this month:

Arne:
Sitting in the basement
At my mother's knee
I learned to spell success as
M-O-N-I-E

John:
Start a new fund
Forget equality
Education starts
With mommy's equity.

Arne and John:
Gotta be prepared
For the new century
Education's creed
In a word: usury

If you want to play, kids
And outcompete each other
Forget about the books, and
Get a RAP mother!

The video on the Ariel Education Initiative's home page focuses exclusively on investing in stocks.
Kids with ties and white shirts speak Wallstreetese. Cute!

John Rogers, Jr., image from Life.

READ MORE - That's a RAP