Former George W. Bush adviser Nicole Wallace asked Duncan if his comments were indicative of an Obama administration that views the nation through a lens of race.So the point — and he fully intended to make it — is that he thinks white women in the suburbs deceive themselves imagining that urban black kids are the ones with the education problems.
“My point was when you dummy down standards, you’re lying to children. That affects all children, that affects all families … even in more affluent suburban areas, not just in the inner city,” Duncan said.
November 21, 2013
Arne Duncan would like people to stop talking about the time he said "white suburban moms."
The phrase was "clumsy," and he's sorry about letting it slip out. But why was it in there, capable of slipping out?
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The affluent white areas certainly produced one Arne Duncan.
What I find interesting is that the most adamant opponents of common core that I know are liberal white suburban moms. This is in New York where the imposition of common core seems to be especially ham-handed.
I find this completely uncontroversial. The much-despised No Child Left Behind Act was sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy for exactly this reason. Schools were lying about test scores by hiding their worst students.
He Meant to Say "White Suburban Soccer Tiger Tea Party Moms". Need All the Cliches to Make a Point.
On top of the gratuitous mention of race, Duncan's statement shows genuine disdain for people who organize their lives in a way different from his. He instinctively tossed the supposedly liberal values of tolerance and choice out the window as soon as he had to apply them in a meaningful way.
Most of the criticisms of the Common Core are that the Core itself is "dummying down" more advanced educational attainment at good schools.
Duncan's statements can be read in a way that concedes the validity of that complaint. "Hey, yes we are dummying down the standards, and lying to the children. This will harm everyone, but will harm affluent families even more." Left unsaid "Our vision of equality demands this, though."
Last week the Obamacare's architect, Jeff Gruber, chategorized healthy people as "genetic winners" who have to pay more to end discrimination against the sick in the cost of healthcare insurance.
When I heard that, a light bulb went off im my head - the modern left is a group of people who read Harrison Bergeron as a model society, rather than a warning.
That worked so well for Paula Deen.
Is he not right?
I hear people talk all the time about how their local schools are great, and their children are doing so well. So well at what? Often, not much. The parents and students are deceived by low standards.
"Dummying down" is a dumbed down way to say "dumbed down."
Here in Florida left wing progressives and right wing Tea Party types are manning the barricades together against Common Core. Politics making for strange bedfellows once again.
Democrats are fixated on race and thus stress "diversity and inclusion". To me this seems like institutionalization of separate but equal.
Right up there with "Little Eichmanns".
I'll just bet he wants it to go away.
I'm sure Choom is looking for a few people to go under the bus and he'd be a great candidate.
Surfed, the same thing is going on here.
I'm a white, suburban mom, and I'm not offended. (Technically, this area is classified as urban, but I think most would call it suburban.) I don't think he made his point as artfully as he should have. He made it pettily. But there is a good point buried in the bad phrasing.
. . . he thinks white women in the suburbs deceive themselves imagining that urban black kids are the ones with the education problems.
One doesn't need to 'imagine' things that are facts. Urban black kids simply are the ones with the education problems. And it is not going to be getting better. A lowering of expectations is the only thing for it. And an emphasis on the trades, from pre-K through 12.
Like No Child Left Behind the Common Core approach will collapse when it further reveals the gap between black and white performance. It is not possible to close this gap with money or "conversation". A tragedy. The suburban mom bit is a clever move of the pea in the shell game of hide the truth.
Turns out Duncan is pretty much a hack behind that glossy resume and reputation.
Just what have he and the Obama administration done to really improve education?
Time for a report card. He's literally a flunky.
MILF = Mothers I'd Like to Fool
Even assuming Arne Duncan was right in the broadest sense, the solution isn't more "help" from the federal government.
On the left, racist attacks against middle class white people (the bourgeois) seem to be acceptable. No big deal.
The deeper question is whether conservatives are wrong to attack the schools for the poor performance of the students? I don't know the answer, but I wonder. Perhaps the schools are doing reasonably well considering how poorly prepped for learning the students are when they arrive at school.
and as i ride my horse through the streets of scarsdale, i proclaim:
"hope and change, hope and change"
My son attends a competitive private school where he pulls, barely, a B average. He will not get into the University of Georgia because there will be many kids with A+ averages who will beat him out. Many of them will be barely literate and they will not last a year. The black kids who flunk will attribute it to a racist system. How else could they have gone from A+ to Fs? Lots of very bad consequences of grade inflation and lower expectations.
I could take my son out of his school and plop him into the public one where he would suddenly be making A+s but I would prefer that he be well educated.
To Michael -
You are on the right track, but always remember that all the University of Georgia can do that is unique, is issue an official sheepskin with the University of Georgia logo.
There are many many ways to get an education, including without any brick-and-mortar places, and many many things companies will accept on resumes as qualifications for an interview.
Freeman, if he had a good point in there, the data would confirm that white suburban kids are not getting good jobs and careers, which, by all measures, they are. Arne Duncan is the most left wing of the entire left wing bunch. He is all for leveling down.
Someone... I agree completely. The good news is that wherever he ends up he will be way ahead of most of his classmates given his excellent writing skills. He can transfer to Georgia easily enough if he desires to.
I grew up in one of the most affluent small towns in the country. The public schools there were excellent by public school standards as evidenced by how its graduates performed at colleges around the country and the things the graduates have gone on to do now. The boarding high school I went to for a time often shows up in the lists of the top twenty public schools nationwide.
And yet, would I say that either place offered a truly excellent education? Excellent compared to most public schools, yes. Excellent compared to what could/should be? No.
Michael said:
"My son attends a competitive private school where he pulls, barely, a B average. He will not get into the University of Georgia because there will be many kids with A+ averages who will beat him out."
If he does well on the SAT that should help. Personally, I've never been impressed by the competition to get into elite colleges. I encouraged my children to go to non-competitive conservative schools. Not only did they receive a good education without all the leftist claptrap but they also saved me a great deal of money. I gave them each an investment account with Charles Schwab worth as much as the tuition they saved. So far it has worked out beautifully.
Now, is that to say that there are no good public schools? No. Is that to say that the federal government should be controlling standards? No.
The point he makes that I think is correct is that the Common Core does expose how low standards have generally been.
On top of the gratuitous mention of race, Duncan's statement shows genuine disdain for people who organize their lives in a way different from his. He instinctively tossed the supposedly liberal values of tolerance and choice out the window as soon as he had to apply them in a meaningful way.
Fen's law, man. Fen's law.
(I will make one modification. My small town school taught writing well by any standard. The people I graduated with write exceptionally well. The teachers were extraordinarily demanding on this point.)
I would be willing to make a bet that one could put together an accurate list of the best performing schools by looking at nothing other than the racial demographics of the students.
Not geographical location, not spending per student, not students per teacher. Nothing but ethnic mix.
The higher the percentage of Asian and White, the better performing the school will be.
The converse will also true, baring rigged admission standards.
Now, why would this be? Look to Darwin for the stark and unflinching answer, and it is as tragic an answer as an answer can be, but it is what it is.
All one can do is play the genetic hand one has been dealt, the best one can. And make sure one's aspirations are in line with one's actual potentialities.
We can all help but granting dignity and true appreciation to ALL jobs, service, trade, white collar.
I'm with Freeman on this one. I'm frequently surprised by the lack of basic skills and knowledge demonstrated by many of the younger generation. Just about every kid seems to have enormous self-confidence, top grades, and no actual capability whatsoever.
Duncan put his foot in his mouth, and I don't agree that government is the answer -- but I think he was spot on that most children today are not nearly as smart/capable as their parents are continually told they are.
The point he makes that I think is correct is that the Common Core does expose how low standards have generally been.
Common Core as a standard seems relatively innocuous. Anyone can make up a standard.
The perceived stringency of the standard doesn't tell us anything about whether implementation of the standard will help anyone actually learn. Common Core hasn't been around long enough to allow comparison to anything. All we have is the pronouncements of its cheerleaders.
Much of the criticism I've read against Common Core falls into two categories:
1) Top-down standards undermine individual learning plans -- for both learning disabled and academically advanced students.
2) Rapid implementation of Common Core creates gaps between the new requirements and students' previous curriculum, creating artificial failures.
Based on NCLB, we can already predict the outcome. Poor schools will dogmatically teach to the standards-based tests, paring down their academic offerings in the process. Good schools will have the test-score flexibility to maintain academic richness.
Parents at he primary educators of their children. I agree with Freeman that the standards should be high. But they should be set by the parents. It's unrealistic to expect any school or teacher to consistently challenge kids to excel. Parents have to do this. They have to work with their kids to supplement whatever the kids are doing at school. School is an institution. It is not going to look out for your kid. No institution is going to do it.
I'm with Freeman on this one. I'm frequently surprised by the lack of basic skills and knowledge demonstrated by many of the younger generation.
Because schools have been considerably less concerned about teaching those things in lieu of social justice-making and fairness.
Now, does Common Core address these problems? I don't know that.
The biggest determining factor in how well-educated a child becomes is the parents. Nothing else comes close.
White suburban soccer moms tend to be more involved and more intrinsic in their childrens' educations.
Is "Common Core" or education reform analogous to the greatest common divisor?
I was educated in private schools. In high school I was required to write an essay every single day including the last day of high school. Plus I learned how to type really fast. Grateful for those things. They made college a breeze.
Until I spent some time in the upper mid-west, I thought the people there were well educated and civilized, compared to Southerners. After visiting Alpina Mich. And Volkfield Wisc. several times. I saw that they had more dirt roads than Alabama. The people there were just as ignorant and backward. The only real difference was that most of them were white.
ken in sc said...
Until I spent some time in the upper mid-west, I thought the people there were well educated and civilized, compared to Southerners. After visiting Alpina Mich. And Volkfield [sic] Wisc. several times. I saw that they had more dirt roads than Alabama. The people there were just as ignorant and backward. The only real difference was that most of them were white.
Thanks for sharing the anecdote. Bless your heart.
" he thinks white women in the suburbs deceive themselves imagining that urban black kids are the ones with the education problems."
He thinks nothing of the sort. Consider the audience he was addressing. He, and they, think that white people have been running this country for too long, and they intend to put a stop to it. And they have a plan, and it looks like it might work. Anyone who imagines his kids are in a "good public school" is delusional. That is like being in "one of the better re-education Gulags".
he thinks white women in the suburbs deceive themselves imagining that urban black kids are the ones with the education problems
Oh no. Quite the reverse. White women in the suburbs deceive themselves imagining that urban black kids have modest educational problems that, for example, could be solved by cranking up taxes, going to merit pay, giving every kid an iPad.
They haven't a fucking clue how unbelievably dysfunctional and useless urban black education is. You have 5-year-olds in kindergarten who cannot speak -- meaning they haven't learned to -- and you have 18-year-olds with diplomas who cannot read beyond See Spot Run. It is an unbelievable Augean stable of corruption, incompetence, delusion, and cynicism among the adults, and a Lord of The Flies nightmare of drugs, violence and sexual sadomasochism among the young. You'd be better off nuking it from orbit, so to speak, e.g. letting kids stay home with mom until age 10 (provided she wasn't actively tweaking), then apprenticing them out to some productive trade.
Arne Duncan is of course the Gollum squatting atop a miserable orc-nest of parasites who exploit the plight of their charges to gain a living from those low-info suburban moms, who think throwing a few $billion in tax-guilt money into the hopper will turn crack babies whored out by their mom since age 8 into future Thurgood Marshalls. In a just world Duncan and his ilk would be sent to the Chateau d'If for a century.
Hitler would like you to stop talking about the time he said he was going to kill all the Jews. It jus slipped out.
Remember that Common Core is a floor and a ceiling. These administrators in DC are all about the equality of outcome and sitting on the head of suburban students is the quickest way to even out the playing field. If they get any more in the way of achievement, we truly will come to the way of the Soviet Union.
The advocates of Common Core have been dismissive of the concerns of parents at every stage. This "White Suburban Mom" incident is just the last of a long line of attempts to delegitimize opposition to their program.
Their program which sux, BTW.
I've always thought it is astrength of American education (public and private) to have a large diversity of education options. Non-standardization of education means a larger group is prepared for a wider array of circumstances. If everyone learns the same things, then what happens if something critical is missed?!
Urban black kids simply are the ones with the education problems...A lowering of expectations is the only thing for it. And an emphasis on the trades...
Most of these black kids are too dumb to learn a trade, to say nothing of practicing one: success at a trade requires not only intelligence, but a capacity for getting on with others, and cooperating with them, that these kids cannot learn. Even their miserable way of speaking English, which is a function of their low intelligence, would knock them out of the box.
Common Core is the corporate and federal takeover of education. Nothing more, nothing less... Big Business realized that there is money to be had in local education but it's too hard to lobby every local school board.
If the Feds could control it all then they'd only have to lobby congress and the bureaucrats at the Dept of Ed. What a huge savings?
Why would Jeb Bush and Obame be on the same team? Big Business and Big Government....
I don't know enough about the specifics of Common Core to comment on it, and I am convinced that race is a disproportionately large prism through which this administration views policy, but I really didn't find Duncan's remarks to be too far off target.
One anecdote among many: my niece went to high school in a system that routinely is ranked in the top five in her state by various polls and measures. Niecey graduated with a B+/A- average in an honors curriculum, and she got into a high quality college. The first time she voted in a public election, she asked me, "How do I decide who should get my vote?" At first, I thought she was asking for my opinion on a candidate. It turned out she had no idea how to go about identifying issues or comparing candidates. She had no intellectual framework for understanding the election. All she knew was that Republicans were supposed to be mean and unpopular, but that didn't feel right to her. She wanted to cast an informed ballot, but she received minimal civics instruction in school (aside from the importance of protest), and she was never taught the critical thinking skills needed to analyze the issues or the politics of the election. Her knowledge of our political system was astonishingly poor, yet the "white, suburban moms" in the neighborhood are convinced that their kids are receiving the best education possible today. I don't know which would be worse: that they are wrong, or that they are right.
Lake Wobegone, here we come.
the modern left is a group of people who read Harrison Bergeron as a model society, rather than a warning.Sadly, Vonnegut himself made the same mistake.
the modern left is a group of people who read Harrison Bergeron as a model society, rather than a warning.Sadly, Vonnegut himself made the same mistake.
See! he's not a racist he's "just" neo-marxist racialist. so there!
Mr. Duncan knocked the lid off a very smelly social reality crock. It's too late to put it back on. True academic achievement is all about race. Since we can't face that everything else we do is either a sham or worse yet, actively harmful.
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