by Derek Viger

Created on: May 27, 2009   Last Updated: May 30, 2009

I am losing faith in "Change". EdSec Duncan seems to be more hype than "Hope". I had a lot of confidence that Arne Duncan would clean house and sow the seeds for some real gains in education. There is a bit of egg on my face at this point.

While Duncan and Co certainly push changes in the education system, these changes are more novelties than substantial improvements. Some take issue with the business-like manner Team Duncan takes on education reform. Personally this is not a problem for me. If the business world presents a solution to an education woe we should use it. That being said, business and education are not entirely the same. Teaching a student is vastly different from running an ad agency or producing a product. Ideas should be kept in perspective. Business solutions can translate to more effective ways of running a school (It does concern me that, excusing the rising costs of stuff and inflation, education continually gets more and more money for the same mixed results. Money is not the solution obviously). Business solutions do not translate well to business of learning.

Why this lack of education in education reform? Team Duncan is no team of rivals.

from Change.org:

Something that stands out about Ed Sec Arne Duncan and his inner circle - Klein, Sharpton, and, lord help us, Newt Gingrich at the *cough* "progressive" Education Equality Project; Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Mayor Bloomberg, and the whole Billionaire Boys' Club gang; Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, and the "give us a rookie idealist and a five week crash course, and we'll give you a competent, expert teacher" gang at Teach for America - and their whole "reform" discourse is how much talk and proposed action we hear about teachers, and how little about teaching.

An obvious cause is that Duncan and most of his gang have more background in management (or, lord help us, politics) than in education. And the frightening thing is that when we listen to them, there's little evidence they're aware of the difference between an MBA and a Ph.D. in education. It's like the hospital comptroller thinking he should have the right to dictate surgical techniques in the O.R.

Clay Burell goes on to say that Team Duncan may actually have a deeper understanding of education, but they continually fail to show this. Burell leads in to a recent post by Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences. Ravitch uses accountability and high stakes testing as an example of how Team Duncan are just pushing more of what doesn't

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