100 Questions I Might Ask Arne Duncan

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Sometimes it takes me awhile to "get it."
In a Facebook group I admire, very much, they are preparing for a phone dialog with Arne Duncan. Imagine that. If you need help I linked his name to listening to him.
Members are engaged in a very interesting discussion of what they want to say, however the group is held together under the notion of WRITING to the President, in "Teacher Letters To Obama" in messages from increasingly desperate teachers to a rather deaf nation on our present policies in education. So a few days ago I put together some of my thoughts on current policy, and added that into the mix there. You can read that here. And I'm enjoying reading all the different points raised. You should read through the responses. You might even enjoy joining the group.

Then it came to me. The question.
Really this is a public servant that ought to be doing the talking, explaining, preparation. While I was sweating on where to begin, I thought about it and realized that as a teacher and a parent, I really have questions above all else. So I am sitting down from my frame, my perspectives, and I'm asking these. They seem logical to me. And I'm sure terribly naive to everyone else.

1. What have you learned from NCLB?

2. What was the purpose of that educational reform, both stated and in its results? How did it come into being as we saw it within schools?

3. What is the single most lasting word associated with NCLB?

4. What is the purpose of public school?

5. How do you see the national governmental role in education?

6. What is the purpose of education?

7. Students in areas of extreme poverty seem to carry the majority of the burden of our society, how does this get reinforced by the system of education we have evolved? How is the intention of school explicit in its projection otherwise(against that reinforcement of society), or to clarify what is school doing but creating a frame to see how we narrate our world to ourselves?

8. How does the recent proposed educational changes of your department, the Blueprint if you will, address the needs of those struggling in our country educationally and economically?

9. Who has been failed in the recent years in our educational model as is?

10. Given the enormous discourse associated with your policies on "the bad teacher" define "a good teacher." I will be, by way of deduction, then assuming a bad teacher is the antithesis unless stated otherwise. Do you think a "bad teacher' might be a great one if embedded in a wealthier community setting to teach, maybe one from an under-performing environment, why or why not?

11. Define and picture verbally how it can be thought remotely American for a President's children to know a different system of education than that of a child, say a child named Estevan raised in a car, in an area of extreme violence and poverty as a 1st generation child a student in public school outside of LA? What specific group, money, interest, raises your attention to define schools more effectively for that child?

12. What do test based schools model?

13. Significant narrowing occurred under NCLB, how will you alter this specific issue in newer models?

14. What should a 1st graders day in a school look like?In narrowed underperforming environments what proportion of a day should testing occupy?

15. Why hasn't a push put technology in the hands of every student nationally?

16. Besides saving money what was the intention of running teachers with experience from the field?

17. Why or how or when will teacher compensation be a focus so that it can move from a missionary work to a professional work? How impossible is this. Given that have you considered the fact that teachers feel very betrayed by the salary they are able to make in proportion to what the job asks and how they are portrayed.

18. What is the role of business within public school schools?
This must be an enormous question to ask.

19. You must be aware of the work of Nel Noddings, from my perspectives she serves well the explication of a philosophy of education, what is the theory/philosophy/position from which you are working in education? Why?

20. As a teacher the last ten years I have been nationally denigrated, and this has grown under this administration to my utter surprise, what purposes does/has this served?

21.If a child needs better home care, jobs for the family, security, safety, love, how does current policy/blueprints address fundamental impoverishment of this kind?

22. Explain the role of textbooks and their publishing in defining the way education looks nationally?

23. I would like to understand why it's a good thing if every classroom is the same? Can you explicate the same page/same day theory?Is this the goal of National Standards?

24. Describe the school and school days of your children?

25. Who was a teacher that made a difference in your life, will you describe this?

26. Did your children test well, enjoy tests? Do tests describe well your children as you know them?

27. What effort is made to frame successes within school systems, how is that nationally promoted and framed? I'm asking how we celebrate successes in our models? Does this disproportionally fall in areas of affluence?

28. Did you attend public schools, are your children attending public schools? If I can ask having that as my background- I would have found it very difficult to teach without having my children attend the schools I taught within, it seems foundational to making them places where we want kids to be and in understanding their issues, strengths, features?

29. In areas of crime, poverty, extreme societal problems, violence, what would you expect it would take to train and retain high quality educational leaders and professionals?

30. Given 29. what are the factors that prevent this from national priority?

31. Who cares about public schools? Who does not?

32. I studied the "hidden curriculum" of schools extensively as I was trained, what do you think is the current "hidden curriculum" say in poverty schools, under-performing schools, schools in areas we might denote from Richard Florida in areas of artistic, cultural and economic growth and protection?

33. Discuss various growth models in the way we might look at public schools in terms of how they might radically alter our schools organization, direction, emphasis? Are the ones in the blueprint really altering the dynamics in such a way that student growth is actually a significant determiner of the value of a school?

34. Define "critical thinking" which is so much a part of the dialog on student learning,and then explicate how it is relevant in current calls for centralization/standardization and in the development of a critical mind with various student populations?

35. What is our greatest asset nationally in terms of education?

36. What would you leave as a legacy within public schools?

37. This is not meant rudely, but what means are being employed to what ends within school reform? Is it a model that we want children to incorporate as a part of their definitions of self, school, community, state, nation as the way to go about improvement of systems? Is it a model? Do you think it holds world wide respect? Can you explain the positive of this legislative process and the growing politicization of ed?

38. A enormous emphasis has been placed on compliance, compliant kindergartens, 1st grades with compliance in testing, teachers, curriculum, compliance, mandates, scripted instruction, compliance with standard, standardization, compliance with national edict, policy, is compliance a foundational value threaded as this has been through the fabric of the educational model. It demands compliance. in fact you are pretty clear non-compliance is the road to loss of a teacher job. What is the cost of this? What has been, if you will, the rub?

39. Describe a teacher you denote "high performing", what are their attributes? How highly placed is compliance within that teacher's bearing and being/professionalism and work?

40. Literacy seems to be the dividing line in our nation between those that can, and those that cannot, interestingly a socio-economic divide as well, what way is literacy specifically promoted as a national agenda within current blueprint reform?

41. Fear seems to frame NCLB, punitive measures and correction, describe the role of fear in education. Even at the teacher level I do not believe in 8 years to a day, certainly not a week ever went by with peers that the dynamics of fear did not dominate the rationales and reasons and talk around change and what we were doing. It is rife in reading teacher's dialogs on their work, from fear of test failure, to fear for their job, to fear for critical and intrusive oversight, fear for failure to meet student needs, fear of ill-fitting reform. Really at the end of the day what is the purpose of fear based education?
What role do we have in helping children, as the adults, face this fear. How do we do that, encourage that, within punishment and fear based models?

42. Why have charter schools been encouraged? What is the reason they are encouraged by this administration? What do they allow?

43. How many children should be in a first grade room?

44. What role do the arts play in the education of a person?

45. What is the thinking behind National Standards?

46. What ways have feedback from teachers, what feedback loops if you will, have been factored into the development of educational policy on local, state and national levels? How can teachers communicate to you and forward their questions, how can they challenge your assumptions, what way is a discourse established? What would be the folly in a failure to include teachers and their hand-on observation within the process of reform? Did teachers frame the blueprint?

47. It would seem interesting that in areas of wealth schools are not rated as failing to a 100% level, while they may have a few points to climb on their states testing system, they are not those labeled critically failing. Given that alone what does policy do to address economic realities?

48. NCLB at the best sat on a lie, or perhaps it was called an ideal, or some kind of fantasy, that 100% of students were going to be by 2014 proficient and advanced within state based systems. How is the current educational policy seated, what is the big lie underneath all of the rest of it that challenges the very possibility of the law achieving itself? Or is that relevant? What will be in 8 years the thing that another inherits to address as the "uh oh"-it would seem that was easily enough seen in the enactment of the last cycle of ed law, why do we construct ourselves into dichotomies like this, and then continue to use the term education? This base seems functionally very problematic, is it?

49. I personally really like a growing group on Facebook, Children Are More Than Test Scores, how are test scores more than children? What is the nature of data driven work? What are the pros and the cons as we are experiencing children as test scores?

50. Why haven't we created models that track children into lives, careers, and work, and asked for their reflections on the purposes, successes, and their definitions of school?Why not that data base?

51. What is the relationship, partnership, how should a healthy system look locally, state and nationally within the public models? Where should the majority of policy, action, generation of idea and effort be placed within that structure to define education? With parents, teachers, administrators, legislators, policos, law-makers, consultants, Standards writers?

52. Consultancy has grown an enormous amount and factored large sums of money to a growing industry, how has this attended to a public principle, what are the accountability models around consultancy?

53. In CA alone vast numbers, 23,000 teachers are losing jobs, why wasn't stimulus money and national concern great enough to stop class sizes going to 30 plus and the erosion of systems to this degree considered a national priority? Or at the least to soften what must fundamentally be an enormous blow to the profession?

54. How would you recommend teachers organize?

55. As a teacher I cannot disclose test questions on state tests nor discuss them, I cannot tell parents many things, I am held in check in numerous ways around advocacy or my sharing something like a view around what program might benefit a child, in fact teachers are finding it increasingly difficult to explain to parents why their schools are run and look they way that they do. We often cannot. Often times in the last ten years parents have been angry, frustrated, felt the pressure about things required of their children as out of line with their perceptions of what a school ought to be doing or providing. Schools have responded with informational out reach and hosts of team building mandated responses. But the gap grows in trust. What purpose does this kind of policy serve? How can we heal that?

56. The figures seem alarming about the simple notion that many of the nation's poor and immigrant children remain left behind, how can this not dictate abandoning previous models?


57. Women define currently the workforce in education, given the tarring of the last ten years how is current policy going to re-define this work as the good work of American women and men?

58. I hate to go for it but from my point of view it seems that tenure is under attack, teachers with more experience under siege experience itself attacked openly as "the problem" with clear studies telling us otherwise, and the notion of a five to seven year rotating door within the field encouraged to get the cheapest, least likely to advocate, least cohesive and cheapest thing possible which certainly puzzles me on many grounds, including its inability to help create stability in neighborhoods, connection to child and family, security for the employee, the conditions for professional development...all of these things seem to underpin the perception of "Arne Duncan." What's the purpose of this? How has this served the trust, communication, relationship with the educator? How have you in such a climate then learned anything at all that a teacher might need to express to you in addressing together concerns about education?

59. Why are America's teachers so seldom involved with and doing productive research through partnerships with educational institutions as a part of their mandate? How can that be bettered within reform moves?

60. You do not work for a teacher's salary, why not? I assume you also have a desk, comfortable chair, iphone, laptop. Many teachers do not have a chair that is remotely comfortable. Definitely without material support, years ago I found myself saying over and over again at home as I spent incredible amounts out of pocket that it would be like imagining your doctor purchasing the tongue depressors, computer, instruments, tables and then absorbing that out of pocket with no way to re-coop the cost. Since this is indeed the national model, how does policy and reform address this step-child issue that has defined the one-room school house marm teacher?
I see how it has implied a vast change is upon us, but since I still have a lousy chair and work on a laptop I had to go get, what really gets me is the denial of how it works within the realities. What system exists to address those dichotomies?
When will teachers get decent chairs? and for that matter when will children?

61. We know many children are fed and actually depend on school food, that seems good news in that we know the need exists, and we in some fashion address it. I work in a 100% free-reduced school serving over 600 children in elementary. The food is industrial, rather impersonal, and a shame when it could be a cultural investment, an investment in caring, a place of better experience, nutritional learning, fun. And as a result I see a herding in how it's approached institutionally, and as an experience. What I see wrong there seems to represent what I see within the system generally. They've complied with regulations but in the process lost good cooks, home-made food, connection to child and family. How can we learn from these things to design better food and better schools in areas where the personnel are not having their own children eat there, are employees, are fulfilling their jobs according to a dictate, mandate model/ It would seem to lead to broader questions of leadership. How do we encourage leadership that is not promoted simply as a promise to extract a higher test score?


62. Should test scores compete with things like the above? See 61.

63. I've really struggled when difficult issues arose within children, possibly abuse or neglect, so on, and my leadership has immediately reduced this to the question of how the child might perform on the state test and this has happened to such a degree it appears their only orientation. What purpose does this serve?

64. All developmental information we have, recommendations about the value of play from the AMA, and other significant sources or findings on children, seem out of the picture or out of kilter, when "standards" are developed. It would seem the expertise to filter these standards is not employed in their development from linguistic to age appropriate. Why?
Why is this above all not the work of national concern? Monitoring that?

65. I think what seems to be the emergent model of a successful learner within our schools is a highly compliant, early age genius/savant, as if children require superstar qualities. In an age of such stuff how do we offer more children music instruction, opportunities in the arts, actual exposure to math and science, nature, drama, mentors and models? And the ability to cope when they may not function like Einstein?

66. I would ask the Education Secretary to discuss and explain both his educational strengths and weaknesses, his own current educational goals, discuss the role of education within his family structures. It isn't a specific question but it is the ground of common understanding.

67. I love this quote from a close family member "policy though can do more to respect children,
respect people, and try to move towards a non-hypocrisy when it comes to America's espoused ideals rather than the underlying.. market forces culture that often drives most everything"
How are you doing that?

68. What failings of the existing policy are corrected in the proposals for re-authorization of the ed act commonly called NCLB? Also, what worked? How?

69. Given dire economic crisis are your proposals about competitive grants even feasible? How?

70. This is a quote from Richard Rothstein reacting to "the BluePrint" can you respond to it "Presently, a quarter of black young and middle-aged adults, of an age to have children in school, are either unemployed, or so discouraged about looking for work that they have dropped out of the labor force. During the course of the year, approximately 40 percent of black adults will be unemployed at one time or another. Schoolchildren from families in such circumstances will change schools more often because of housing instability, will more frequently come to school hungry, in poor health, and with behavioral problems arising from family stress. It would be a remarkable accomplishment for the achievement of disadvantaged children to remain stable for the duration of the economic crisis. Expectations of near-term improvement are breathtakingly removed from reality"?

71. And another from this same piece, "The goal of all students college-ready by 2020 is just as fanciful as the goal of all students proficient by 2014. Today, perhaps 20 percent of all youth graduate high school fully prepared for academic college. It should certainly be higher. Aspiring to make it higher is a worthy ambition. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable."

Why are we afraid to talk to reality?

72. I have been standardized teaching when a child in 3rd grade in my class vomited all over test and group. Not ill, just a good student afraid of doing poorly. What would you say to the child that doesn't test well?

73. I have kept logs of the amount of teaching time, the amount of testing required within my school that has, because of its placement in a poverty setting, felt the greatest pressure to test well with NCLB mandates. As much as 53% of the morning reading instructional time in a year was (during the course of these changes) re-directed into testing the students within 1st grade. I can certainly explain the problems that have resulted, can you explain to me how these children will learn to read well given I am absolutely mandated, forced, coerced, observed and literally ridiculed into following this absolute schedule? What do you think was the first to go?
(I can tell you this, literature.)

74. Basically I don't as a teacher want to lie. The goal of NCLB was unattainable. How can that be explained to me, to parents? Why was this allowed?

75. It seems to me that such a lie is occurring in the failure of the government to respond to the draconian cutting and collapse in state funding for education. Are you aware of the looming nightmare? And shall we sing, or what, as our jobs go and class-sizes soar?

76. Teachers lost incredible autonomy in these last ten years, and it would seem this hasn't solved much, explain in your view the kinds of qualities that define effective teaching, what seems to be a mediocrity was required, is this bettered in the blueprint?

77. I've worked for very different Principals but one thing defined many-sheer inappropriateness and lack of an ethic beyond their survival, and their self promotion. Fortunately I married a great one and had experiences and training with great ones to off-set these perceptions. I cannot imagine merit pay constructs in the hands of many that get promoted in school administrations. What leads you to believe a magical umbrella will descend to keep the rain of truth out of merit pay? Why would it work?

78. One thing that utterly mystifies me is that state tests are administrated by the teachers that have a stake in outcomes, within schools rewarding them for improvement, are we leery for any particular reason of imposing at least a modicum of the appearance of this not being highly questionable in the doing it?

79. In the last few years because of my staying in the same area for 15 years ( out of 30 in my career) I'm aware how many students do not get to go to college. The number is staggering, yet it is the "purpose" driving our work, and the economics of it overwhelmingly a factor in who can't go. It was a large factor in my own educational trajectory. I had no counsel to inform me I could go into outrageous loan debt, and go to a better school, but now the prices are so exorbitant it boggles my mind. My daughter at CalTech an example I understand. She attended my schools, poverty schools, excelled, and was able to enter 40 plus institutions. She and her sister valedictorians. Many children do not have that family awareness and support, many children cannot see themselves into schools. Many cannot find in high schools training to give them hope and possibility. As a teacher I find it heartening to hear of those that make it, but extremely rare to find a child I worried about in that college category. It feels too long, too hard, too real for me to miss. My question is why? What to do....

80. Technology only just made it to my class after a 15 year wait, and some pretty slogging local muddles, what role should technology play in education?

81. A blueprint can be a plan for a building. What are you building? What is the nation constructing?

82. How do you fundamentally differ from your predecessor in the Dept. of Ed.? What were the people that elected President Obama electing in terms of education?

83. Here is a quote from Marion Brady, an educator "Op-eds nationwide read about the same:
End social promotion! Put all kids in uniform! Disband teacher unions! Close
down schools of education! Get tough on parents! Expel the troublemakers!
Give everybody vouchers! Put mayors in charge! Abolish tenure! Bring back
corporal punishment! Convert all schools to charters! Increase spending!
Adopt pay-for-performance schemes!

Check around, and it turns out that somewhere, all these "reform" strategies
and many others have been tried and have made little or no difference. That's
because -- as most educators know but those actually running the big show
refuse to admit -- the main reason for poor learner performance is childhood
poverty. "

What will address poverty nationally in the Blueprint? there seem to be rewards and punishments for neighborhoods, communities with better , or worse, supports, but how is greater community infra-structure built with your support? Tough question that ought to be answered.

He went on to answer this in this way and it is a very challenge proposition "Clinging to that curriculum is a recipe not just for educational but for
societal disaster. If education policymakers in Tallahassee and Washington
knew what they were doing, instead of demanding national standards and tests
keyed to a curriculum generated in an era long past and no longer relevant,
they'd be calling for an emergency national conference to rethink what's
being taught, and why. "

84. Is there always one right answer? Has this one right answer test format done real damage to creating students engaged in math and science as a way of thinking?

85. Not to be rude but how does this blueprint get kids field-trips, to nature, experiences with real scientists-artists-musicians, how does it assist them after school with hours of drill kill homework, how does it provide butterfly pavilions in ghettos, how does it dribble and shoot, where does it align words with doing, where are the supplies, books, enjoyable stories, where in the blueprint are the cool tasty lunches, the neat singing programs for parents, the poems you memorize, does this blue print imprint the love of learning, does it differentiate, identify talents, place you on a trajectory, can you look at the moon through it, see the stars, will you titer a liquid, can you use this blueprint to plan for schools that embrace learning above testing, will you sing a score from it, listen to the wind, meet Beethoven, watch a Reading Rainbow, will this blueprint teach you to electric slide, will you get your turn, will your parents find their way, one day as you sit observing a hawk over your play yard will this blue print allow you the space in the day to begin to set up a bird study, from this blue print can your teacher leaders extract what they are really there to do, will you speak in multiple languages, communicate care, can I count on this blueprint to soar into the minds and hearts of all that read it as something that is like our creeds, inspirational? If not, why not?

86. How is this Blue print not a me, my kid, and then everyone else model?

87. I'm confused. NCLB wasn't funded to actually do what it purported, it wasn't funded. How is this any different especially now, given the collapses within states, like we see in California holding so many of the nation's children?

88. I've written this "standard" in a set I rather am proud of , "All children should begin the process of literacy not as a race but as a right, a joy, an exploration, and a normal function. " Would you explain to me how any of this blueprint does THAT?

89. "All children should run on beaches, in grass, have playgrounds, feel forest floors, fly kites, gather leaves, cross streets safely, visit fire stations, meet the police in nice days to learn about hard jobs with the ability to ask them about their work, go to groceries, learn about money, see movies, roll down hills, sled, walk by crocus, talk to grandmas and grandpas, collect and recycle, play cards, take turns, have dice, play Candy-land, do dance, gymnastics, try water slides, learn swimming safety, go to farms, pet animals, cut pumpkins, smell pine, wash the floor with a friend, have chores, taste baked bread, knead dough, water plants, grow seeds, take care of fish, walk in lines, put on shows, sing with friends, flop on the floor, use blocks, without feeling anything but how good all of that feels. " What exactly makes me so nervous about this Blue print Mr. Duncan is in regard to the above statement, something you cannot I'm sure answer? Why am I holding on to this as a serious issue?

90. Maybe I asked, so again, what's right with education?

91. A lot was made of "scientific" or "data driven" over the last few years. Will we invite real researchers, not those selling their wares to us, real scientists and real educators to the tables to discuss what they need to mutually understand from each other to do a better job envisioning schools? How are you as Ed secretary doing THAT?

92. Will you be attending AERA in April and in the future to be a part of Educational research in the field?

93. Have you considered conversations with Nel Noddings, Susan Ohanian, Doug Noon, Mark Ahlness, Anthony Cody, Steven Neary, Jesse Turner and a host of others they can name for you, real, long engaged on-going talk? I believe that might be really one of the more important questions I've asked.

94. It often feels like those that drive the "solutions" are on book tours or don't understand the logistical implications of their constructs, an example in listening to you speak to multiple measures being used to "look" at a child it seemed clear you just thought "more tests."
Is it possible that somehow actual practitioners might infiltrate the process to assist in helping us to understand school years with 50% or more in instructional time on tests, or anything remotely over 10% are not years where children are learning constructively. We probably can make multiple measures work, if we don't before we get to try, find them defined as a new and better workbook drill and scan tron sheet. What exactly do you think multiple measures offers and to whom will you look to assist in understanding this area?

95. If poverty drives the low end, and money the upper end, one a road to success -the other the path to failure as clearly we see- with nothing else really as clear, how do we design schools so that in areas of poverty we recreate at the least what exists in areas of economic wealth in a school?

96. President Obama ran saying he would put the out of work into building the schools "of the future" and "why not" What happened? How is this coming into being?

97. Over twenty thousand of my peers are losing their jobs. I know my District accounts for 45 this year. That is the reality. And in that our classes are zooming into sizes not seen in years, and when seen-of tragic consequences in what education could then be. And yet I do not see any mention of this in the national dialog but do hear of the firings of "bad teachers" and your support for such public denigration. What purpose has this served? How has this been compassionate, caring, effective, accountable or any of the virtues we uphold within our national rhetoric?

98. It would be impossible for you to miss Diane Ravitch's current book, tour, or commentary. How is this informing you?

99. Where do you think teachers are right?

100. Where do you think we've missed the boat?