Arne's in Europe pushing education reform. Odd UNESCO ad featuring Arne and Obama playing basketball

[madfloridian]

I agree with Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post about this ad for education featuring a basketball scene. It's really strange.

Is Duncan out of bounds?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is in Europe this week, visiting first London and then Paris, where he will visit UNESCO headquarters and deliver a speech on Thursday called “The Vision of Education Reform in the United States: Keeping the Eye on the Ball!”

Below is the poster designed to promote the Paris speech.

No. It's not a joke.

I have just one question: Who thought that showing Duncan playing basketball with President Obama was a good idea?

There is an interesting blog post at The New Stateman website about Duncan's visit.

Don't buy the hype from Michael Gove - or Arne Duncan.

Arne Duncan, Obama's education secretary and the man who invited the US military to run local schools during his controversial tenure as chief executive of the Chicago state school system, is in London visiting our very own Michael Gove. The latter, of course, has been ultra-keen to push his agenda of academies and "free schools" since taking office in May, and has become fond of citing the Obama administration's support for so-called charter schools. (Interestingly, on a side note, Gove and the Tories have very little to say about Obama's position on deficit reduction, which is closer to the Labour Party's view than the coalition's).

"It's worth noting the cynicism, however, of Gove's approach. At first, the Education Secretary championed free schools by pointing to the supposed successes of the Swedish version, which is said to have been the original inspiration for the Tories' education reforms. But, as emprical evidence emerged over the summer that challenged the Swedish model, Gove and his outriders began pointing instead to America's experiment with charter schools. Hence today's visit by Duncan to the UK.

As the Americans reject the Obama administration, the coalition embraces one of its worst ideas. Peer-reviewed academic research suggests charter schools ain't as good as their well-funded and high-profile advocates make them out to be. Here's what the CREDO National Charter Schools Study at Stanford University discovered last year:

"While the report recognized a robust national demand for more charter schools from parents and local communities, it found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference."

There has been no mention of the role teachers might have played in this election. I believe it might have made a huge difference if they were enthused and not so afraid and wary of the coming changes being forced on them from the top down.