The Education Secretary and a criminal conspiracy. Duncan should be fired.

I admit that I thought the appointment of Arne Duncan to the post of Education Secretary by President Obama was a terrible idea.

I also admit that I have signed every petition to have him fired.

I think Duncan’s policies while head of schools in Chicago were bad for students.

He hasn’t gotten better at the Department of Education.

But Michael Winerip of the New York Times (a reporter who has nothing to do with the Times decision to publish phony teacher scores) has written about Duncan’s conduct in regard to a federal investigation of a criminal conspiracy involving the former head of DC schools, Michelle Rhee.

This goes beyond bad policy decisions. As serious as that is.

Arne Duncan is impeding a federal investigation of cheating on test scores in the DC schools when Michelle Rhee was Chancellor.

Winerip reports that Duncan and Rhee have appeared together at a recent conference. Duncan offered her high praise.

Richard Hyde is an investigator looking into test cheating scandals in Atlanta and other school districts. He believes that the result of Duncan consorting with someone like Rhee who is under investigation will discourage witnesses from coming forward.

Mr. Hyde said that to get witnesses to cooperate in such investigations, they must believe that the political leadership is committed. “I’m shocked that the secretary of education would be fraternizing with someone who could potentially be the target of the investigation,” he said. “The appearance of a conflict of interest is troubling because it can cause the public to lose faith in the investigation.”

What more does Obama need to fire the guy?

8 thoughts on “The Education Secretary and a criminal conspiracy. Duncan should be fired.

  1. These aren’t Duncan’s policies.

    These are Obama’s policies.

    Obama is the problem, not Duncan.

    Vote for Obama in 2012 and you vote for a continuation of these corporate-driven education reform policies.

    I know you were opposed to the NEA’s early endorsement of Obama, Fred.

    That was a fine argument you made about that.

    But I think so long as Obama knows teachers are going to support him regardless of how he hurts our profession or demonizes us in policy and statement, nothing changes.

    And so again I say, Obama is the problem.

    Go public with oppostion to Obama like Teacher Ken did and see what reaction you get.

    You have a large readership – I bet that would make a few waves on the Internets.

    1. Sorry. You’ve got the wrong guy. I was not only opposed to the early endorsement, I was a delegate who spoke and voted against it. My opposition was based on the fact that the NEA got nothing in return. Less than nothing.
      My own personal vote for president on election day is meaningless. I live in Chicago. In a blue state. Because of the undemocratic nature of the electoral college, I am essentially disenfranchised.
      So, instead, I assume you are asking me to organize folks to vote against Obama, or not vote at all, which is essentially a vote against Obama.
      Not me.
      That’s not where my efforts are going. There’s a movement in Chicago against the destruction of the public schools. I’m in it.
      I’m not spending the next 9 months engaged in a tired debate over voting for Obama or not.
      I’m also not buying into the argument that criticizing Obama helps the Republicans.
      Fire Duncan. Bring the troops home from Afghanistan. Hold Obama to his promise on the pipeline. Get rid of the Defense of Marriage Act. Restore civil liberties that have been undermined by the Patriot Act.
      That’s where my head is at.
      I guess I’m not as interested in getting reactions as I am in getting action. Less about making waves and more about making change.

      1. Fred,

        I think all those things you want Obama to do are noble.

        I agree with you on all of them.

        But he won’t do them.

        Because he doesn’t want to.

        His record is quite clear:

        Obama is a corporatist president who has given a pass to every Wall Street criminal who helped bring about the ’08 mess, who renominated Ben Bernanke (one of the architects of the mess), who named the Goldman/AIG bailout architect Tim Geithner to Treasury, who renamed the Bush bank bailout TALF from TARP and continued to hand out free money to the banksters so that Jamie Dimon and others could rake in huge “performance bonuses”. Far from taking on the Dimons of the world, Obama defended the bonuses as justified in the press. In addition, Obama has largely handed over the USDOE to the Gates Foundation, the FDA to Big Pharma, the USDA to Monsanto and the Dept of Energy to the oil and gas companies. Just look at who he put into place in these agencies and look at the policies that come out of the administration.

        I won’t get into the foreign policy stuff here, Glenn Greenwald does a terrific job of exposing the Obama administration for the secretive war machine they are, but I will ask a few questions:

        How many innocents has our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president killed through his secretive drone campaign?

        How many Americans will he decide to assassinate now that he has declared he has the power to liquidate any American he believes to be a terrorist threat?

        How many gov’t whistelblowers will he prosecute in order to keep the Surveillance State stuff a secret?

        As for ed policy, well, 40 % of my evaluations will now be based upon test scores using a value added measurement with a MOE the size of Obama’s ego BECAUSE Barack Obama’s Race to the Top policy encouraged that. The charter cap in my state has been lifted for the same reason. The new Obama policy push on ed is for merit pay (that’s what the $5 billion for education announcement was all about a few weeks ago.) We get a nationalized curriculum with nationalized standardized tests in a few years as a direct result of Obama’s efforts through RttT and the NCLB waivers.

        I am opposed to the majority of Obama’s policies.

        I am especially opposed to his education policies.

        The point I want to make is, these are HIS policies.

        Not Ducan’s policies.

        Not HRC’s.

        They’re Obama’s.

        I would never ask you to campaign against Obama. I certainly didn’t mean that to be the point of my comment.

        The point I wanted to make was that by backing the Dump Duncan campaign you pass along the myth that somehow Obama is not responsible for his own policies, that by changing the ministers around him, you will change his policies.

        But you won’t change those policies because Obama wants his administration to pursue them.

        We have to stop displacing blame from the architect of the Obama administration policies to the lackeys who carry those policies out.

      1. Why is it that those who blame Duncan and excuse Obama don’t also refer to No Child Left Behind as Rod Paige’s policy instead of blaming Bush? You can’t have it both ways. The Secretary of Education answers to the President, who has the power to fire him. NCLB was Bush’s policy, and Race to the Top is Obama’s.

  2. I can see why you’d think firing Duncan is a good idea. However I have to argue that shutting down the U.S. Dept. of Ed is a better one.
    With the appointment of Duncan, we can clearly see the amount of corruption and scandal that can happen when the govt. gets TOO big.
    Education is reserved to the states. (See the 10th Amend) AS such, the Feds shouldn’t be involved.

    $69 BILLION wasted on this department alone. Just think if those funds were directed back to the Schools where local communities could decide HOW to spend it.

    Until teachers, parents and voters demand abolishing the US DOE, we risk all of this happening again and again.

    Central planners are tyrants. They control everything. It’s time to de-centralize and empower teachers and local communities again.

Leave a comment