BY AARON BARLOW

Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, writes, “Our efforts to improve schools have worked well where people have led with courage. To say otherwise is wrong.” As one who has spent 25 of the last 40 years in the classroom, as a secondary-school teacher, an adjunct college instructor and as a full-time college professor, I am certain it is he who is wrong. And that the real courage, in education, lies elsewhere.

Like so many making decisions about education in America, Duncan is besotted by numbers—or massages them, at least, to make predetermined points. He starts his recent article for The Washington Post with two paragraphs celebrating that fourth- and eighth-grade test scores are up—before admitting that twelfth-grade scores are flat. His explanation for this, circular and self-serving, is that high schools have resisted reform.

He then celebrates the increase in high-school graduation—but he looks at this only as a number to be proud of, writing that getting “more kids over the finish line of high school means many more have a chance to continue their education.” In light of twelfth-grade flat scores, that can be no more than just pushing recognition of failure, in point of fact, on to the next level: many of these graduates (as a recent look into graduation rates in the District of Columbia shows) should not have graduated at all and will face extensive remediation if they go on to college.

Duncan goes on to take credit for the increase in percentages of Americans with two- and four-year degrees and for the increased number of Latinos in college. I suspect that he knows these numbers cannot be connected to his “reforms” for he doesn’t even try to make such a claim, simply noting the increases and expecting readers to assume a connection—except to say that it “happened because we confronted hard truths, raised the bar and tried new things.”

No.

That’s like taking credit for the rise in the ocean because you spit into it.

Duncan goes on, as would be expected, to raise the specter of “standards,” writing that today “almost every state has raised standards” and that in charter schools in particular students “are held accountable.” To him, “standards” is nothing more than the reaching of arbitrary numerical goal posts. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with real learning.

Real learning isn’t the cramming of six years of instruction into five, as Duncan lauds Chicago schools for doing. Real learning results from positive motivation of students through factors of family, community and educational environment and is facilitated by teachers with real knowledge both of their students and their subject matters. Real learning is subjective and individual; it cannot be assessed simply through batteries of standardized tests. It does not result, as Duncan claims, from “common-sense changes such as increased learning time, more early learning, a deeper focus on the quality of principals and teachers, and a bright light on the data.” It results from an emphasis on play and a reduction, early on at least, of stress. It results from an increasing (as they grow) sense of agency on the parts of students concerning their education. It results from confidence in teachers and an emphasis on teacher training instead of on numerical standards (letting the horse lead the cart instead of vice versa). It results from a commitment to fund education, including teacher pay, to a level where institutions and individuals are never trying simply to make do with too little.

It does not result from teacher evaluation of the sort Duncan says “few places are sticking with… and getting it right.” It results from administrators with real classroom experience themselves (unlike Duncan) who evaluate classroom success through a panoply of factors in conjunction with the individual teachers—not from a set of standards imported from some faceless assessment bureau.

Duncan blames both “ends of the political spectrum” for impeding the success of reform. The real problem,  though, is that both political parties have been approaching education wearing the same set of blinders for a generation. Duncan isn’t so different from Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education who, like Duncan, has never been a teacher herself. On education, I doubt that Jerry Brown and Donald Trump would find much to argue about. All four like charter schools, are amenable to vouchers, and think stipulated outcomes can change what’s going on inside our schools. Duncan is right, voters “are not holding anyone accountable for education.” Not only that, but we have used teachers as a punching bag for so long that no one is listening to what they have to say about it—though they are the ones who can lead us to real and effective educational reform.

There was nothing courageous in what Duncan did as Secretary of Education, and nothing courageous about what DeVos is doing now. The real courage is shown in the classroom, where thousands of teachers are still managing to provide fine education to students in the face of poor funding and pay and interference by people (like Duncan and DeVos) whose agendas cause them to look more to numbers and political philosophies than to the real successes of students.