Arne Duncan, Obama’s Education secretary, announced their big plan to save public education last week and, surprise! surprise!, it has NOTHING to do with ending the punitive stick policies of Bushco and a money funnel to test makers.

It does seem to be less prone to cronyism rewards (the Bushco failed Reading First) and add some carrots (to the state departments of education and district bureaucrats, NOT teachers).

Now, instead of Bushco’s all-or-nothing threats, Arne has proposed a 3-tier threat system. Tier I teachers get fired immediately, Tier 2 teachers get fired next year, and Tier 3 teachers get fired in 2 years. This was Arne’s approach in Chicago that didn’t work. The new teachers they brought in to replace those whom they fired did no better and in many cases did worse when it came to working with the most challenging kids and raising those holy test scores.

Teacher pay is to be tied primarliy to test scores. Since those of us who work with the most challenging poor minority and non-English speaking children are stupid, lazy, and don’t care enough to actually teach our kids, according to the conservative Bush/Obama theory, waving money in front of our noses will change that! And watching our colleagues who teach in all-white, upper middle class schools rake even more dough after working in ideal conditions will REALLY inspire us to stop being so lazy and causing all these poverty effects in our kids’ lives and our money starving schools. The districts will use most of the money to hire more bureaucrats and trainers and test analysts and little will funnel into the classroom like it didn’t under NCLB and Bush.

No change here. More of the same. Good-bye Reading Rainbow and public education. Nice knowing you . . . .

Oddly he brought the kids into the meeting with the parole officer…which suggests he was subconciously trying to get arrested. Or see just how far he could take it.