Schools

Education Secretary's Comments Anger Administrators, Parents

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan came under fire for his "white suburban moms" comment about the Common Core Standards.

By Karina Ioffee

Last Friday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents that he found it "fascinating" that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards could be traced to “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden realize — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

The Common Core was designed as a way to improve student learning by focusing on themes to learn science, math and the language arts and is being implemented in 45 states this year. But some critics say that it focuses too much on analyzing texts and not enough on getting children to think for themselves.

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Regardless of how you feel about Common Core, Duncan’s comment has caused a frenzy among parents, who say the Education Secretary has incorrectly injected race and class into something that impacts all children.

One New York educator has even penned a letter to Duncan, which he shared with Patch.

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"You need to know that if the common core initiative has succeeded at anything, it has succeeded in uniting all the disparate groups throughout our state and country - white and nonwhite, urban and suburban, mothers, fathers, educators, and politicians of all parties," said Joseph Rella, the Superintendent of Schools in the Comsewogue School District located in Port Jefferson Station, New York in his letter.

Rella went on to say that student achievement has not improved anywhere Common Core has been implemented.

“We need look no further than New Orleans, Chicago, and Philadelphia to see the end result of the corporate takeover of our public schools. Significantly, not one single word was spoken about the effects of those grand initiatives on the children of those cities.”

Since his speech on Friday, Secretary Duncan has apologized for his language.

“I used some clumsy phrasing that I regret — particularly because it distracted from an important conversation about how to better prepare all of America’s students for success,” he wrote on the U.S. Department of Education’s website. “I want to encourage a difficult conversation and challenge the underlying assumption that when we talk about the need to improve our nation’s schools, we are talking only about poor minority students in inner cities. This is simply not true. Research demonstrates that as a country, every demographic group has room for improvement.”

If you’re a teacher, school administrator or parents, we want to hear from you. Are you concerned about the implementation of Common Core in local schools? Share your views in the comments below.

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