Last Friday, addressing state school superintendents, the U.S. secretary of education discussed the outcry against the new Common Core standards. "It's fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who -- all of a sudden -- their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were, and that's pretty scary," he said. "You've bet your house and where you live and everything on 'My child's going to be prepared.' That can be a punch in the gut."
Duncan's gender, racial and geographic specificity -- as if dads or black suburban moms or white moms in cities don't exist or share these feelings, or the feelings of white suburban moms aren't valid -- was thoughtless and wrongheaded. Imagine the firestorm if he'd marginalized pushback against an education initiative by arguing it was only coming from "black inner-city moms." But at the core, he made a valid point, one he stated more clearly on Monday in an attempt to clarify his remarks.
In New York, pass rates on standardized tests dropped by more than a quarter last year, after the state overhauled them to be in line with the new Common Core standards. That means nearly 70 percent of New York students failed the reading and math standardized tests.
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