More Duncanisms

Do I like reading and writing about our Secretary of Education's words and performance? Depressingly, for this once-hopeful Obamaniac, no. I don't. Here's another example of why:

In a recent interview, Secretary Duncan discussed how he went about assembling his team, targeting people like Ms. Melendez who came from modest backgrounds, had a passion for the work, and showed an entrepreneurial spirit—and were willing to take what was likely a big pay cut to work in a federal job. No education policy or district superstars with big egos were welcome, he said.

“If they’re scared off because they won’t make more money ... or if they wanted a certain job title, ... that’s not the kind of person we want,” Mr. Duncan said. “We want people for whom this is a real passion. This is mission-driven work. Everyone is taking pay cuts.”

Ms. Melendez, by the way, is Duncan's appointee for K-12 chief. Her experience?

She got her superintendent’s job, in California’s 30,000-student Pomona Unified School District, through a nontraditional route: She spent a year and a half at a private education foundation before winning a spot in the 2006 Broad Superintendents Academy, which trains emerging district leaders.

So she takes a "pay cut" in the "entrepreneurial spirit" - can we start a wiki of Duncanisms? - via her shortcut to the top on the tuxedo coattails of billionaire AIG crony and ed meddler Eli Broad. Call me crazy, but you'd think people who were "education policy superstars," who spent their lives in classrooms and later in research, would qualify as "passionate" more than the "missionaries" with an "entrepreneurial spirit." People like, you know, Linda Darling-Hammond, who's devoted her life to knowing through research how to improve education, rather than taking a left turn from entrepreneurialism out of some "money + passion = change you can believe in" zeal.

[Update: Tom Hoffman comments that Melendez has decades of classroom experience before her stint as a superintendent, and suggests she deserves a chance. We wish her well. The point I was trying to make here is that Duncan's rhetoric smacks of a sort of anti-intellectualism and pro-entrepreneurialism, and his staff picks reflect that as well. His DoE staffers are overwhelmingly connected more to Eli Broad and Bill Gates than to universities and classrooms.]

In light of all of this, it's no surprise that the new national standards in the works for math and reading are being written not by teachers, not by academics, but by

Achieve, a Washington-based group made up of state policymakers and business leaders; act Inc., the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit organization that runs the college-entrance exam of the same name; and the College Board, the New York City-based sponsor of the sat admissions exam and the Advanced Placement program.

--ed businesses all. Achieve* is run by politicians and businesspeople; Iowa City and the College Board need no introduction, as we've all filled bubbles for them in our careers to show our learning. You can bet none of these entrepreneurs are thinking pay cuts in the long term. Think of the new tests possible with national standards.

Secretary Duncan, if you want "passion" and "mission-driven," why are you excluding the exemplars of those qualities - the people who've devoted their lives to the work, and never had much room in their salaries for pay cuts because it was never about the money for them? They offer value-added qualities that your entrepreneurs don't: life-long experience, knowledge, and dedication.

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*A previous error has been corrected here, which mistook Achieve for a different Achieve. "Achieve" is a popular name for folks in the education business.