Education chaos: Common Core, Arne Duncan on inequality, fairness and federal spending
Many school systems remain “fundamentally separate and unequal,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said and a Sunday Washington Post article claims Common Core makes the divide greater.
Duncan points to 23 states spending more per pupil in affluent school districts than they do in high-poverty districts, claiming thatinequality may be getting worse.
Duncan then blamed Republican-backed efforts to overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act, which he said would give even more money to well-off school districts at the expense of struggling districts.
The Post has run a series on Common Core and now reached out to experts in New York and Florida who write that: “I can tell you that students of color, economically disadvantaged students, and special education students disproportionately ‘failed’ our Common Core tests” and how the “Florida standards were essentially a renaming of the Common Core and she apologizes for the devastating toll Common Core math took on her students….” – the battles rage on.
Duncan speaks of politics, blames Republicans who are pushing what he called a “Robin Hood in reverse” funding proposal that “would exacerbate the existing problem by allowing even greater cuts to districts that need the most help.”
The funding inequality data comes from National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Department of Education that collects information on schools, and Duncan’s assertions are accurate – some districts get more money than others.
“The point of that money was to supplement, recognizing that poor children, and English language-learners, and students with disabilities come to school with additional challenges,” Duncan told the Washington Post. “This is about trying to get additional resources to children and communities who everyone knows need additional help.”
Pennsylvania was listed as the state with the worst separation according to the data.
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