Arne Duncan's sucessor a big problem, too

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post - John B. King was the New York State education commissioner, taking over in 2011 and announcing in December 2014 that he was leaving to become Duncan’s No. 2, a job officially titled “Senior Adviser Delegated Duties of Deputy Secretary of Education,” according to the Education Department’s biography. King can run the department without being officially nominated as education secretary.

Duncan is leaving amid strong discontent from all sides of the political spectrum with his tenure, during which he became the most powerful education secretary in U.S. history. He backed school reforms, including the Common Core State Standards and standardized test-based accountability for teachers, which became increasingly unpopular in states across the country. Last year, the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, called on him to resign. And Congress is now considering legislation to rewrite No Child Left Behind that would sharply reduce the federal power Duncan wielded, a direct result of Duncan’s tenure.

King was just as embattled, if not more, in New York as education commissioner for some of the same reasons as Duncan — and there were numerous calls for his resignation as well. By the time he resigned, he had lost the confidence of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) (although King was appointed by the New York State Regents).

King led a series of school reforms that included a new teacher evaluation system using student standardized test scores that critics say is nonsensical (for example, art teachers are evaluated by student math test scores) and the implementation of the Common Core standards, and aligned Pearson-designed standardized tests. King’s oversight of all of this was considered such a disaster that Cuomo last year wrote in a letter to top state education officials that “Common Core’s implementation in New York has been flawed and mismanaged from the start.”

Critics of King in New York said he did not give teachers enough time to develop lessons and forced students to take new Pearson-designed standardized tests that themselves were attacked for including unfair questions and bad scoring. King’s testing policies led to the creation of an opt-out movement in New York, in which 20 percent of test-takers statewide sat out the tests this spring.
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