You call that reform?

This letter was published in TIME Magazine, Sept. 28, 2009 following a story about Arne Duncan and his plans, early in his tenure as Secretary of Education.

You call that reform?

What I learned from TIME's story on Education Secretary Arne Duncan is that Duncan's only experience before he became head of Chicago schools was helping out in his mother's after-school tutoring program [Sept. 14]. His plan is to take nationwide the unproven, and not terribly successful, approaches he used in Chicago and also expand the Bush Administration's ineffective testing program. All because he thinks U.S. schools are "dysfunctional," despite analyses that show the primary problem is poverty, not the quality of our schools. American students who do not live in poverty have done well on international tests. Some reform!

Stephen Krashen