

Secretary Duncan is still walking back his remarks, but if a similar story in Texas is any guide, he's not done with this fight by a long shot.

Speaking to a group of superintendents, Duncan stepped in it, got down and rolled around in it when he said mothers just couldn't accept how dumb their kids were.


Common Core has been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, and so far, the rollout has been such a disaster that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a Common Core supporter, said, "You think the Obamacare implementation is bad? The implementation of the Common Core is far worse."

But President Barack Obama took responsibility for the failures of healthcare.gov and his broken promise that people could keep their insurance plans. Not so with Secretary Duncan, who thought telling mothers that he knew their children better than they was good politics.

Secretary Duncan's half-hearted apology for his "controversial-sounding soundbites" and "clumsy phrasing" has done nothing to quell the full-throated opposition. Critics have started a petition on WhiteHouse.gov to remove Duncan as Secretary of Education.

The apology is beside the point. Parents of public school students--myself included--are mad that our education system is still based on standardized tests that are developmentally inappropriate, unable to measure classroom learning, and over-emphasized to the point of corrupting the curriculum. Moms (and dads, for that matter) will not be happy until we put developing children and not raising test scores at the center of our education policy. We're just waiting for Secretary Duncan to realize that he isn't as brilliant as he thinks he is.
