As I Have Written Many Times,

Arne Duncan is a complete disaster on education, an incompetent, who is in love with the concept of "market-based reforms" which are destined to fail, and have failed in Chicago.

The reason is simple: It's because education is not a business and cannot be run on business models. Teachers can not be put on "merit pay" models given the extremely political and often poisonous work environment which they are subjected. Teachers are supposed to collaborate with each, not be "competitive" with other teachers. Students are not all alike, and there are so many variables at work regarding their "performance" that are out of the schools' hands. Family environment and poverty or the lack of it are key.

That doesn't stop idiots like Duncan, Gates, Broad, and all of the rest from shoving a bunch of shit down the throats of educators and taxpayers in general.

A brief snip to illustrate my point:

This question is at the heart of a longstanding battle between business-oriented educators, who want to churn out a ready workforce, and progressive educators, acting in the tradition of John Dewey, who believe schools should nurture well-rounded, independent-minded citizens.

Unfortunately, most Republicans and many Democrats, including some progressives, believe that the problems with American schools can be solved with more market-style policies, competition, financial incentives, charter schools, privatization, standardized testing and weakened teachers’ unions.

But the theory that supports treating education as a marketplace is flawed, as is the practice. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute and others point out that few professionals in the private sector are paid for performance (except in finance, and that should be a cautionary example). And when faced with performance incentives, people typically end up gaming the system. In a 2003 study, economists Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and Brian Jacob of Harvard found that as high-stakes testing increased, teachers were more likely to cheat, for example, changing student answers, giving students correct answers and teaching from illicitly obtained advance test copies.

The educational systems in the rest of the developed world, which famously outperform U.S. schools, are overwhelmingly public, highly unionized and protected from market-style funding. Even though American suburban schools vary dramatically, many of these schools—with unions and teacher tenure—perform so well that affluent families pick their homes partly on the basis of school quality.

Who needs facts when you have a neoliberal agenda that states public schools are bad because they are public?