Asking Arne

Arne Duncan kicks off American Education Week today with a live #AskArne Q&A session on Twitter. I'm anticipating Arne's usual repetitive speed-rapping (speed tweeting?) evasive answers to any difficult questions. I'm sure his com guys will have him fully prepped with the party line and have plenty of their own crew tweeting in with puffy questions, ie. "Don't you think your Race To The Top reforms and your NCLB waivers ares the civil rights issues of our era?"

Instead, I hope someone will ask him about the recent report from the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, showing "no real progress in reading scores" for the city's public school students during his tenure as schools CEO.

A good Arne question might focus on another piece of Consortium report which found that racial gaps in achievement steadily increased, and Latino students, and African American students fell further behind all other groups while Duncan was in charge. Civil rights issue, indeed. (For more on this, see Julie Woestehoff's latest piece in the Chicago K-12 Examiner, "Arne Duncan "reforms" increased black-white achievement gap.")

Here's a possible #AskArne question:

You rode "Chicago Miracle" myth all the way to Washington. What do you have to say about your "reform" plan now, in light of CCSR report?

It fits perfectly. Only 137 characters.