After 6 years of failure, and complaints from teachers, poor and minority have complained that the Obama administration’s support of relentlessly mindless testing and a corporate for profit model for public schools.

Well, now that the protests are reaching into white school districts, Obama finally has to pay attention to parents and teachers, as opposed to listening to corrupt grifter and banksters who are determined to make their fortunes off of public education money:

Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.

Specifically, the administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorizes the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.

“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has announced that he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.”
………
As a new generation of tests tied to the Common Core was rolled out last spring, several states abandoned plans to use the tests, while others renounced the Common Core, or rebranded it as a new set of local standards. And some parents, mostly in suburban areas, had their children opt out of the tests.

(emphasis mine)

That last bit is exactly the same racist tripe that Duncan used 2 years ago, when he stated his mystification over the the fact hat there were white suburban parents were opposing his ruining the public schools.

I don’t think that either Duncan or Obama understand why white people are finally turning on their educational vision, but I do think that they understand the political reality.

Black people, brown people, and teachers they could ignore, but once it was white folks, they were forced to at least pretend to listen.