I won’t pretend I was very happy with the appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education by the president whom I voted for. Aside from the fact that I really rather that Obama had not named so many people from Illinois to his administration, Duncan’s appointment also meant that the U.S. Department of Education has been helmed by anything but career educators for the last five years. Still, given that Duncan has been at Chicago Public Schools for a while — something Bush’s Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings never could’ve boasted, despite her hugely appropriate name for the position — I let it go. Well, wasn’t that a stupid move.

Given Obama’s recent speech on educational policy to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, I’m beginning to worry that “hope and change” has turned into stagnation as far as the educational front is concerned. Some of these positions we already knew about: Obama supported merit pay and increases in early childhood education during his campaign, for example, and has continued to since being elected. Some positions are new but understandable — he mentioned possibly lengthening the school day or school year to allow students to get more work in. Some also (at least in this case) come out of left field for me. Specifically, Obama now talks about “tougher, clearer standards” to train American children for the 21st century. This is nothing more than code for the same standardized testing that has already stifled American education for the last few years under two Secretaries of Education who somehow convinced a huge portion of Congress that it was a good idea to force students to take a massive number of tests in order to graduate and make school funding dependent entirely on scoring thresholds.

Don’t get me wrong — I voted for Obama partly because he painted himself as a consensus-builder, and I’m glad he’s working to bring in Congress and state Republicans. The problem is that, statistically speaking, this is one area where he doesn’t need to give ground.