Among other insightful comments on what the 2010 education priorities of the Obama administration might be, Steve Peha has offers this:

Our Secretary of Education has remarked many times that our tests are inadequate and that the language of the current ESEA encourages states to lower their standards over time. Appropriately, he calls this process, “the race to the bottom”. Mr. Duncan has the issue pegged. But fixing it doesn’t seem to be at the top of his agenda. I find that strange. Finally, someone in Washington has identified the fundamental problem with the fundamental element of reform, and yet he doesn’t seem to want to do much about it. ... I'm baffled.

Mr. Peha is right.  Not only is it nowhere near the top of Duncan's agenda, he is pushing states hard to use those same crappy tests to evaluate teachers.  To help Mr. Peha with his bafflement, I would submit that Duncan is a master of doublespeak, defined in George Orwell's 1984 as:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfullness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancel each other out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it ... to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again.

Also known as "speaking with a forked tongue," it is critical skill for high-level education policymakers and administrators.