RICHMOND, Va. – The Obama administration is filled with arrogant, condescending individuals, but none more so than Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Duncan – whose favorite pastime seems to be insulting Common Core critics – recently took a swipe at the “white suburban moms” who are voicing opposition to the new, one-size-fits-all learning standards that are being put in place in some 45 states, according to Politico.

“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who – all of a sudden – their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary,” Duncan told a members of the Council of Chief State Schools Officers Organization on Friday.

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“You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.”

Duncan’s comments appear to be a reference to the outcry of New York parents who have seen their children’s tests scores plummet as state schools shift to new, Common Core-aligned standardized tests.

As Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post writes, “New York was the first large state to implement the standards and give new standardized tests supposedly aligned with the Core.”

Many parents – including a number of “white suburban moms” – were upset their children were being tested on the new standards, even though they were primarily being taught under the old ones. That seemed unfair to them (as it would most reasonable people) and caused many parents to question the wisdom of the entire Common Core experiment.

Duncan, however, is twisting those concerns in order to make the parents appear superficial – that they only object to Common Core because little Johnny is no longer seen as a baby Einstein.

Joseph Rella, superintendent of New York’s Comsewogue School District, responded to Duncan’s latest insult in a recent letter.

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Rella writes, in part:

“I am writing to you as a non-white suburban mother to express my deep concern over recent comment that you made regarding criticism of the common core implementation. …

“I do not believe that your statement was racially motivated but I’m having trouble understanding how it was not meant to divide. You need to know that if the common core initiative has succeeded at anything, it has succeeded in uniting all the disparate groups throughout our state and country – white and nonwhite, urban and suburban, mothers, fathers, educators, and politicians of all parties.

“I believe you’re missing the point. Ignoring our real concerns and engaging in divisive rhetoric will not make the issue disappear. …

“Many parents are pushing back because – all of a sudden – their children’s experience of school had changed since the miserable implementation of the Common Core Initiative and it had not changed for the better. Children in our district, on Long Island, and across the state are experiencing increased levels of anxiety, stress, behavioral problems, sleep deprivation, respiratory issues, and in the worst cases, self-abusive and self-destructive  behaviors …children are experiencing this. It is abusive and it is breaking their spirit. These behaviors are becoming more pervasive and they are occurring among younger and younger children. The ‘Common Core Disorder,’ as it’s coming to be called, is here and growing.

“Now I’m sure I will hear that there is no proven connection between the Common Core Initiative and what our children are experiencing. Sacrificing a generation of students to prove or disprove a correlation or discounting it because it is anecdotal evidence and not based on research is completely unacceptable. After all, the Common Core standards were adopted by the vast majority of states without any peer-reviewed studies but many claims about how it would make us globally competitive, claims that have not been subjected to any serious scrutiny. If anecdotal evidence is good enough for the Common Core, it most certainly should be good enough for our children.

“The growing outrage of parents and educators across our state is the result of the purposeful deafness of the educational leadership at the state and federal levels to our legitimate concerns. As a practical matter, student achievement has not improved anywhere this initiative has been introduced. We need look no further than New Orleans, Chicago, and Philadelphia to see the end result of the corporate takeover of our public schools. Significantly, not one single word was spoken about the effects of those grand initiatives on the children of those cities. We see a similar pattern here in New York. We don’t want that to happen here. We will do everything in our power to prevent it from happening here in New York. We will not be silent. We need responsive leadership, not sound bites.”