A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education admitted on a Jan. 12 radio broadcast that his own department is promoting policies that are "actually harming the education of students in this country" and that "education has been corrupted" by those policies.

Speaking on the program "To the Point" on radio station KCRW, Peter Cunningham, assistant secretary of communications for the U.S. Department of Education, readily agreed with the views of another program guest that overreliance on standardized testing is detrimental to students, and that "many" charter schools, a model being promoted as a solution for troubled schools, are not successful.

Education researcher Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, speaking on the program along with Cunningham, voiced sharp criticism of the Obama administration's Race to the Top education policies -- criticism that Cunningham acknowledged was valid.

Rothstein and Cunningham agreed that cornerstone policies in the current education legislation known as No Child Left Behind have harmed education and that the new administration's Race to the Top program continues the problematic policies.

Race to the Top, Rothstein charged, is "accentuating the harm that NCLB did." NCLB's emphasis on testing only for math and reading is unchanged in RTTT.

"A major consequence of No Child Left Behind that's done major harm to American education is the narrowing of the curriculum," Rothstein said. Sciences, history, social studies, music, the arts and physical education are neglected or abandoned as educators struggle to adhere to NCLB's emphasis on math and reading, Rothstein explained, and "Race to the Top doesn't change that." Abandoning other subjects "does the most harm to disadvantaged students," Rothstein added.

Moderator Warren Olney followed up Rothstein's comments with the question to Cunningham: "Are standardized tests a good measure of teacher performance and ultimately of school performance?"

"No, they're not," Cunningham admitted bluntly. "Education has been corrupted. In addition to narrowing the curriculum by abandoning other topics, what this kind of system does is create incentives to game the system. We're actually harming the education of students in this country." He mentioned, without more specifics, the "hope" of reauthorizing NCLB to include testing in more subjects. The prospect of increasing testing is likely to raise more concerns, but the discussion didn't pursue that issue.

On the subject of charter schools, Rothstein disputed the view promoted by both the Bush and Obama administrations that charters are a solution for troubled schools. "The research is pretty consistent," he said. "Charter schools on average don't have better student performance than regular schools."

Rothstein got no argument from Cunningham, who responded, "We 100 percent agree with Mr. Rothstein that many of them are not good" and called for more accountability for charter schools.

Rothstein is a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute, a former education columnist for the New York Times, and the author of many books and studies about education policy.

Cunningham was previously a communications consultant for the Chicago Public Schools during the time when his current boss, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was head of that school system.

"To the Point" was part of the Jan. 12 KCRW broadcast of the program "Which Way, L.A.?" which also covered the issue of outside groups' efforts to take over a number of Los Angeles schools.

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