This paper investigates how this conception of failure came to prevail in the political discourse around the reform of teacher education. It explores how discursive structures and strategies in two speeches by former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan legitimate a particular construction of the failure of teacher education and encourage privatization of the public. As a consequence of legitimating one view of failure, I show how teacher educators and teachers in the public sector are deprived of individual agency and opportunities to engage in deliberate dialogue around the reform of teacher education.