~A Commentary~
A Talk With Arne
Education Secretary Arne Duncan was a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on September 2. Since listening to that interview live, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. What follows is a personal dialog purge.
When President Obama selected Arne Duncan to be the new Secretary of Education at the beginning of his term, I was intrigued. I had expected Mr. Obama’s campaign education advisor, Linda Darling Hammond, to take the post- a selection I would have greeted with glee.
Duncan’s selection was curious. Duncan gained notoriety as the tough reform-minded Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools who banded together with Mayor Richard Daley to launch Renaissance 2010 back in 2004. Within a couple of years, the school division was trumpeting claims of dramatic gains in state test scores. Yet, it has since been uncovered that the state changed testing companies and lowered cut scores. The net result was dramatic improvement on state tests, yet the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores remained flat.[i]
Duncan spoke that early September day with a group of mostly private academy students from the Northern Virginia area. I’ve drawn some snippets out of the dialog transcripts that specifically interested me. One final note: the transcripts were copied and pasted from the NPR site as they were written there. The transcriptions were not 100% error-free.
Sec. DUNCAN: So what I want for this country is for every single child to have a chance to go to a great school...
…And that might be public. It might be religious based. It might be private. And it might be something else. We just need every single child to have that opportunity. And - so to me, there's no sense of competition. There's no sense of us versus them. It's about us as a country, educating our way to a better economy.
And so, I've been working very, very closely with national leadership both from religious based schools, faith based schools, as well as from private schools. And we want to be a better partner. We want to be a resource. We want to support the hard work that's going on there. And we just want to see every single child have a chance. And so, we are finding, I think, some pretty creative ways to better partner and better support the hardworking that's going on in faith based and private schools around the nation.
Duncan comes across clearly in favor of sharing public resources with private secular and religious schools. He sounds quite reasonable, but when you get right down to it, the playing field isn’t level. Private and religious schools have the freedom to accept any student they wish. Public schools must accept all children. If sparse financial resources were to be diverted to private and religious schools, how would public school funding be impacted? More on this quote later in the conversation.
I think No Child Left Behind - much that needs to be fixed, and that's one of the real challenges. So let me just take one minute on this one, because this is hugely important. I think the current law is far too punitive. If you said there are about 50 ways to fail and almost no rewards for success, it is very prescriptive. It's very top down from Washington. I think that, fundamentally, doesn't work. It is led and I talked about that earlier. I think there's an unintended consequence, but still led to dumbing down of standards.
One of the biggest complaints I've heard, ever, around the country, has led to narrowing of the curriculum. Teachers just teaching to the test, filling out bubble sheets. And so how do we fix all those? We have to reward excellence. We have to reward success. We have to find those schools that are beating the odds and doing a great job. Those teachers, those schools, those districts, those states - celebrate them. Reward them. Give them more resources, not less. We have to focus on growth and gain.
Mr. Duncan clearly states one of the greatest problems in education today, but then he steers in to mindless rhetoric. Reward excellence! (How do we do that?...wait for it…wait for it…use standardized test scores!)
KIMBERLY GODFREY: Good afternoon, Secretary Duncan. My name is Kimberly Godfrey(ph), and I attend in Annapolis Area Christian Schools. My question is, how can we make education more attractive so that we can attract and retain qualified teachers? I know that in my school the teachers are very qualified. And in return, they get very good privileges and benefits.
Right on Kimberly! Teachers are very qualified in my school district as well. The benefits are still excellent. However, the compensation packages and privileges are somewhat lacking.
Sec. DUNCAN: So that's a huge question, and it's really interesting. Teaching used to be a revered profession in our country. I think, somehow, we've lost our way. I think we've beaten down teachers. We disrespect them too often. And we have to find a way to elevate and strengthen the entire teaching profession. And actually, as we get into the end of the month, we're going to launch a national campaign. So you're hearing it here first. We're going to launch a national campaign to recruit the next generation great talent. And we're going to work hard to elevate the profession.
Is what we’ve experienced in the national news from the billionaire sponsors, Oprah, NBC, and the President this past week all a part of that revved up national campaign? Seriously, I haven’t heard teachers so vilified since the press mangled the message in “A Nation at Risk” back in 1983. It’s like we are all the super bad guys in some Superman movie or something.
And it's interesting. Other countries who are out competing us, educationally, have taken very different approaches. Um, in South Korea, that, right now, is doing better than us by many measures, their teachers are known as nation builders. And that's a really interesting idea, teachers as nation builders. And I see this as their driving force for the entire country. In Finland, which is doing a great job, educationally, only one in 10 young folks who want to be a teacher is allowed to be the teacher. They take the best of the best, the hardest working, the most committed, into the profession. So I think we can learn some examples from around the globe. But we have to elevate the profession. And if we do that well, I think we'll give the next generation a phenomenal talent to come in and help us educate our way to every county.
CONAN: Are those teachers in Finland paid and better than, perhaps, other professions?
Sec. DUNCAN: They are. They are. In many countries - it is actually interesting. Some countries - and there's a little controversy here. They trade off class size. They have larger classes. And they pay teachers more in those larger settings.
I absolutely love it when politicians and media voices bring up the success of schools in foreign countries. I especially enjoy discussing Finland, roundly regarded by reformers as being at the pinnacle of state-sponsored education reform. Two points regarding Finland are usually left out. First, virtually every Finnish teacher is a member of the teacher’s union. Second, Finland does not use heavy-handed accountability measures. Instead, they’ve focused their 30-year reform program on investing in teacher education and curriculum development. Maybe we should get with the Finns. Oh and I can’t see trading off on class size for greater pay. I’d challenge anyone to find space to add another five more kids to my small classroom.
In closing, I’d like to revisit part of the first quote from Arne Duncan. Mr. Duncan was involved in his response to the public vs. private dollars when he said something that made my mouth drop.
It's about us as a country, educating our way to a better economy.
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I’ve been misguided my entire 29-year teaching career. I always thought that I was educating children to be productive citizens, not productive money spenders. I also find it interesting that Duncan chose the word economy considering the increasing influence of billion dollar foundations led by some of America’s most wealthy billionaires. Maybe we really are educating children to create a better economy, and I’ve been reading from the wrong manual my whole life.
…and that’s what education is all about Charlie Brown.
Thom Ryder
