Education Sec'y Sees "Quiet Revolution" in US Schools
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday there is a quiet revolution being driven by educators and administrators “challenging the defeatism and inertia that has trapped generations of children in second-rate schools.”
Duncan, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon, decried schools that are “drop-out factories” and graduate less than half their students. Overall, a quarter of the nation’s students do not graduate from high school -- 1.2 million young people a year, he said.
He credited the “No Child Left Behind” education law with exposing dirty laundry within education but said its one-size-fits-all approach was wrong. DUncan said it led some educators to focus on standardized testing and fed a “long-standing frustration with federal over-reaching.”
Duncan also criticized “indefensible inequities” in schools in terms of funding, teacher quality, access to a rigorous curriculum and student outcomes. Some schools will be targeted using civil-rights laws, he said. A half century after Brown vs. Board of Education, which desegregated schools, such imbalances represent an “epic injustice,” Duncan said.
He warned that only four in 10 students earn a two- or four-year degree, putting the U.S. in 10th place in the world. A generation ago, it was first. He said eighth graders trail 10 other countries in science, and 15-year-olds are in the bottom quartile in math.
He said in 18 months as schools chief he had visited hundreds of schools in 37 states and not met one person “satisfied with the status quo.”
“From journalists to educators to politicians and parents, there’s a growing sense that a quiet revolution is underway in our homes, in our schools, in our classrooms, in our communities,” he said.
Duncan, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, heralded schools including Chicago’s Urban Prep, an all-male, all-black facility that replaced a school where only 4 percent of incoming freshmen were at grade. Now each of 107 young men in the first graduating class is heading to a four-year college, he said.
Duncan, in answer to a question, said the school calendar was outdated since it was based on an agrarian economy. He said schools should be open 12 to 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week and 11 to 12 months each year, with community groups hosting programs, training and mentoring after regular hours.
“Not just more of the same … dance and drama and art and music, chess, yearbook, robotics, activities for older siblings and parents, GED classes, ESL classes, family literacy nights,” he said.
Another questioner asked the most important thing that parents and teachers can to do help children succeed. Duncan, noting that he and his wife have an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old, said parents should be engaged as equal partners with teachers. And teachers, he said, can “just give their heart to the children.”
Half of education is the “intellectual part, the brains” and the other half is “really about your heart,” Duncan said.
He used the podium to announce 19 finalists competing for $3.4 billion in Education Department funding in the second round of the “Race to the Top,” which recognizes states for comprehensive education reforms. The finalists are Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
Finalists will present plans during the week of Aug. 9 in Washington. Awards will be made in September to 10 to 15 contenders, he said. Thirty-five states and the district applied in the second round, he said. Two states, Delaware and Tennessee, won in first-round competition.
-- Katherine Skiba, [email protected]