Arne Duncan: 'We've Been Very Complacent'

With President Barack Obama poised to announce alternatives to states' compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act on Friday, the role of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will be under scrutiny.

In August, Duncan and the president announced they would waive components of NCLB -- at least for states that agree to pursue reforms mandated by the administration. Duncan has since faced criticism for exceeding the bounds of his power. Less than a month later, he embarked on a bus tour in early September to discuss with education leaders both the waiver plan and the economic hardships many districts face.

After watching Obama's Sept. 8 jobs speech on TV on the road between Merillville, Ind., and Milwaukee, Wis., Duncan spent an hour with HuffPost Education, answering questions about everything from his tenure so far to standardized testing.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

What did you think this job would be before you took it?

I didn't know. I had talked a fair bit to [George W. Bush Education] Secretary [Margaret] Spellings so I had some sense, but you honestly don't know.

What surprised you most?

How much we could get done. The U.S. Department of Education hadn't necessarily been my friend in Chicago. So I had a healthy skepticism about what was possible. My job is to support, to shine a spotlight, to replicate success, to talk about excellence, but also to challenge the status quo.

You talk about the status quo a lot, without describing who's keeping it that way. Who are you targeting?

In this country, we've been very complacent. A lot of what drives me is anger, is frustration and real dissatisfaction with the status quo. There are far too many children who we aren't getting real opportunities for. I've seen that my whole life, so that's really personal.

How can we fix education?
It'll take another four hours to talk about. There isn't one thing. I wish there was one simple thing we can do. It starts with really high-quality early childhood education. Raise standards. Think about how we get more great teachers into the profession. For post-secondary, we retained the Pell grant and simplified the financial aid application form. It's about all those pieces.

A major change your administration has promoted is changing teacher evaluations. Do you have a prescription on how teachers should be rated?

I don't. And frankly no one does.

Teacher evaluations are largely broken in this country. We've had a system that doesn't reward excellence, doesn't support those teachers in the middle that are trying to get better, that doesn't weed out the teachers who are unfortunately not improving. If it doesn't work for any of the adults along that continuum, I can promise you it's not working for children.

You said in Pittsburgh and elsewhere that people are "scared" to discuss teacher excellence. Is that really true?

Everyone is scared to say that great teachers matter, and that's been a great impediment to reform. There's been this tendency to treat everyone the same. It masks a tremendous richness and potential of nurturing amazing work and not tolerating failure when it impacts children. Don't you think that's vitally important to figure out how to get talent where you need it most?

Then on what system are you grading them?

On whatever system they have. You're right, they've got to have a thoughtful system. But let's have that conversation.

What do you see as your role in these conversations?

My role is to shine a spotlight on folks who are showing real courage, doing tremendous work to support students. My role is to challenge folks where I don't see that happening.

So many states have dummied down standards. I tried to talk about this today in Detroit and pumped them up -- Michigan is raising their standards. They're getting huge pushback. I have to give them political cover, because there's lots of forces, lots of pressure to continue to lie to themselves, to continue to lie to parents.

How do you know that tests are measuring teaching?

Are they measuring some things? Yes. Are they doing it perfectly? Of course not. Again, that's why it's so important for me to have multiple measures.

When did you realize when NCLB reform was something you would take into your own hands?

I was always aware of that possibility. It wasn't something that I wanted or welcomed. We've been very clear for awhile that so much of the current law is fundamentally broken. I have this huge sense of urgency. I can't see doing nothing.

Were you surprised when the news about teacher cheating in Atlanta broke?

I was disturbed, angry to hear about it, to get the full report. I'd had some sense that you had a culture there that was morally bankrupt. Nobody goes into education to hurt children, but that's exactly what happened there.

Why do you think some teachers are angry at you?

I want to challenge that assumption but I want you to characterize it yourself as you see it.

Well, there were angry teachers at the Save Our Schools march this summer.

This is a really tough time to be in education. Teachers are massively frustrated with No Child Left Behind. That's why we're acting. This is a time of very significant budget cuts, the likes of what we haven't seen in decades. Teachers have to do more with less. They're seeing their colleagues laid off, they're seeing class sizes increase. It's frustrating. I share that frustration. We're doing everything we can from trying to fix NCLB's waivers to saving 300,000 teacher jobs with the Recovery Act to the announcement tonight of a huge part of $60 billion from the president's speech used in education.

How can unions be a contributing force to your plans?

Collective bargaining itself must be a tool not to protect adults, but to protect student achievement. That's got to be the purpose of all collective bargaining activity.

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Comments

[Marx Twain]

06:19 PM on 09/26/2011

My namesake, Mark Twain, once wrote "Better to stay silent, and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." This interview with Duncan proves this point amply, as Duncan proves beyond a doubt that he has no real ideas, nor is he interested in getting any.

Let's start with his response to "How can we fix education?" His response is terribly evasive. "Oh, I could talk for another four hours about it..." If you can't summarize it, you don't actually know it. That response is a total cop out. Then comes the add ons, "high quality early childhood education." Great idea, why haven't you done anything to increase access to it? Few states provide it, and less can afford it in our current condition.

Then comes his stock response, "raising standards". Mr. Secretary, standards don't teach kids, teachers do. All of the research into standards has been pretty consistent: standards have little to no effect on achievement.

Then comes the kicker: the totally incoherent defense of changing teacher evaluations. He admits that he has no clue how to change them, and that nobody else does either. But it definitely needs to be done. Actually, there has been loads of research and journal articles written about it, and Phi Delta Kappa put out a whole issue about it, but apparently reading and thinking about professional literature is just for teachers, not for important people like him.

[blueagle8u]

10:05 PM on 09/25/2011

The only thing I know for sure is Individual states NEED to have some sort of oversite on the Public school systems. Yearly tax increases are causing some families to relocate! Iv'e seen perfectly good school buses going out for sale at auction! Whatever happened to rebuilding engines/transmissions? Some schools have as many as 5 assistant Principles,all making six figure salaries! C'mon you GOT to trim some budgets here and there!

[Ossit]

05:35 PM on 09/25/2011

If teaching is your calling, then money, though important, shouldn't be the sole goal. Your students want to learn believe it or not, not fund your SUV, your Caribbean vacation. If teaching is so awful, then get out. Make room for teachers who love the job.

I read on a board where a teacher did nothing but complain. Blamed tests, blamed students, I'm not paid enough, I have to do this in lesson plans. I only have so much time to do this and that. Not once did that teacher say they loved to teach. It was all about them!

Kids are left behind during these strikes. No one will do it in school break. No one will do it when there's no summer school. Certainly no one fights about salary during holidays. The kids are left behind while adults fight about money.

What gets me most is another form of complacenc­y. We're used to guards, weapon checks, school shootings, teacher strikes and notice it's always when school is in session? Not during breaks, not during holidays, not during summer when there's no summer school. Let's renegotiat­e our contract while Junior stays home playing with their computer. Some students love no school. Others want to learn. The problems mentioned were non existent when I went to school in the 60's and 70's. Teachers taught because they cared. Never was there a strike during school. No guards, no metal detectors. No school shootings. Things have indeed changed.

[daughterusmc]

11:20 AM on 09/26/2011

When I go to my very dedicated pediatrician, I have no problem paying her. I do not think a good salary is indicative of a lack of professionalism or dedication.
I love to teach, I love my content, I love my students. I am not a volunteer. I want to be paid. If you want a saint, go to church.

[Ossit]

04:46 PM on 09/26/2011

LOL! Touche daughterusmc about the saint. You sound like an excellent teacher.

[Ossit]

05:01 PM on 09/25/2011

"Collective bargaining itself must be a tool not to protect adults, but to protect student achievement. That's got to be the purpose of all collective bargaining activity." I like those words. He's thinking about the students for a change.

[Laylahnajwa]

05:02 AM on 09/27/2011

I don't like those words; they don't make good sense.

Good teachers protect student achievement (not to be conflated with mere test results, or apparent test results).

Collective bargaining puts individual workers on a more equal footing with the groups, organisations, and bureaucracies (including states and school districts) that employ them. That doesn't change. It's the same regardless of whether the group of employees who bargain collectively are teachers, cops, firemen, actors, steelworkers, truck drivers, or coal miners. All of them had better do their jobs right or else (for various kinds of "else"), but the fact that they bargain collectively for their hire has little to do directly with that.

His was just one of those statements that sounds good until you think about it.

[burgar]

03:48 PM on 09/25/2011

Arne Duncan is the worst thing to happen to public education. His brand of restructuring will line the pockets of many, but will not improve the education of the majority of children. He is essentially blackmailing states that desperately need and deserve federal money and an NCLB waiver, but refusing it to them if they do not comply with his reforms. Reforms that are not proven. People hear the word "reform" and think it's a good thing without carefully examining the end result. Arne's reform is a thinly disguised way to break the teacher's unions and test our kids to death. His brand of curriculum calls for constant testing, taking time away from critical thinking thus producing workerbees, but not critical thinkers. Parents need to unite to help local teachers fight Arne and his misguided "reforms." He is seeking only to privatize education so his cronies will make money. Privatized education will lead to corruption and then it will be too late. Too late, parents will realize that they were conned!

[larrytpsnm]

12:28 PM on 09/25/2011

I am curious as to how much this department takes from funds alotted to education. I am curious as to any benefit the states could achieve if they were not paying a handling charge to the Federal government to give them some of the money that is for educating our children. Their are so many duplications in how the money gets to the school systems 1st federal government, then state government, school district, the school and teachers. For education systems this seems like they have to have quiet a bit of supervision. Or is it the case of a lot chiefs and not to many indians. Teachers really get the short stick and the kids do not have the opportunity we are told because the system uses most of the funds for it's governing bodies prior to getting to the school.

[ugotabkidnme]

11:31 AM on 09/25/2011

New (Old) School Rules:
1) Be on time and prepared for class; sit down; be quiet; listen to the teacher,; respect others and school property.
2) Repeated violation of the rules and the child will be suspended for three days without a home tutor.
3) Suspended three times in a semester and you will be expelled, without a home tutor.

Parents don't want their children home during the school year. Believe me, a lot of the problems will go away if state education laws were changed and subscribe to the above laws.

[eceresa]

04:02 PM on 09/25/2011

That would work, IF:
1. Let the expelled kids try again next year. Nobody should be denied an education permanently, and the parents might manage to straighten the kid out in the meantime, if only to get the kid out of their hair.
2. Some other accommodation was made for the very small, but definitely present, minority of kids who, due to disabilities, really can't sit down and act normal. You'd also have to made special accommodations for kids who, through having been expelled and allowed to come back and try again several times, are fourteen but still working on 4th grade. Neither of those groups could be in the same classes as the masses, in this system.
3. Schools weren't ranked, punished, reported in the media, or otherwise judged on the behavior of their students. You'd have to have the government standing behind the schools' interest in keeping order, and the media agreeing to refrain from going for cheap headlines by comparing how many kids each school had to expel (or legally prevented from doing so). Otherwise, you're going to have some schools allowing the behavior to continue, even though it infringes on the right of students to learn and teachers to teach, because they don't want the consequences or the negative publicity.

So, the short answer is, it wouldn't work. The first two conditions might work, though the government would probably want to cut corners and funding for the second one, but the third is pretty much impossible.

[MsLovePeace]

11:10 AM on 09/25/2011

Raising standards????? If kids are failing, why we should make the standards more rigorous and the tests harder? The standards in my state are already 2-3 years ahead of when I was in school in the 70's and 80's. In my district, the Periodic Assessments, which are modeled after the BIG TESTS, are so difficult (and so poorly written) that my friends with professions outside of teaching and with advanced degrees can't divine the answers. People think teachers are stupid, but they have blind faith that the tests are great. Who do you think writes these tests? The tests are a mess, and they are used to drive instruction and now to evaluate teachers. If I could retype the questions here, you would all be A. Stumped and B. Vomiting at the idea that this is what drives curriculum and teacher evaluation, particularly if you have a good education. Writing really difficult, serpentine test questions for kids who are already delayed by poverty is reckless and idiotic. What developmental psychologist would approve of this? Even my lowest performing students, with the most dysfunctional, impoverished lives could put their heads together and come up with a far better solution than the ones Arne proposes. In fact, asking the kids who are failing what would help them succeed would actually be a really great idea. But Arne doesn't respect those people; he's too busy helping testing companies get rich and hating teachers. Hollow man.

[ugotabkidnme]

11:09 AM on 09/25/2011

If you study education success in other countries, a key component is, "small." Small neighborhood schools. Americans always believe bigger is better. We closed our small schools and centralized them into large sprawling industrial districts. Another inconspicuous difference is school uniforms. There is too of a child's attention is placed on fashion and diverted from studying and confused with self esteem.

[eceresa]

04:04 PM on 09/25/2011

Small isn't always better; large secondary schools, in particular, can offer a wider variety of classes. That can be a huge advantage.

Small CLASSES, that's always a good thing. Small schools, not necessarily.

[ugotabkidnme]

10:55 AM on 09/25/2011

Dear Don Juan, There is an additional reality in public school systems. Our school district constitutes all three financial classes and the problems in the classroom are not restricted to students from poverty stricken families.

The combination of administrators placating upper and middle class parents contribute greatly to classroom chaos and student failure. Their children are EXCEPTIONAL. Their children are beyond discipline. You can't teach a child who believes school hallways are fashion runways and the classroom is their stage and a teacher is a paid employee who must doesn't wear the same labels as mommy or drives a car as nice as daddy's.

US public schools are the most expensive social clubs in the world. You can't teach a child who believes they are born exceptional and when the rules don't apply to them. The system is screwed because the inmates, rich and poor, are running the show. There is no respect for public education. The purpose of public schools is to educate; when in fact they are buildings which house youths during the day for eight months of a year on taxpayer's dime with educated guards.

[DonJuan1943]

08:06 AM on 09/25/2011

Early Childhood Education is children having children: Semi-Illiterate intoxicated angry fourteen/fifteen/sixteen year old parents sit their children in front of the TV to watch violently loud and profane subject material. Day after day.... The interaction between humans that the children observe is punctuated by violent, loud, profane conversation. They learn that the loudest voice is always right. This becomes "their norm".

They arrive at school, never having seen a book. No dictionary in the house. ...if there is a house. No sane sober adult in their lives. And they find themselves in a classroom of children of similar circumstance... And so it goes.

This is the challenge faced by thousands of teachers across this country. How long are we going to allow guys like George W. Bush, Arnie Duncan, and other politicos to ignore the reality of REAL EARLY CHILDHOOD NEEDS?! ...the role of the parents? The role of the politicians is to blame the TEACHERS and the teacher organizations. And so it goes.

[MiamiMama]

09:06 PM on 09/24/2011

Districts spend too much time filling out reports to be held accountable and no one reads them. Fund schools and pay teachers what they are worth and you will attract the best and brightest. Mindless testing is destroying our schools. How would you like to go to the doctor every week and have one test after another just to make sure you are healthy? Same thing! No one knows better what a child needs than a teacher that gives the end of chapter test for a given subject. It worked for years but now it doesn't because corporations are getting rich selling and publishing tests. BIG BUSINESS! CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE BIG BUSINESS TOO!

[MiamiMama]

09:06 PM on 09/24/2011

Teachers continue to get paid low salaries and take the blame for all the woes of education. There is plenty of blame to go around. I did it for 35 years. First of all, all these gimmicks like Race to the Top and other things out of DC do nothing for education. It is the band aid approach. They can never find the answer to educating low students because all the people making decisions have very little education background. How about this novel idea?? Let schools control their own school. No one knows what is needed more then they do. The teachers on the staff have centuries of experience and education to do the job. They are the last ones with input at the school level. Duncan pushed Charter Schools because it was the fashion in Chicago. The whole US is not Chicago. School curriculum needs to become current with the needs of today's society. Kids are bored with what is taught and tune out. Now you push testing down their throats and teach to the test and you lose even more. This is the Ipod Generation. Everything they do is related to some type of technological device. Who has asked kids why they don't like school? No one! Close down the DOE in DC and DOE at the state level and let each county set their own policies.

[P Alan Greene]

03:04 PM on 09/24/2011

"Teachers mad at moi?! Moi??!! I have no idea how that could be. I have been a best friend to education and teachers since day one."

The real irony is that much of his rhetoric is pretty on target, but then he reaches a conclusion that has nothing to do with his premise, and institutes actions that have nothing to do with either.

So, yeah, the teacher evaluation system is broken. But let's not plan to figure out why or how. Instead lets talk about discussing a variety of changes that have nothing to do with teacher quality, and THEN let's push teacher evaluation based on student results on bad standardized tests (the same ones we say we're trying to de-emphasize).

I can think of few journalistic enterprises that could waste more time than an interview with Duncan, because the words that come out of his mouth have absolutely no predictive power related to what he's actually going to do.

[Venicelady]

10:51 AM on 09/24/2011

Telling, isn't it? Prior to taking the position, Arne Duncan states:"I didn't know" what the job would be about.

According to many tips given to job seekers when they are interviewing for a company, the candidate should do as much research as possible about the position applied for, be knowledgeable about what the responsibilities and duties are called for in the position.

Yet, the man that was appointed head of the U.S. Department of Education took this position saying:"I don't know". Would any other employer have hired such as person who would give such an answer to an interview, particularly when the position entails making and implementing policy for education?

I think not.

How can the President justify appointing Arne Duncan to head an agency responsible for implementing education policy, when the man "didn't know" what his job would be about when he took it? Very strange.....