Education Secretary: "Education is the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time"

While health care may be the current hot button topic, President Obama has made it a point to also prop up another issue. "Week after week, month after month, he keeps coming back to education," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan at a reporter's roundtable last week. "He has flatlined all domestic spending outside of national affairs, except education. He is constantly pushing me. He's got an absolute passion on this."
 


The Obama administration's education agenda, as laid out in the 2011 federal budget and a higher education bill pending in the Senate, involves increased funding for early childhood education and community colleges, but also structural changes for a system that has fallen behind. "Some say our strategy is too ambitious," Duncan said. "I would argue we have to be ambitious."
Here he elaborates on some of his ideas:

Evaluating teachers based on student performance

"We don't look at absolute test scores. We look at growth and how much students are improving each year. Let me give you an example: You're a fifth grade teacher, and I come to you at a second grade reading level, three years behind. If after I leave you I'm one grade level behind, under No Child Left Behind you would be labeled a failing teacher. I think not only are you not a failing teacher, you're a phenomenal teacher. I gained two years of growth in one year's instruction. So, we look at how much students are improving. ... Another thing is, student test scores should only be a piece of evaluation, not the whole thing. There's a whole series of other factors to look at--graduation rate, climate, whether the school is creating a culture where students can be successful. But what I'm finding is folks who say student achievement is irrelevant to teacher evaluation. That's like saying that teachers don't matter."

Why he thinks education is the civil rights issue of our time

"If you look at the history of public education in our country, it's supposed to be the great equalizer. The dividing line in our country, between the have and have nots, is often around educational opportunity. You can come from real poverty, but if you have a great early childhood program, a great K to 12 education and you have access to go to college, you'll do great. Yet in far too many places in this country, educational opportunity is tied to race, neighborhood and zip code. There's something wrong with that picture."

Supporting historically Black colleges and universities

"We increased HBCU funding by $98 million [in the 2011 budget]. Only two percent of our country's teachers are African-American males, and I worry about the disconnect between what our students around the country look like, and what our teachers and administrators look like. HBCUs produce almost half of the country's African-American teachers, so if I want to increase my African-American male teacher pipeline, we need to keep HBCUs strong and make sure we're producing that next generation of talent." 



Charter schools

"I'm not a fan of charters; I'm a fan of good charters. To have good charter schools, you need a high bar for entry. There should be a very rigorous process for allowing someone to open a charter school. Once you pick who you allow to educate, you need two things. First, we need to give them real autonomy. If they are innovators who think they can do better than what's happened before, you've got to give them the room to implement their vision. But secondly, you have to hold them accountable for results. If you just give them autonomy but don't hold them accountable, you perpetuate the status quo. When those three things happen, you often get great results for children."

 

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Comments

[Discrimination2]

09:12 PM on 03/04/2010

Touro College, School of Health Sciences discrimina­ted me, dismissed me from the Occupation­al Therapy Program, its College as well as prohibited me from pursuing opportunit­ies it offers in other academic discipline­s, disregarde­d my appeal letters, took away my right to pursue education and framed me for a crime I did not commit. Attempted falsifying business records 2nd degree. I reported and sent my evidence to various agencies including, United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights who later dropped the investigat­ion. I also contacted the FBI and explained my situation about my discrimina­tion and unfair practices and reported how police came to my residents without court a order, or subpoena and did not read me Miranda Warning, or told me the charges brought against me. I told the FBI that Touro College has illegal practices and abuses its power as well as wrote an e-mails to United States Student Associatio­n who responded quickly to me, but Touro College has not made any attempt to resolve the situation.


Sincerely,

Michael Levin

[EugeneMorgan]

08:37 AM on 03/03/2010

More money will ,for the most part, create more of what we already have.
The source of the problem in education is where most of societies problems start.
In the home!!!
Too many missing dads. Too many women having sex with men who aren't daddy material. It's the job of the parents (that means both) to prepare their children so the teacher can impart informatio­n in an orderly fashion.

[MtDavid]

01:38 PM on 03/02/2010

Blaming "schools" and teachers for failure is absurd. It is like blaming doctors for high death rates in poor countries. Anyone who taught in schools in economical­ly depressed areas knows that teachers there work twice as hard for limited results. Why would anyone but a martyr wish to work twice as hard, and then be blamed for society's "failure" ?

[mrskorn]

07:33 PM on 03/02/2010

Exactly. If you think that schools in the urban areas have the same resources as the suburban schools, you are fooling yourself.

Now if Duncan wants to make sure that every single school in this country has the same materials, specialist­s, curriculum­, budget etc., then it might be a level playing field, but the one most important factor that NO ONE can control is family background­. If a child comes to school without the basic needs being met, a teacher can only do so much. I wish they would focus as much on holding parents accountabl­e.

Also, teachers are forced to teach what curriculum­/ programs the administra­tions demands. Even if they know it is not working...­..but the teachers get blamed. Why doesn't anyone ask the teachers what will help their students learn the most? They are the ones that know, but are powerless to change things.