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Hi. I’m Arne Duncan. I want to respond to some great questions we got from our Facebook
followers and Jenny had a question about how much are we trying to listen to teachers and
I can’t emphasize enough how critically important that is to us. I’ve visited literally
hundreds of schools in almost every state in the country. Everywhere I go I spend time
with teachers – formerly, informally, hearing what’s working, hearing what’s not working,
trying to figure out how we can support the extraordinary important work they’re doing
often in very difficult and challenging situations. And, I think so much of where we’re trying
to go in reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind law and fixing what’s broken—it’s thanks
to the input and the great ideas of teachers. We’ve heard it repeatedly that the law has
led to a narrowing of the curriculum; it’s led to teaching to the test; and it’s led
to a dummying down of standards. Teacher don’t have the flexibility to be creative and to
make a difference and so as we move forward with reauthorization, we want to do it in
a bipartisan way this year. And, the President did a remarkable job, I thought, talking about
it in the State of the Union address. We want to fix many of those problems that teachers
have pointed out to us. We want to make sure that every single child has access to a well-rounded
education. We want to put a billion dollars behind that effort. Yes, reading and math
are really important, but science and social studies, the fine and performing arts, PE,
environmental literacy, economic and financial literacy--all those things are critically
important to us and we want to make sure, not just for high school students, but elementary
school students have access to those kinds of opportunities. Teachers don’t like teaching
to a test, dummying down standards, narrowing the curriculum. We think we can get away from
all of that. At the end of the day, we want to provide much more flexibility to local
educators. Great teachers, great principals know how to help their children. We want to
hold them accountable to a high bar but give them the room to be creative, and we want
to focus much more on growth and gain. How much are student improving, rather than absolute
test scores. I was in a high school two days ago in Atlanta where the graduation rate is
about 70% now. It has a long way to go, but it has gone from about 50% to 60% to 70%.
Those trends are going exactly the right way. You had another school with a graduation rate
that used to be 90% and now it’s down to 75%. On a relative basis it’s higher, but
their trends are the wrong way. So we want to reward excellence, shine a spotlight on
success and reward those great teachers that are moving the needle every single day and
again, often working with children in communities where their work is very, very tough.
Julie asked a great question about the inequitable distribution of resources in school districts
around the country and that is an absolute fact. It’s not a pretty one, but it’s
the brutal truth. And I lived on the other side of that for a long time. I ran the Chicago
public schools for seven and a half years and 85% of my students lived below the poverty
line, 90% came from the minority community and yet we had less than half the money to
spend per student, per year relative to other property-rich districts that were just five
miles north of us -- just right up Lake Michigan. And so, it’s not fair. It’s something
we want to bring much greater transparency behind, and we’ve actually just in the past
week launched a new website: dashboard.ed.gov… again, dashboard.ed.gov. This lays out state-by-state
what they’re doing around the equitable distribution of resources and calling out
those places where it’s not happening. So, it’s something we are bringing much greater
transparency to – that’s what Julia’s asking for. There is lots of other really
interesting information on that website and we encourage you to check that out.