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Hi. I’m Arne Duncan. I just wanted to respond to a couple of really thoughtful questions
that were posted recently on our Facebook page.
First Megan, and I think she is from Washington State. But she was interested in Washington
State’s application for the Race to the Top competition and we’re trying to be totally
transparent with everyone’s application. So Washington State’s application, the reviewer’s
scores, the reviewer’s comments, and where states were finalist the actual interviews
with the leadership teams from every single state are posted on our website. So just go
to www.ED.Gov, again, www.ED.Gov. Go to the Race to the Top page and you can see, not
just Washington State, but every State’s application, the reviewer’s comments and
scores from every single State and where states were finalist in the second round of the competition,
all of those interviews are there as well. I saw that two of our Facebook fans, Stewart
and Tim, had a pretty extended conversation on what was still in and what was different
between our Race to the Top competition and No Child Left Behind. And I actually think
there are very few similarities and very, very different ideas. So what we’ve done
with Race to the Top is really encourage States to come up with plans they’re going to take
academically achievement in their States to an entirely different level. These are States’
plans, these are their ideas and we invested in States that we thought had the courage,
the commitment, and most importantly, the capacity to do two things to raise the achievement
for all students and to close achievement gaps and so it is really about rewarding excellence
but the ideas are all coming at the local level. As we reauthorize No Child Left Behind,
while I will always give the previous administration credit for focusing on the horrendous achievement
gaps in our country. Frankly, there’s a lot I think we need to fix, and No Child Left
Behind that is currently broken. I’ll walk you through quickly what we’re trying to
do there. First, the law is very, very punitive. There
are about 50 different ways to fail and very few rewards for success under No Child Left
Behind. It’s very prescriptive, very top down and I say everywhere I go that the best
ideas in education are never going to come from me or frankly from anyone else in Washington,
they’re always going to come at the local level. Great teachers, great principals, superintendents,
school boards, making a difference in student’s lives. While this may have been an unintended
consequence, it’s beyond the shadow of a doubt that No Child Left Behind lead to a
dummying down of standards. Many states, for political reason, political pressure reduced
standards, lowered standards were actually lying to children, families wasn’t good
for children, wasn’t good for education, wasn’t good for teachers, wasn’t good
for the state in the long haul, but nevertheless it happened, due to political pressure and
by far the biggest complaint I’ve heard about No Child Left Behind – everywhere
I go, urban, rural, suburban. I’ve been to about 42 states as it leads to a narrowing
of curriculum. So as we move towards reauthorization and my strong hope is to do that early in
the next year and to do it in a bipartisan way. I’ve said repeatedly that education
has to be the one thing that goes politics and ideology get thrown to the side. We have
to fix all those things that don’t work. We have to make sure that we are rewarding
success and rewarding excellence so great teachers, great principals make a huge difference
in student’s lives. Schools that are doing a great job, districts, entire states, part
of what Race to the Top is trying to do was to shine a spotlight on excellence and while
Race to the Top seemed like a lot of money, and it’s a lot of money, $4 billion, with
that that’s actually less than one percent of total K to 12 spending in our country.
We spend about $650 billion a year on K to 12 education and with Race to the Top, we’ve
seen this tremendous amount of break through, tremendous amount of reform and innovation.
We have unleashed this avalanche of innovative ideas for relatively very, very modest investment.
So as we reauthorize No Child Left Behind making sure rewarding excellence at every
level – the classroom, the school, the district, the state. Secondly, we have to really focus
on growth and gain. How much are students improving each year? Under No Child Left Behind
it was much more focused on absolute test scores. I’m frankly much less interest in
that, I’m actually interested in many other indicators but I want to know how much you
are improving. We want to be much more flexible as we reauthorize. When I ran the Chicago
Public Schools for 7-1/2 years, I almost had to sue the Department of Education for the
right to tutor my children after school. It made no sense. I had litterally tens of thousands
of children who wanted to improve, who wanted to stay in school longer hours and the Department
of Education here was telling me I couldn’t tutor those children. We won that battle.
We tutored them, the students improved but again, local educators shouldn’t be having
to fight Washington to do the right thing by their children. We’re going to provide
much more flexibility, hold folks accountable for results but give them the room to be creative.
They’re going to have the best ideas as to how to meet the needs of their children.
We just heard today from a parent named Audrey who is a parent of a third grader, and I have
a third grade daughter at home as well who is really impressed and enthusiastic about
Sally Rides web chat on science and engineering and space exploration. And Sally Rides is
part of a team of corporate leaders and leaders from the philanthropic community who are partnering
with us in a program called education to innovate. Their committed to dramatically improving
stem education in this country. They have a hundred CEO’s from around the Nation who
are going to be working very, very hard at the local level in different communities around
the Nation to help produced the next generation of stem talent, the next generation of teachers,
the next generation of young people with a passion and a heart for science and engineering
and technology and mathematics and so we have to get a lot better as a country and these
kinds of public and private partnerships the leadership of Sally Ride and Meg Jamison and
so many others I think are going to help lead the country to where we need to go and we
couldn’t be more proud and more thankful for their huge commitment in this area.