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Hi. I’m Arne Duncan. I’m the U.S. Secretary of Education. We’re getting great questions
from our Facebook readers, and I want to use this as an opportunity to respond.
Robert asked a question about what we’re doing to encourage arts across the country
and also whether we’re going to include arts in ESEA Reauthorization in terms of accountability
subject. So, on the first one – on the second one, we’re not looking to include arts as
part of the accountability structure, but we actually are pushing very, very hard for
what we call a well-rounded education. We’re putting a billion dollars in our FY ’11
budget to make sure we’re not just focusing on reading and math – and while those are
foundational and fundamentally important, so is science, so is social studies, so is
financial literacy, so is environmental literacy, so is PE, and arts, and dance, and drama,
and music. And we have a $265 million dollar pot focused on civics education, financial
literacy, and the arts. So, we want to invest very, very heavily there, and we want to make
sure that all children, not just high school students, but young children have a chance
to get a world-class well-rounded education and arts is a hugely, hugely important component
in that. Stacey asked a really good question about
why do we fund something like Race to the Top. Why don’t we just make every program
sort of formula based funding? And the vast majority of our resources always will be formula
based. Over 80% of our budget is formula based. We actually worked extraordinarily hard to
get an additional $10 billion from Congress to save teachers jobs around the country this
school year. About 160,000 teachers would have been laid off if we weren’t successful
in getting those resources. But I want to be really clear that we can’t just invest
in the status quo, and whether it’s Race to the Top, whether it’s the invest in innovation
fund, whether it is Promised Neighborhoods, whether it’s the teacher incentive fund,
with those kinds of opportunities with unleashed this huge amount of creativity and innovation
around the country, and I would argue you’ve seen more change, more reform, more transformation
in the past 18-19 months than you have in the previous ten years and that’s due in
part because we have the chance to reward excellence at the local level. So to see 36
states adopting higher standards, to see 44 states working to become a much more thoughtful
assessments, to see communities coming together with the Promise Neighborhoods initiative
to create not just great schools, but great communities around schools to support student
achievement. We absolutely want to continue to focus on excellence and reward the leadership
and the creativity and the courage at the local level and Race to the Top and other
opportunities like that give us an opportunity to transform the quality of public education
in this country which we desperately need to do.
Tina asked if I met with educational leaders like Diane Ravitch and Linda Darling Hammond
and I had a great meeting a couple of months ago with Diane Ravitch -- had a very thoughtful
conversation. We don’t agree on every issue obviously, but I know how committed she is
to children. I listened very, very closely to what she had to say. I have had a great
working relationship from day one with Linda Darling Hammond – I actually literally met
with her in this office yesterday and she is helping to lead one of the two consortium
of states that are working to transform assessments in this country, and we’ve made a huge investment,
about $330 million, behind the consortium she’s leading, and a second one being lead
by Mike Cohen and others who wanted dramatically to improve the quality of assessment around
the country and Linda’s work there – Linda’s work in terms of international benchmarks
and we talked a lot about what is going on in Singapore and Finland and other countries.
Her expertise – not just in this country – but across the globe has been extraordinarily
helpful to me and I think her leadership on this consortium – on this consortia of states
working to help assessments get beyond fill in the blank, you know, bubble tests, measuring
critical thinking skills, getting real time feedback to teachers and to students in terms
of what students are actually learning. It is going to be transformational. This is a
game changer for the country and Linda’s leadership is absolutely huge there.