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We will never have a national curriculum here in the United States of America, but it’s
important that our curriculum continues to become more rigorous, continues to become
more engaging and challenges students to do a much higher level of work. We’re seeing
tremendous movement, thanks not due to our leadership, but real courage, real leadership
at the state and local levels. We have 40 states who have raised standards through college
and career ready standards for the first time in our country. We’re going to stop dummying
down standards due to political pressure. We’re going to stop lying to children. We
have 44 states working together and two consortia to come up with the next generation of assessments.
And, when you have much higher standards, when you come up with common assessments,
then behind that we’ll be able to figure out which curriculum, which is defined at
the local level is doing the best job of helping students learn and over time those that are
really accelerating learning for all students, helping to close achievement gaps. We’ll
see those successful curricular replicated and built upon around the country, and so
you may see a narrowing of options, a narrowing of the best of the best moving forward, I
think that will be healthy and that would be all determined by which curricular helping
students fulfill their academic and social potential.
Much of the current standardizing testing, I think, has real challenges. Frankly, I think
it is far too simplistic. It sort of – in many places, just fill in the bubble tests
and often does very little to actually help students improve. As we move forward, we want
to think much more about on-going formative evaluations. So that real-time teachers, parents
and, most importantly, students themselves, know what they’re learning, what their strengths
are, what their weaknesses are, whether they’re doing well, and how do we continue to accelerate
them in those areas, where they are struggling, what does that child do them self, what can
their parents do at night, on the weekends, what can teachers do to help reteach and help
them learn what they’re struggling -- the material they are struggling with. We have
two consortia of states working together to create and generate this next generation of
assessments but will be much more comprehensive, go far beyond these simplistic fill in the
bubble tests. Do a much better job of evaluating critical thinking skills, and, I think, this
is going to move the country forward in a critically important direction, and I am so
thankful for the leadership that’s been shown amongst also every single state --
44 states around the country in these two efforts.
These are very, very tough budget times, and I’ve talking to many educators across the
country who have been teaching or who have been an administrator for, you know, two,
three, even four decades and many of them say, unfortunately, this might be about the
toughest time economically that they’re face. So school districts are being asked
to do more with less. Local resources, state resources are at some points at lows that
we haven’t seen in possibly in decades. So, it is a real challenging time at a time
when doing great work in the classroom in schools has never been more important. So
it’s so important that we all work together to become more productive, to become more
efficient, to figure out how we get better results. We have limited resources. You have
some districts, some states that are showing tremendous courage and ingenuity in this area
that are actually given tough budget times stretching dollars and still getting much
better results for students. You have other places that are, frankly, a little bit more
paralyzed that are really struggling to break through, and we want to do everything we can
to shine a spotlight on those places that are making tough choices, but smart, strategic
choices, where student learning is continuing to increase and to accelerate despite the
tight budget times and continue to help those places that are struggling to figure out what’s
the best way to stretch every scare dollar to help children in the maximum way possible.
I think all of us, including the federal government, have to do more to help that next generation
of young people in our country be successful. I look at this through a couple of different
lenses. First, I see education as the civil rights issue of our generation. The dividing
line in our country is less around race and class than it is around educational opportunity,
and we have to level the playing field. Secondly, we’re fighting for our country’s economic
future here. Other countries right now are simply out educating us. As the President
said repeatedly, the country that out educates us today is going to out compete us long term.
And thirdly, there is a real national security risk here. As I talk to generals and admirals
and military leaders unfortunately, far too many of our young people simply can’t qualify
for military services because they are not up to par academically. They have, you know,
trouble with their criminal past or might be obese and so whether you look at this from
a national security lens, as an economic imperative or as a civil rights issue, we have to do
a lot better. We, at the Federal government have tried to provide unprecedented resources
– more than $40 billion -- to make college much more assessable and affordable, as a
huge, huge break through. We’re driving unparallel leadership, and innovation, encourage
reform at the local level through Race to the Top resources, through school improvement
grants, through teacher incentive funds, we want to invest more in the early childhood
side. So, we want to be a great partner, but we know the actions always going to be at
the local level, and we want to do everything we can to support states, to support districts
and to support local communities to give every single child the world-class education they
need and deserve.