Secretary Of Education Arne Duncan
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-10-09/secretary-education-arne-duncan
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan just completed a cross-country bus tour promoting education as an investment in America's future. He joins Diane to talk about ongoing reforms and challenges still facing our nation's schools. Later in the hour, a panel of education experts give their views on what is and isn't working in the U.S. education system.
Guests
Arne Duncan
Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration
Kevin Carey
director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation.
Randi Weingarten
president of American Federation of Teachers.
Maria Ferguson
executive director at the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University.
Video: Inside The Studio
Education Secretary Arne Duncan discussed how school reform under an Obama administration would differ from a Romney administration, touching on Pell grants, the No Child Left Behind policy and Head Start program.
Comments
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I have a child with an IQ of 140 who is also dyslexic and digraphic. My experience trying to educate him at Windsor Farm Elementary School in Annapolis MD was so sub-par (inclusive of having to remove him from a drunk teacher's class) that had I not been fortunate enough to be able to fund a private education for him, he would have been so "dumbed down" by the teachers and system eventually he would have been dumb. I will never forget his teacher telling me he was just "average" and that IEP's would help him get through school and graduate. That same child at Radcliffe Creek School in Chestertown, MD (yes we drive) in just one school year increased his reading level by 2 years and 4 months, writes in cursive beautifully, studies math a grade level ahead and finished last year by earning the most prestigious award the school gives for being such an exemplary student. We will not fix education in this country until we stop just "processing" children and teaching to pass a test. Additionally, the fact that the "acceptable norm" of a child's performance is between 31 - 72% before they are either "helped or enhanced" is un-exceptable.
partisan politics wrote:
"There desperately needs to be competition for tax payer dollars at the local level. Dollars attached to the students and not the school districts. Yes a voucher system, so parents can choose the schools with the best outcomes."
Two follow up questions:
1. With a voucher system, how would you make sure that pupils/students are offered the same quality opportunities for learning?
2. Competition: competition in economics is an American mantra. But competition also leads to a lowering of prices, yielding a lowering of production costs via a lowering of quality standards (see Gresham's law). How do you protect against a furthering of the lowering of education standards (which have been in a downward spiral for many years already)?
As a former teacher who has taught in several districts and states to solution is simple: get rid of tenureship and make schools compete for students, thus dollars/salary. I had to clean up after a lot of teachers who wasted a student's entire year with their poor, lazy teaching. The kids don't get that year back. Too many co-workers focused on their retirement rather than kids in the union meetings.
You work 188 days a year. You couldn't get away with poor performance in the private sector. Integrity is the only thing forcing teachers to do good jobs. You can teach amazing things with the basics and a teacher who tries and competes.
Birth control pills are prescribed medications. Inequality for one is inequality for all. When you provide prescription meds to one you must prescribe it for all. As for Mrs Rehms comment about people knows they are applying to a Religious institution, hence they are taking that risk. I believe that the religious affiliated institutes should stick to the churches if they want to use their religion to discriminate, but when they branch out into hospitals, universities, or other businesses they have to provide equal coverage to everyone.
It is not about sexual behavior it is about a WOMAN's right to make decisions about her life and body.
Two follow up questions:
1. With a voucher system, how would you make sure that pupils/students are offered the same quality opportunities for learning?
2. Competition: competition in economics is an American mantra. But competition also leads to a lowering of prices, yielding a lowering of production costs via a lowering of quality standards (see Gresham's law). How do you protect against a furthering of the lowering of education standards (which have been in a downward spiral for many years already)?
1.Parents would decide which local school provides the best opportunity for their children, much better than the system we now have that gives most parents no choice.
2. For the most part I experience quality improvements caused by the competition over costs and quality control. Supply a bad product and you go out of business. In my area private schools have better outcomes at 1/3 the cost of public schools.
What ever happened to the separation of church and state? I have strong emotions about Mitt Romney, the GOP Republican Presidential Candidate being a faithful follower of a church that is determined to and has succeeded in building a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) - The Mormons, Seminary Building right next to almost every high school in the state of Utah. I am sure the LDS church would love to do the same in your state, and they probably will as Mitt Romney, and other LDS faithful members push for state's rights, school/education vouchers, and the dismantling of the US Department of Education. I think we can probably thank Utah Senator Orin Hatch (a pioneer of state's rights and his current understudy Senator Mike Lee), and other LDS faithful lawmakers for launching and persisting in the movement for states rights and for smudging the fine line to exempt the LDS church and the evasive and secretive State of Utah government from federal guidelines.
The secretary of education doesn't know the difference between "less" and "fewer"? Oh dear.
What is lacking in the discussion about improving the education system is the role and accountability of parents and students. Much is said about more teachers, school management, testing, funding, etc. Raising my children I found that the biggest obstacle to a sound learning experience were the parents of other students that took no interest in the school, the teachers or classroom experience. Their children came to class unprepared and uninterested in learning. For them school was little more than a babysitter. Unless and until parents are engaged in and held accountable for the education of their children, there is no program, funding or testing standard that will move the ball. Let's hear more discussion about this and how to get parents to meet their obligations.
partisan politics wrote:
Two follow up questions:
1. With a voucher system, how would you make sure that pupils/students are offered the same quality opportunities for learning?
2. Competition: competition in economics is an American mantra. But competition also leads to a lowering of prices, yielding a lowering of production costs via a lowering of quality standards (see Gresham's law). How do you protect against a furthering of the lowering of education standards (which have been in a downward spiral for many years already)?
1.Parents would decide which local school provides the best opportunity for their children, much better than the system we now have that gives most parents no choice.
2. For the most part I experience quality improvements caused by the competition over costs and quality control. Supply a bad product and you go out of business. In my area private schools have better outcomes at 1/3 the cost of public schools"
You really did not answer my first question... The issue of equal access to a basic standard ought to be minimally addressed. Don't you think?
Don't get me wrong... When my son was in first grade (I did not know much about US schools), something happened that made me pull him out of the public schools and put him in a private school from 1st grade to HS graduation... So, I am not against private schools. But I realize that not everyone can afford a private school education. What do we do for all students? Who sets the standards?
With regards to my second question, lowering costs can happen through better organization. I agree! But, in most cases that I am aware of, worldwide, lowering costs lessens the quality of the product or service offered... True quality has a price...
Living in a state that provides vouchers, I am aware of some of the consequences associated with them. Many schools will not take special education students if you go out of district or to a charter. So frustrated parents are stuck with teachers that cannot or will not provide adequate support. How do we alleviate this inequality?
1. "You really did not answer my first question... The issue of equal access to a basic standard ought to be minimally addressed. Don't you think?"
2."lowering costs lessens the quality of the product or service offered... True quality has a price..."
Both your "opinions" are addressed with my free market solutions. You either respect that or you don't. I know of NO poor quality service or product that has survived unless it is supported by government. If you have a non government example I would like to hear it?
The Department Of Education did not exist as we know it until 1979, it can claim no positive results in outcomes since that time. Federal centralized power is part of the problem not the solution.
partisan politics wrote:
"NO poor quality service or product that has survived unless it is supported by government. If you have a non government example I would like to hear it?"
This is going to be a very long debate...
Let us take the issue of the growth in power of market intermediaries forcing producers to export their production capacity to countries with lower wages, regulatory standards, etc... Walmart, Target are such intermediaries who offer low price/low quality goods to people who can afford less and less to buy the quality that could be found in stores in the past.
My first time in the US (a very long time ago), goods on the shelves where of superior quality. No longer. This is Gresham's law I alluded to before... As I understand it, Walmart and Target are not government entities... They cater to a clientele that can no longer afford to buy quality.
This is but one example of the market pressure to lower prices... Once you can no longer reduce wages, one reduces quality...
In education, for profit universities truly offer "junk" products. I can elaborate if you wish in another post or in an email...
The "experts" on today's show have ignored the latest research on the developing child, especially brain research. This information goes a long way in explaining why kids aren't succeeding academically. (Information is available online from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child.) The most important goal of early childhood is establishing trust through a loving bond with parents or other primary caregiver.
But the lack of trust in their relationships causes stress. Ongoing stress in the body produces stress hormones, such as cortisol, which damage developing brain architecture, resulting in problems with learning, behavior and even physical health. It's a physiological response, and a now well-established fact.
Educators need to look at what is really happening to children's brains due to the stress caused by absentee fathers, poverty, domestic tension and lack of parenting skills in young parents.
Families don't need day-long educational programming for preschoolers, or one-stop-shopping for social services, as several callers suggested. They need a family-supporting income for fathers so that mothers are free to nurture their children at home, fulfilling the first and most important goal of early childhood. No daycare program can take the place of a mother's loving arms. No amount of educational funding, remediation or special services can make up for the damage caused to our children's brains if they have not been allowed to meet their earliest developmental requirements for trust and attachment. Why is this such an unreasonable goal, when so much money is being spent on trying to fix the problem after the damage has been done? It's an issue that can no longer be ignored if we are going to commit ourselves as a nation to the success of our children. Once again, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Ferdnam wrote: "This is going to be a very long debate..."Walmart, Target are such intermediaries who offer low price/low quality goods to people who can afford less and less to buy the quality that could be found in stores in the past. "They cater to a clientele that can no longer afford to buy quality"
Not a long debate because you cannot name a product or service. The material wealth of the poor and those of moderate income has been on a constant steady rise throughout the industrial revolution. The products you denounce as inferior allow people an opportunity to have something adequate instead of nothing at all as they would of had years ago.
Points to remember concerning public education:
a. Public schools, unlike private or charter schools, must acceot and teach all students.......NO exceptions, no cherry picking, no permanent expulsions due to behavior.
b. National statistics of performance overall indicate NO clear difference in outcomes between public schools and charter schools.......a bad school is a bad school.
c. In many, many circumstances, parents especially in low income areas predominantly regard public schools as child care centers. (Notice how many of the parents in the Chicago strike situation complained about the inconvenience rather than the loss of education.)
d. There remains a wide gap between the quality of teachers and facilities available to low income areas vs. middle to high income areas.........the preponderance of school funding at the local level being based on property taxes.
e. Wages and benefits for teachers at all levels of experience remain outpaced drastically by workers with similar education/training. The exception is among college instructors.
f. Methods and tools and curricula are mandated by school boards and administration.......teachers have little/no input or flexibility.
g. Budgets dictate staffing and quality........."tenure" for elementary teachers and, to a lesser extent, high school instructors is purely based on budgetary constraints.......administrators are encouraged and rewarded for cost containment far more than educational outcomes.
Honest?Abe wrote: a smorgasbord of poorly thought out self serving opinions.
The same guy who said teacher unions started the public school system!
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The problem fundamentally is this: We believe we can replace the role of the nuclear family with a huge, expansive, budget numbing, money wasting government program spilling over with rhetorical flourish. It is NOT going to work.
You want education reform? Here's education reform:
The students must do the following.
1) Go to bed on time.
2) Wake up on time.
3) Go to school on time.
4) Turn work in on time.
5) Behave.
If every student were to do this, there would be less talk about education "reform," holding teachers "accountable," or the chimera of "research based" education.
And if the students don't do this - then I don't care what teachers you have or curriculum you teach.
That's the Gospel truth and you know it!
Arne used the term 'invest' multiple times. What he fails to understand, just like a true bureaucrat, is that investments need to produce measurable returns. Otherwise, they are just expenses. He has no way of knowing what the economic return is from having pumped X $$ into these programs. Therefore, they truly are just tax-payer funded expenses to which he's attempting to tag an appealing term. And how is the President's goal of increasing the number of people getting a college degree relevant? There are so many of them now who can't get a job. If the labor force can be better served by more people going to trade school, how will helping them get college degrees benefit the country? Just another Obama way to piss away more tax dollars and grow the deficit.
I appreciated the caller who was a drop out, went back to school, got his degree, owes $140K in student loans and, oh yeah, is an independent voter. He claims Romney thinks he should ask his mother to repay his student loan. No, Romney (and many other Americans) think he should use the income he's earning (which he admits is very good) because of his degree to repay the cost of getting that degree. But that doesn't occur to him. Like the rest of the entitlement nation, he feels the tax-payers need to re-pay the loan, and that he should keep his fabulous income all to himself. This is the mindset Obama and DR have encouraged.
partisan politics wrote:
"Not a long debate because you cannot name a product or service. The material wealth of the poor and those of moderate income has been on a constant steady rise throughout the industrial revolution. The products you denounce as inferior allow people an opportunity to have something adequate instead of nothing at all as they would of had years ago."
I would agree that the industrial revolution moved us from an economy of scarcity to an economy of sufficiency... This being said, we are now moving from a economy of sufficiency to an economy of plenty of "junk..." Further, this junk is produced "elsewhere" with the unfortunate consequence that the consumer can afford less and less because he is no longer a producer... A prosperous economy is founded upon an ecology of enterprises and an ecology of labor. The individual within the economic system has to be both a consumer and a producer... The consumer/producer can afford quality stuff... The consumer/non producer can afford first less stuff, then junk, then less junk, then nothing...
This will indeed be a very long debate if one does not consider the dynamic essence of economic phenomena....
When, at 10:25:47, the Secretary of Education says that for the past 2 centuries, 90-95% of children have attended public school, what can he be thinking? Public schools did not exist until around 1850, they started in the northeast and midwest only, and certainly did not enroll black children. What is he talking about?
Why aren't there any students on this panel? That makes no sense. We have a stake in our education. We should have a substantial voice.
Nikhil Goyal
17-year-old author, speaker, and student
ngoyal2013@gmail.com