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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Can I comment ahead of time before Mr. Duncan unloads a truckload of bovine ejecta?
If I remember correctly, when Mr Duncan left as head of the Chicago School District to join the Obama Administration, he left with an 18% drop out rate.
Here's a radical idea: wait until the show airs before making a comment.
16 years ago, when Maryland was developing its High School Assessments, they said that students would have to pass the test in order to graduate, and that the test would be a challenging one.
My response was "Baloney. The state doesn't have the guts to say 'I'm sorry lady, your kid is too dumb or lazy to graduate."
As it turned out, that is true. When they fail the test, they get to do a project. The kids who don't show up to do the project are chased around until they do.
As long as it is the case, well known to all students, that all they have to do is show up long enough and someone will find a way to give them a diploma, it is just plain silly to hold anyone else accountable.
One thing that isn't working in the U.S. education system is that at the same time volunteers from the community could make a big difference in schools, concern for protection of children and fear of liability is causing more school systems to implement fingerprinting requirements at the expense of, and great inconvenience to, the volunteer. In the case of undocumented families, we are losing the resource of having families involved in the schools. The Department of Education could develop a model program that school systems could use to take the place of fingerprinting. Although I don't know what that system would be, I also can remember a time when we wondered how the internet could be of any use. Someone has the answer to this! It is archaic that there is no transferability of information -- that I should have had to be fingerprinted first to be a teacher, then again to be a daycare provider, then again to be a volunteer in retirement. Additionally, it is difficult to get fingerprints from older people & those in helping professions such as nurses, so this system seems rather discriminatory.
Please ask the Secretary why he believes polls of public school parents - as in NYC and Chicago - overwhelmingly show that we parents have little to no faith in his corporate "Ed Reform" programs and the dictatorial Mayoral Control systems which include increased high stakes testing, Darwinian competition between public and charter schools, and only holding teachers but never senior administrators accountable. Can he explain why instead he almost never mentions programs that parents want and Unions support including smaller class sizes, less reliance on testing, investing in rather than closing our schools, less competition/more collaboration, and much more parent/community control and input into our children's educations? Thank you.
President Obama said during the debate he wanted to add a hundred thousand teachers to the educational system. Of course the main stream media ignored it. This is not a federal government role in the first place, the federal government has shown no improvement in overall achievement levels of students since the start of the federal Department of Education, in fact things have only gotten worse.
Please no more top down federal government boondoggles. The federal Department of Education should be eliminated.
More views from the Obama side on education.
Fair and Balanced?....no way....
This show continues to strive for no public funding based on its political rant!
Could you ask Secretary Duncan about how he sees the lines of responsibility between the Federal Government, State, and local governments as it relates to education. There are many different types of problems at the local levels which don't lend themselves to centralized Federal control. If the State and local level should have freedom to deal with the problems and populations they have, what is the role of the Department of Education?
I think the expectations for future income for college educated studenets is over sold for the amount of debt and costs. I think the biggest failure is in giving students guidance about careers AND how to match personalities with job requirements. I think the disconnect is huge. There is not real exploration of skills and what it takes to be a success in the business world. I see salaries for many educated adults that are below the $50K mark even after years of good job performance.
@ partisan politics...
Can we agree that education is key to economic growth and prosperity? See for instance the economic theory of human capital (T. Schultz, University of Chicago Nobel Laureate in economics).
Who should put in place the capabilities that will provide everyone with the fundamental intellectual and practical skills to help themselves and contribute to society's prosperity?
Should it be the state? If so, how would you make sure that all states provide the same opportunities?
Who else?
I like what I am hearing. Sounds good and possible. Motivate kids to want to succeed.
Does Mr. Duncan have any opinion on adopting the Common Core State Standards, or something similar?
Would like to hear a comment from the secretary about post secondary educational opportunities for individuals with special needs.
School funding is a battle for increasingly scarce resources. Instead of continuing to throw good money after bad a different approach is needed. Why not encourage those that ought not be having children to have fewer or none at all? I envision a private foundation to pay high-risk populations to pass pregnancy tests. A reduction in births to those that can barely feed themselves would solve many of the societal ills we face.
Ferdnam wrote: " how would you make sure that all states provide the same opportunities?"
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. The Department of Education is subject to the political whims of which political party is in power, democrats are in the pocket of teacher labor unions and nothing good for the students can come from that.
Thank you for having Arne Duncan on your show. Mr. Duncan mentioned that college students can pay off their education for teaching ten years. Please note that everyone is not cut out to teach. His pushing from more Teach for America was left unsaid. We need people that are willing to commit to teaching. Those that are trained in the development of children. His past work in Chicago is not that impressive. President Obama has not made a positive impression on me by following all of Arne Duncan's ideas.
Special education is the bastard red head child in the family that Duncan won't discuss. Why won't he come out and demand national standards for the use of restraints against the spec. ed population instead of continuing to let children die at the hands of ill-trained teachers and staff members?
Special education is a sub-set of general education and spec. ed. is in the gutter and any parent whose child is receiving spec. ed. services will confirm this. Our public schools are an embarrassment to our country and in comparison around the world we are failing our children.
Public schools care more about job security for its' teachers than educating the children they serve.
I think the real problem I see, at least in Florida, is that kids are taught to the test. They are not necessarily learning anything, they are just cramming for the exam. There is no critical thinking been taught.
Unfortunately, the teachers themselves have no idea what critical thinking is, because they did not get it taught when they were in school themselves.
We need a re-boot.
Unrelated to this, I'd like also to add: School is meant to be tough and difficult. That's how one learns. Life is not easy, so why should school be? Not everyone was born with the intelligence nor the drive to be the next Einstein.
I've said this before- there aren't enough private school slots in America to accept every child who might want to attend (ever applied for your kid(s) and ended up on a waiting list? I have; but, if every private school in the US closed today, guess where all those students would end up?!
Private schools can choose their students, public schools can't!
For decades now, we have had one side of our political class telling us education should be a local issue- that Washington shouldn't tell us how to educate our kids. The result of that are 51 different educational standards, and with all due respect, the worst standards are in places that consistently listen to those 'leaders'. They tell us how bad teachers are, how bad educated people are, and how people need to take a stand against them.
Well, first, why shouldn't we have national standards for education? Why shouldn't the core curriculum be the same nationwide? Allowing for regional dialects, shouldn't the basics [reading, writing, arithmetic, social studies/history- [the Civil War is not the war of northern aggression, the south started it] be the same for everyone? Our worldwide industrial competitors have national standards and it shows in their ability to compete.
Secondly, all those politicos 'dissing' education- every one of them went to college [Mr. Rick 3-degrees-and-son-started-college-this-year Santorum]; so, education is bad for you but not for them? Let's face it, with their agenda, they need their constituents desperate (no jobs, struggling to make ends meet) and dumb (poor education and educational opportunities) to keep getting the votes they get.
I went to scientific based college in the late seventies and the entire 4 years costs $24K. Now this would cost $152 for 4 years. Is the education 6 times better? Why would we throw more money into loans until we solve this problem.
Part of the problem is the culture of our children. I live in Frederick County, MD and there are lots of jobs available, especially for young people. But these jobs go unfilled because no one "wants" to do the job. Our children have been raised to believe they can make a living doing what they "want" to do...living their dreams, striving high. What we've done is raise a generation of children unwilling to actually work for a living. If beautiful if you can make a living working at your dream but this is not reality for most people. And certainly it's rarely possible for young people. As a 45 year old woman, who does have the privilege of working in a field that is my passion, I know this is something that doesn't happen overnight. I worked many jobs to pay the bills before I was in a position to have my dream job. The young people I know today are simply unwilling to put in the time and effort it takes to make it to a place where one can work/live their dream.
Vocational Schools are indeed needed! There is a real crisis in manufacturing because vocational education is just not there. So true.
Mr. Duncan is Wrong. Very Wrong.
Vocational Schools are indeed needed! There is a real crisis in manufacturing because vocational education is just not there. So true.
Mr. Duncan is Wrong. Very Wrong.
I am a parent of a 2nd grader (public schools) and 5 year old (Montessori). I am a very involved parent and have been in the public classroom and school in a middle to upper class socioeconomic community in Michigan. I am DEEPLY concerned with what I have observed in our public schools:
3 things I have observed first-hand:
#1 Students/children are not the focus anymore, and at this rate, our best teachers are going to flee the profession. Public policies are forcing a MAJOR disconnect between teachers and their students because teachers are exhausted, stressed and overwhelmed with assessments, data gathering, teacher evaluations, tying in state standards, digital lesson plans, state standard tests, etc. Children are NOT the focus anymore - Students are left to work on their own and are NOT progressing forward.
#2 Classroom size is a major issue! 28-29 students? One teacher? No parapro? Millions of assessments every quarter that take up huge amounts of time? How is this moving children forward in their learning? They are spending entirely too much time waiting around for the next lesson, help, and for the teacher to answer their questions.
#3 We have forgotten that the number one motivator for student success is a child's attitude toward school. The fun has been taken out, the children are not the focus, the teachers are impatient and stressed out, motivating programs have been removed... no wonder why kids don' like school!
I have worked in both public and private schools as well as poor and wealthy schools in both. The biggest problem was that parents are either helicopter parents and refuse to let their students be challenged or parents are not involved and let their children fail. In the end, the teachers are handicapped and the children and our country will suffer.
As a rule, no one seems to consider the role of human genetics. Quite simply, some children are born with more intelligence than others. Unless science can come up with a way to "create" more intelligent people, there's simply no way that you can "make" someone more intelligent than they are.
But even if you solve that problem, you still need to deal with the unsolvable problem of human nature. Some children just don't care. Just like some adults just don't care.
Maybe the idea that the human race has reached the point of unsustainablity is relevant? Many people subscribe to the idea that there are "no limits". I believe history will prove them wrong.
And by the way, not every kid is cut out for STEM. It sounds great to say there should be more STEM classes/education, but what about the kids who don't excell in those subjects.
note: the FAA used to hire then train its ATCs, but now people have to take the ATC curriculum at the local community college at their own expense, before even applying for the job.
In Michigan, there is high drop out rate in low income areas because of the Michigan Merit Exam, a high stakes test in the Junior year of a student. The test is partly made of the ACT, a college entrance exam which used to be taken only by college bound students. It is a discriminatory test that is designed to tell students how successful or unsuccessful they will be in a college or university. To gear up for it, students are put through test prep for the entire year, and in the grades before. Students have been turned into numerical test scores, and they are not prepared for future employment because when faced with a real-life problem, there are no correct bubbles to choose. Students are quitting school because when they fall behind in math, they are given one or two extra math classes during the school day - and are equally unsuccessful in those as well. They drop out because they fall too far behind their peers and they move on to earn their GED somewhere where testing pressure has been taken off. Arne Duncan, President Obama, and the reformist movement, are all on board with 3rd party testing companies. Project based classrooms will not exist in Michigan until high-stakes testing is tempered.
Too many parents themselves can't or don't read. With everyone glued to their cell phones and ipads brains are not being fed with the same stimulus that reading a book provides.