Stimulating the education system

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The money could revive the reform efforts that began promisingly with President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. On "The Takeaway," Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, explains how the dollars will be spent.

Secretary Duncan starts by tackling the current education system in the US: "… I think we need to raise the bar, our students today are competing for jobs not down the block or within the state, they’re competing for jobs with children from India and China. I think we need a higher bar, we need better assessments so children have a way to learn what their strengths and weaknesses are along the road. We talk about a higher bar, I mean, internationally benchmarked, college-ready, career-ready standards. We need to really tell the truth to our students and to our parents about what students’ strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and we need real-time assessments … to really give our students the ability to improve where they need to."

On President Obama’s education spending in the stimulus bill, Secretary Duncan says: "… this is obviously an extraordinary, once in a lifetime, historic opportunity to make things dramatically better. We need to push very hard for reform … the status quo isn’t good enough that we need to get dramatically better. What we can do with these new resources are a few things.

"First of all I talked about raising the bar, raising the standards, college-ready, career-ready, internationally benchmark standards. We need to develop great assessments behind that, so you can tell a second-grader, a third-grader, are they on the road to go to college, are they successful or are they not.

"You need great data systems, you need to be able to track student achievement year after year, track students against teachers, and track teachers back to student educations to see which teachers are making a difference in student lives.

"Finally, we have to think very, very differently about how we reward teachers and principals. As you know, in education, talent matters tremendously. We have to get the best and brightest into education and we have to keep them there. We have to reward them not just for success in students, but for taking on the toughest assignments, whether that’s inner-city urban or rural. With the resources we have, we can dramatically challenge the status quo, not just invest in the status quo."

According to Secretary Duncan, the stimulus bill is saving teaching jobs: "I can tell you what we’ve been able to do, we’ve been able to stave off a catastrophe. As you know, with the recovery package, we’re going to save hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs … I was with the mayor and the chancellor and Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, in New York about two weeks ago, and they estimate that due to our state stabilization fund, we’re going to save 14,000 teaching jobs in New York alone. What I was really worried about, is what I think would have been an educational travesty, where we would have seen class size around the country go from 25 to 38 or 40. And with the funds in the recovery package, we’re able to save many, many of those jobs. There’s an estimate of as many as 580,000 teaching jobs being lost. So at this point, we’re not able to reduce class size, but we’re able to make sure things don’t get dramatically worse, which would have been a terrible, terrible blow to children around the country."

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"The Takeaway" is a national morning news program, delivering the news and analysis you need to catch up, start your day, and prepare for what’s ahead. The show is a co-production of WNYC and PRI, in editorial collaboration with the BBC, The New York Times Radio, and WGBH.

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