My Transcript Of arne duncan On The Ed Show

[Dinger]

Not that I like him, but I just had a little time on my hands, and did this:


Ed: You know, when I was growing up, my mother was a high school. english teacher, and I remember my mother grading papers till 2- 3 o’clock in the morning . I said “Mom, why are you doing that?” Then of course she’d get up at 7:30 in the morning and get us all ready for school, and we’d be off and going. I said “Mom, why do you do that?” It was the reward of teaching. That’s what my parents taught me. It was the reward of helping other people out. And we can’t lose that fire. We can’t lose that vitality. We can’t lose that real passion in this country if we’re going to save public education. Now the conservatives, they’re all about school vouchers. They think these numbers that I showed you a moment ago are just way off the chart. Taxpayers should not have to “put up with” this Obama plan. This is all a fraud. Let me tell you something. The fraud has already been committed on the American People with No Child Left Behind. We made a deal with the last administration.
And then they didn’t fund it. Now it’s going to be up to the Obama Administration to keep its word to the American People so these school districts don’t have to make these gut-wrenching votes, to cut teachers, to not build facilities. There is one other number that is very startling that we are going to have to turn around in this country folks, and that is nationally, there is a 9.3 % drop out rate. Now if we throw a bunch of billions of dollars at that, is that going to going turn it around? But the startling thing is, ironically there are children that are being left behind in some portions of the country, and isn’t it interesting it’s in our inner city schools. In Cleveland, the dropout rate is 66%. In Indianapolis it’s 70%. This is staggering to me. In Detroit, when kids come into the high school, in ninth grade, three out of four do not get a high school diploma. This is not America. We are better than this. It’s gonna take a generational commitment if we’re going to turn this around. And of course you can go through all the statistics, that if you have a more educated population, you’re not going to have the crime. And that’s another story I’m going to have to do. Just how many prisons do we have in this country? This guy behind me (a picture of President Obama)
has got some heavy lifting to do, and we gotta help him out. His secretary of education is with us tonight. Mr. Arne Duncan. Mr. Duncan I have not had an opportunity to meet you., but I am certainly excited to have you on the program, and you got some big shoulders I see. You’re gonna need ‘em because this is gonna be a heavy lift.

Arne: Thanks so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Ed: You bet. Mr. Secretary, all this money, is this actually gonna get to local school
districts? We’ve heard that song and dance before.

Arne: It already is. As you said, one of the big issues with NCLB is guess what?
They’ve left the money behind. And this is a historic investment in public
education. As you said, over 100 billion dollars, 5 billion dollars for early childhood,
over 70 billion dollars for K-12, and over 31 billion dollars to increase access and
opportunity for students going on to higher education to college. So it’s never been
a bigger influx of resources. I am just so thankful for the President’s absolute
commitment. He totally understands that we have to educate our way to a better
economy. That’s the only way that we’re going to get there. Congress has been
extremely supportive. And as I said earlier, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to
to dramatically improve the quality of education. We were facing an education
catastrophe. We were anticipating as many as 600,000 teaching jobs being lost.
That would have been an absolute disaster. And we’re going to save literally hundreds
of thousands of teaching jobs around the country, and we’re going to push a very
strong reform agenda because as you said, we have to get dramatically better. The
status quo isn’t good enough. But this is a fantastic time to be working on public
education in America.



Ed: Well I’ll tell you what, it’s an awful lot of money to follow, there’s no question about
that. O.K. Do you believe that this is going to hold teachers in the profession that
might be thinking about retiring?

*Banner at bottom says: “More than 50% of teachers could retire in the next decade.”

Arne: It will, and as teachers retire, we have a chance . . . that presents come challenges
Ed, but it presents some huge opportunities as well. And we can bring this next
generation of young leadership into the teaching profession. So teachers that want
to keep teaching , we absolutely want them to do that, but teachers that want to
retire, we need to bring that next generation of talent in. And so we’re going to work
very hard, the President, the First Lady, The Vice President, his wife and myself,
starting this fall, traveling the country, really talking about . . . if you want to serve the
country, if you want to make a difference in students’ lives, there’s no more
meaningful profession, there’s no noble a profession than teaching. It’s actually one
of the few benefits from such a tough economy as more more and more folks are
looking at the teaching profession.

Ed: Well you know, that’s a key point. I hope that’s the case because the starting pay
across the country is not very good. Now I want you to address the dropout rates.
75% in Detroit? I don’t mean to pick on Detroit, but that’s a microcosm of what we’re
seeing in a lot of big cities all over the country, which brings us to curriculum. Are we
going to see an easier curriculum to turn this around, or is it just putting money to it
that’s going to change it?

Arne: No, you can’t water down the curriculum. What’s gone on in Detroit, now now they’re
talking about this since I the day I started my job, has been an educational travesty.
The education there has been perpetuating poverty. It perpetuated social failure.
The education system is a big part of the problem. That has to change. In Detroit
specifically, I have been pushing for mayoral control. You need when things are
so tough, you need everybody, the business community, the philanthropic
community, the religious community, the nonprofit social service agencies,
everyone has to rally behind the school children of Detroit. That leadership has to
come from the top. There has to be fundamental and dramatic change there.

Ed: Well o.k., fundamental and dramatic change. This is the $ 64 question Secretary
Duncan.. Will the Obama Administration scrap NCLB and start over because there
so many frustrated educators, professionals across the country. They’re just
throwing their hands up, and that’s one of the reasons they’re leaving the profession.
Will you scrap the program and start over?

Duncan: Well I’ve lived on the other side of the program for seven and a half years as
the CEO of Chicago Public Schools. I have very strong feelings about what
worked and what didn’t work. And a big part of what didn’t work was the unfunded
mandates, and again over $10 billion going in for Title 1, over $10 billion going in for
IDEA for special education students, so unprecedented resources. Well what I’m
going to do Ed, is to really travel the country to listen and learn, and talk to teachers,
and to hear their frustrations, and talk to parents, and talk to students, and we’ll come
back later in the year with a really thoughtful bill, and quite frankly, need to be some
fundamental changes, but the name itself I think is toxic. The NCLB name
fundamentally has to change, as well as some serious substance behind that as
well.


Ed: Alright, but it sounds like the standards that have to be met, the testing that’s being
taken place, that’s all gonna stay in place?

Duncan: Well I think we actually have to raise the bar. I would argue Ed that in many
states we have dummied down standards, and that is hurting children. I think we
actually have to raise the bar. Our children as you know, are competing for jobs
with children in India and China. And those students are going to school longer,
being taught to higher standards, so the answer to the dropout crisis, the answer to
our economy, is not to water things down, it’s to challenge students to do more, to
have the highest of expectations, but to provide the resources and the support
to help them get there, and to support great teachers and great principals as you
said, keep them in the profession.

Ed: Alright. Secretary Duncan, good to have you on the program tonight. We’re gonna
follow this story. This is one of the benchmark issues on the Obama campaign.
And a lot of people are counting on this money making a difference, and your
leadership is gonna be key. Good to have you with us tonight on The Ed Program.


Duncan: We have an extraordinary opportunity ahead of us.

Ed:I think we do.