Tag Archives: Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan Speaks at National Press Club

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Last week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan addressed an audience at the National Press Club.  His remarks were focused on current education reforms and the estimated success of programs already in place.

“Today, we are asking much more of ourselves and much more of each other – and everyone is stepping up – parents, teachers, administrators, community leaders – and, of course, students,” Duncan said.  He highlighted ongoing reform activity across the entire educational continuum: early learning, K-12, higher education and adult education.

Duncan and his senior staff just completed a cross-country bus tour, “Education Drives America,” that took them to 12 states for more than 100 separate events.  In his remarks, the Secretary explicitly linked education with the economy saying, “People everywhere understand that the path to the middle class runs right through our classrooms.”

Duncan discussed major education reforms underway, including:

  • College and career-ready standards in 45 states and D.C.
  • State-designed accountability systems in 33 states serving more than 60 percent of students; more local decision-making around interventions in low-performing schools.
  • Nearly 10 million students attending college with Pell grants – up from 6 million; rising college enrollment and completion.
  • Greater labor-management collaboration around issues like teacher and principal evaluation, compensation, and career pathways for teachers.

Duncan acknowledged budget pressures affecting states and districts across the country and highlighted the administration’s effort to protect 400,000 education jobs through the Recovery Act and the American Jobs Act.  He also raised concerns about cuts to education in Congress.

“The choice facing the country is pretty clear: some people see education as an expense government can cut to help balance our budgets.  The President sees education as an investment in our future,” Duncan said.

Vowing to “double down on what we know is working,” Duncan outlined several educational priorities for the country:

  • High quality early education for more low-income children.
  • State-driven accountability that demands progress for all kids.
  • More local decision-making and fewer mandates from Washington.
  • More support for principals and teachers to translate high standards into practice.
  • More personalization in the classroom and greater student engagement.
  • A stronger partnership between teachers and technology.
  • A new generation of math and science teachers recruited from America’s top universities.
  • Passage of the DREAM Act.
  • Reforming career education programs in high schools and community colleges.
  • Closing the skills gap for millions of unemployed or underemployed adults.
  • Reforming and simplifying student aid to help drive college affordability and completion.

Duncan closed his remarks with an urgent appeal for bipartisan commitment to education reform, saying: “America must unite behind the cause of public education and recognize that the solutions don’t come from one party or one ideology. They come from all of us – you and me – challenging ourselves and holding ourselves accountable. We don’t have a minute to waste.”

To read his full remarks, please visit http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/moving-forward-staying-focused

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Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom

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Since the end of the recession three years ago, 300,000 educators have lost their jobs—7,000 in the last month alone, according to a new White House report.  These startling numbers have led the Obama administration to sound the alarm on education spending cuts across the country.

In Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom, the White House highlights some of the financial woes of many school systems: 292 took drastic measures, such as shortening the school week to 4 days, eliminating full-day kindergarten, and laying off hundreds of thousands of teachers to remain financially solvent.

This report is the first to comprehensively tally the cumulative effects of teacher layoffs on class size over the last few years. In his remarks about the report, President Obama reflected on how these changes have negatively impacted America’s competitive advantage: “At a time when the rest of the world is racing to out-educate America, these cuts force our kids into crowded classrooms, cancel programs for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and shorten the school week and the school year.  That’s the opposite of what we should be doing as a country.”

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has noted that in re-writing NCLB, the administration supports “shirting away from class-sized based reduction that is not evidence-based,” and noted that high-performing school systems in Asia have larger class sizes.

Some are questioning whether the Administration’s rhetoric stems from campaign-consciousness, or whether education is coming into its own as an important social and political issue that the next administration will be willing to address.

To read Investing in Our Future, please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Investing_in_Our_Future_Report.pdf

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Shared Vision for the Next Generation of Teaching

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U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined seven fellow national education leaders last month in signing a shared vision for the future of the teaching profession during the opening 2012 Labor Management Conference in Cincinnati.

“Lessons and best practices from talented teachers is the driving force behind this shared vision for transforming the teaching profession,” said Duncan.  “The principles outlined in the document represent ways to strengthen and elevate teaching as one of our nation’s most valued and respected professions.”

The shared vision, Transforming the Teaching Profession, focuses on three main goals:  1) high levels of student achievement judged by multiple measures; 2) increased equity through narrowing achievement and opportunity gaps; and 3) increased global competitiveness.  Seven core principles make up the elements of achieving these goals. They include:

  1. A culture of shared responsibility and leadership;
  2. Recruiting top talent into schools prepared for success;
  3. Continuous growth and professional development;
  4. Effective teachers and principals;
  5. A professional career continuum with competitive compensation;
  6. Conditions that support successful teaching and learning; and
  7. Engaged communities

U.S. education leaders developed the shared vision following the 2012 International Summit on the Teaching Profession held in New York City in March. The event gathered teachers, union leaders, and education ministers from 23 high performing and rapidly improving countries and regions to share ideas and best practices for elevating teaching and improving student performance.

The 2012 Labor Management Conference brought together state and district teams nationwide to spotlight local work around the next generation of great teaching. Over a dozen state and district presenters showcased their work, which includes elements illustrated in the vision document such as collaborative working environments, career ladders, differentiated compensation, college and career ready standards, and community engagement to support classroom instruction.

For more information on the core principles, please visit http://www2.ed.gov/documents/labor-management-collaboration/2012-shared-vision.pdf

 

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Duncan: Ask the Teachers

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In a recent op-ed piece for the Huffington Post, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discusses his views on how to improve the teaching profession by sharing conversations he’s had with educators across the country.  He captures a sentiment common among educators:  they “love teaching though they wouldn’t mind a little more respect for their challenging work and a little less blame for America’s educational shortcomings.”

The op-ed was written in conjunction with the Department’s announcement of a new initiative, “Strengthening and Elevating the Teaching Profession” (I blogged about it here).  He reminds us that regardless of the measures taken to strengthen and elevate the teaching profession, teacher’s must be listened to, or the attempts at reform are “doomed.”

He summarizes some of the common themes teachers participating in the RESPECT Project concurred on:  the lack of preparation for the classroom, lack of mentoring and support, and high-stakes testing and the results of which provide the bulk of most measures of teacher effectiveness.  Compensation is not generally an issue for teachers, but Duncan argues that teachers are severely undercompensated compared to other professions.

The thing he has found most teachers to be enthusiastic about are “career pathways,” which have differentiated roles that do not require excellent teachers to leave the classroom, but compensate them for their excellence.  However, what the teachers in the RESPECT Project have continually lamented is the lack of time—time for collaboration, lesson planning, professional learning, and for working with small groups of students.  “Unfortunately,” Duncan observes, “we shoehorn schooling into a too-short school day and year.”

Duncan ends with a call to make teaching not just one of America’s most important professions, but also one of the most valued.  “America’s teachers are hungry for comprehensive reform to their profession and they are ready to lead the change.  Indeed, they are the only ones who can.”

To read the full article, please visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arne-duncan/ask-the-teachers_b_1490642.html

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Duncan: Microsoft will take over TEACH; the dangers of “educational protectionism”

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At first blush, many listening to Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s speech at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum may have thought they had accidentally stumbled into an economic forum.  Duncan’s speech was liberally sprinkled with many terms from the current economic rhetoric: “zero-sum game,” “international competition,” and “protectionism.” Words often used in debates over economic reforms and free trade agreements were instead used to highlight the attitudes that many have towards international collaboration in the public education sphere.

Duncan urged attendees to harness the power of technology and collaboration to “elevate the teaching profession and accelerate achievement,” as well as to “resist the idea that international competition in education is a zero-sum game, in which one nation’s advance is another nation’s loss.”   While acknowledging that the current global economic system creates a vastly more competitive, even cutthroat, job market, “educational protectionism” is not the answer.

In support of these ideas, Duncan then announced that Microsoft’s Partners in Learning (PiL) will be taking over the Department of Education’s TEACH campaign, a program aimed to future teachers (particularly those in STEM, special education, and those of diverse heritage) and raise awareness of the value and importance of the profession.  As the new owner and operator of the program, PiL will be responsible for maintaining the website, (teach.gov, which will move to teach.org), marketing the program, and “improving and expanding the teacher recruitment campaign.”  The Department’s new role will be that of official partner in these efforts.

Duncan covered many more topics during his speech, mainly focused on the potential positive impact of technology on education, citing examples from across the globe, and on the need for collaboration across countries, industries, and companies—even those in direct competition.  He lauded the “healthy competition” that Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation programs have encouraged, which are “beautiful illustration[s] of how healthy competition and collaboration go hand-in-hand.”

In closing, he again used economic terms to describe the needed changes in education.  Rather than a future with “countries vying to get larger pieces of a finite economic pie for themselves…expanding educational attainment everywhere is the best way to grow the pie for all.”

To read Secretary Duncan’s full speech, please visit http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/secretary-arne-duncans-remarks-microsoft-partners-learning-global-forum

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Obama Administration Releases Plan for Teacher Education Reform and Improvement

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Last month, the Obama Administration released its plan for “recruiting, preparing, and retaining great teaching talent.”  In his forward to the plan by Secretary Duncan writes:

“Some of our existing teacher preparation programs are not up to the job.  They operate partially blindfolded, without access to data that tells them how effective their graduates are in elementary and secondary school classrooms after they leave their teacher preparation programs.  Too many are not attracting top students, and too many states are not setting a high bar for entry into the profession…and too few teacher preparation programs offer the type of rigorous, clinical experience that prepares future teachers for the realities of today’s diverse classrooms […]

Under this plan, teacher preparation programs will be held to a clear standard of quality that includes but is not limited to their record of preparing and placing teachers who deliver results for P-12 students…Significant new scholarship funding will help recruit the next generation of teachers…we will invest needed resources in developing a teaching workforce that reflects the diversity of our students. And standards for entry into teaching will rise to a level worthy of this great profession.”
The plan, briefly stated, is this:

Develop regulations to focus data collection conducted under the Higher Education Act on the most important indicators of quality.

Advance Presidential Teaching Fellows initiative in support of rigorous state-level policy reforms: direct scholarship aid to top performing teacher preparation programs.

Seek funding for the Hawkins Centers for Excellence program at Minority Serving Institutions.

To read the full plan, please visit http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/our-future-our-teachers.pdf

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Arne Duncan speaks on DREAM Act, Atlanta scandal on Tell Me More

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Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sat down with Michel Martin, host of NPR’s Tell Me More on July 7 to talk about current issues in education.  Duncan addressed several issues, how the current economic conditions are unduly affecting education, the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools, No Child Left Behind, the DREAM Act, and the new effort to recruit and train 80,000 African-American male teachers by 2015.

To read a transcript of or listen to the interview, visit http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137672099/arne-duncan-how-dream-act-can-reduce-deficit

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A Letter to Teachers from Arne Duncan

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In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has published an open letter to American teachers. In Education Week, he writes that as someone working most of his life in education, he has “a deep and genuine appreciation for the work [teachers] do.” He wants to see the profession treated with honor and dignity, and wants to work with teachers to “change and improve federal law” and “to develop a system of evaluation that draws on meaningful observations and input from your peers, as well as a sophisticated assessment that measures individual student growth, creativity, and critical thinking.” Together, Duncan says they can transform teaching from the model of a century ago to one built for the information age. This era will have an accountability system based on “data we trust” that “recognizes and rewards great teaching, gives new or struggling teachers the support they need, and deals fairly, efficiently, and compassionately with teachers who are simply not up to the job.” And, he points out, in the next decade, half of America’s teachers will likely retire. What is done to recruit, train, and retain new teachers will shape public education in this country for a generation. “As that work proceeds, I want you to know that I hear you, I value you, and I respect you,” Duncan writes. [PEN Weekly]

To read the full letter, visit http://tinyurl.com/3p8y35d

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