EducationNews.org

1) Rick, you and Rick Hess yesterday did a live chat about the new secretary of Education. How did it go? 

There was a lot of community interest in the topic and some excellent questions.  It's always nice to share a dialogue with Rick Hess.  Although we often don't agree on policy issues, he reads everything and knows a great deal. 

2) Now, what was YOUR initial reaction when you heard about Arne Duncan being named?

I think Duncan is an excellent choice because he's an education reformer who knows how to work with teachers and their unions to accomplish real change.  He also understands that poverty is a central impediment to closing the achievement gap and that we need to supplement the "schools only" approach to reform of the No Child Left Behind Act.  Finally, as a friend of Barack Obama's he will have the ear of the president, which is good for education.

3) What do you know about his time in Chicago? What were his major changes there?

Arne Duncan is known for a number of initiatives in Chicago.  Chicago embraced standards, testing and accountability prior to NCLB, and Duncan maintained a strong commitment to that approach.  He's a strong supporter of charter schools.  Recognizing the need to address poverty, he embraced pre-K programs.  And he supported pay for performance for teachers of the type that makes sense.  Chicago uses the Teacher Advancement Program, which is far more sophisticated than most merit pay plans in that it bases financial incentives not only on test score gains but also on expert teacher peer evaluations.  It includes financial incentives as only one component of a larger package of efforts to improve teaching.  And it includes a measure of school wide test gains as well as individual teacher gains in order to provide an incentive to teachers to collaborate. 

The embrace of TAP by local teacher unions is emblematic of the larger proposition that the "reformer" vs. teacher union dichotomy is wrong.  My biography of Albert Shanker (www.richardkahlenberg.com) tries to underline this point, and there are lots of examples of teacher unionist education reformers out there today -- including the new AFT president Randi Weingarten.

4) What kinds of things do you anticipate from him in general?

Obama's platform calls for recruiting an army of new teachers, fully funding NCLB, expanding funding of charter schools, investing in pre-K, embracing the Harlem Children Zone model, adopting reasonable pay for performance plans, and, in higher education, providing a $4000 refundable tax credit to help pay for college.  I don't see anything in Duncan's record to suggest that he wouldn't fully support these programs; indeed, press reports suggest he had an important role in crafting Obama's platform.  In higher ed, one of the hot button issues to watch for is how Obama and Duncan handle affirmative action.  Conservatives have sued the University of Texas at Austin for using racial preferences and the case may reach the Supreme Court around 2010. 

Obama has said his own daughters, given their relatively privileged upbringing, don't deserve racial preferences, and that low income students of all backgrounds do deserve a leg up.  It will be fascinating to see how the administration handles this question.

5) Now, in terms of specifics, do you anticipate him doing anything about NCLB?

Obama and Duncan are likely to do several things to improve NCLB.  They support fully funding the legislation, recognizing that NCLB is asking schools to do what they've never done before and will require greater investments.  They've discussed improving the standards and assessments used, which is not just a technical issue but a critical element of improving the act.  Other nations that consistently beat us on international tests have much more sophisticated standards and assessments than we have.  Although Obama hasn't talked much about NCLB's student transfer provisions -- which allow students stuck in failing schools to transfer to better ones -- I hope they look at proposals to allow poor kids in cities to transfer to better performing suburban public schools.  In order for this to happen, suburban schools will need to be given a financial incentive to participate.  Amy Stuart Wells and Jennifer Jellison Holme have an excellent outline of how a program like this could work in a book I edited entitled, Improving on No Child Left Behind, published in October.    http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=PB&pubid=660

6) What do you think of his position on charter schools?

In the campaign, Obama tempered his strong support of charter schools (doubling of federal funding) with a call to close down failing charter schools.  I think that's much more responsible than simply funding anything that has the "charter" label.  The charter school phenomenon is an important recognition that kids trapped in bad, high poverty schools need better options, but I hope Obama and Duncan to read a fascinating new report put out by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA which highlights the role of magnet schools. ( http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/magnet/the_forgotten_choice_rethinking_magnet_schools.pdf )The report notes that twice as many children attend magnet schools as charter schools (2 million vs. 1 million), and that magnet schools have a much stronger record of raising academic achievement than charter schools.  That's because magnets recognize that economic and racial segregation undercut school performance are specifically designed to overcome segregation through public school choice. 

In fact, research has long found that the single most productive thing one can do for a low income student is to give her access to an economically mixed school, where she is likely to be surrounded by peers who have big dreams and value achievement; teachers who are highly qualified and have high expectations; and parents are active in school affairs.  The UCLA report notes, however, that charter schools currently receive twice as much money ($200 million) as magnet schools ($100 million).

I hope Obama and Duncan address this issue, either by increasing magnet school funding, or redirecting the focus of charter schools to make them an engine for addressing the negative effects of school poverty concentrations on educational outcomes.

7) We are facing some tough economic times- do you think this will influence the way he does business?

Budgets are tight, but research going back to the Coleman Report of 1966 have found that what matters even more than money in a school is the people in it -- students, parents and teachers and principals.  Wake County (Raleigh) North Carolina, which has a policy that no school should have more than 40% of students eligible for subsidized lunch, generally spends less per student than other large North Carolina counties but outperforms almost all of them. 

8) You did this live chat with Rick Hess. Was seemed to be his reaction?

He seems cautiously optimistic about Arne Duncan. 

9) Any last thoughts?  

I hope Arne Duncan and the Obama education team keep at the forefront of their minds that the biggest impediment to equal educational opportunity in the United States is not the existence of teacher unions but rather poverty and economic segregation.  Tackling those issues -- through pre-K programs, better health care, and magnet schools -- will do far to improve the lives of kids than treating teacher unions as this year's Sister Soljah. 

Published December 31, 2008