Nation's education chief visits Houston
Duncan gets message on local control of schools
By ERICKA MELLON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
April 30, 2010, 10:43PM
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan echoed a familiar theme Friday during a whirlwind tour of Houston: Good teachers deserve rewards, while ineffective ones should be removed from the classroom.
Duncan did not specifically endorse the Houston Independent School District's efforts to pay bonuses to top teachers and to fire weak ones, but his comments sound similar to those of HISD Superintendent Terry Grier and the school board.
“What we want to do is do everything we can to shine a spotlight on great teachers,” Duncan said. “When you have a small percentage of teachers at the bottom, where after help and mentoring and support are simply not working for children, we need to have those honest conversations (about exiting the profession).”
The Houston school board in February became among the first in the nation to take an aggressive approach to ousting weak teachers, with a policy that allows the firing of those whose students consistently score below expectations on standardized tests.
Duncan, the first education secretary since 2001 who isn't from Texas, played nice in the Lone Star State, declining to criticizeRepublican Gov. Rick Perry, who has accused President Barack Obama's administration of pushing a federal takeover of public schools. Texas and Alaska were the only two states not to join a recent initiative to develop common curriculum standards — an idea Duncan supports and Perry rejects.
Asked if he was worried about Texas going at the standards movement alone, Duncan said, “Whether it's states working together, whether it's a state working by itself, the key to me is that every child has access to college and career standards.”
‘This is amazing to see'
Though Duncan didn't make it to Austin — he spent most of the day in Houston — he still got the message that local control over schools, even under-performing ones, is important to many Texans.
“We believe in local decision-making when it comes to turning those schools around and to getting them back on track,” Priscilla Ridgway, an assistant superintendent in Aldine ISD, told Duncan during a panel discussion that included North