Beyond Bubble Tests and Bake Sales: Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks at the 114th Annual National PTA Convention
Thank you. It's an honor to speak to the nation's oldest and largest volunteer child advocacy organization.
Ever since Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst founded what would become the PTA in 1897, the PTA has led the fight to improve the education and health of our nation's children. We take many of the PTA's successful campaigns for granted today, from installing sprinklers and fire alarms in schools, to mandatory immunization of children, to the creation of kindergarten classes and hot lunch programs.
Yet it is easy to forget how hard-fought many of those struggles were—and just how profoundly parental involvement has altered the landscape of public schools over the last century. When Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Heart first formed the National Congress of Mothers, they did so at a time when women could not vote and were not supposed to speak out about education. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the merger of the National PTA and the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers—a pointed reminder of the decades-long shame of segregated schools that echoes to this day in Memphis and elsewhere.
I want to suggest to you today that it is time for the PTA to take the lead again in preparing students to compete in the 21st century. President Obama has set an ambitious goal for the nation. He wants America to again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. That goal is the North Star for all of our education efforts. To reach it, the college degree attainment rate must rise from 40 percent to 60 percent. President Obama and I are convinced we have to educate our way to a better economy.
We will not attain the 2020 goal by doing what we are doing now--only just a little bit better. Our educational system needs transformational change. To achieve that transformational change, parents and educators need to start thinking beyond the limited vision of student achievement and family engagement that have often defined education reform in the past.
It is time to think beyond assessing students with narrowly-focused bubble tests. It is time to think beyond the bake sale- barometer in promoting parental involvement. And it is time to think beyond the focus on math and English alone, and give every child a well-rounded education. We must stop narrowing the curriculum. Our children need—and deserve—so much more.
My hope is that PTAs around the nation can be leaders in pressing for higher standards, better assessments, for a richer vision of parental involvement, and for a well-rounded curriculum.