Teach Your Children...Better
Education Secretary Arne Duncan on how to fix a broken system
By REBECCA BLUMENSTEIN
Education, just about everyone seems to agree, is broken in the U.S. The country has tumbled down the international rankings in several measures of educational excellence. Education Secretary Arne Duncan talked with The Wall Street Journal's Rebecca Blumenstein about what's being done to fix the system and what still needs to be done.
Here are edited excerpts of that discussion.
Plenty of Obstacles
REBECCA BLUMENSTEIN: There are going to be a lot of budget cuts, there are going to be moves to curb property taxes, and the unions are going to be an obstacle to change. Is President Obama, and are you, willing to fully confront the unions, which obviously are a key constituency of the Democratic party?
ARNE DUNCAN: Well, let me tell you what has happened. Thanks to Race to the Top, you have 37 states that historically dumbed down standards—essentially not because of unions but due to political pressure, due to politicians wanting their students to look good—we've seen all these states now adopting common college- and career-ready standards. This is an absolute game changer.
We have this next generation of assessments coming. We saw more than three dozen states remove barriers to charter schools and innovation. We had a couple states that had laws on their books that prohibited the linking of student achievement to teacher evaluations; all those