Arne Duncan: The newest rhetoric vs. the reality
Arne Duncan (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
Education Secretary Arne Duncan appeared at a Washington Post-sponsored conference on families today, and he sounded (mostly) highly reasonable:
Early childhood education is the absolute “best long-term investment” that the country can make for kids, families and the economy, he said. (Not, apparently, the billions of dollars he spent in the first term of the Obama administration pushing states to enact school reforms that linked standardized test scores to the evaluation of teachers and made these tests more high stakes than ever).
He said further that, of course, kids can’t focus in class if they are hungry or can’t see the blackboard. “Social and emotional needs have to be met for students to do well in school,” he said. In fact, there isn’t “one simple answer” to improving schools. You need “great principals” and “fantastic teachers,” and “all the wrap-around services” and food to feed hungry children and after-school activities and transformative school cultures. (Not,
A school brings brain research to the center of its curriculum
Most teachers would tell a panicked student simply to calm down, but that’s not what teacher Glenn Whitman did when a junior came to him in knots about a major oral history project. “Maddy,” he said, “I care about your amygdala.”
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