Arne Duncan praises, slaps charter schools
Arne Duncan (Jacquelyn Martin-Associated Press)
Here is the text of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s speech delivered at the 2013 convention of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, being held this week in Washington D.C.
I am on vacation so am posting this without comment. I’ll leave it to you to comment about his view that, on the one hand, charters are “incubators of innovation,” but, on the other hand, they aren’t as innovative as he had hoped; and that the charter sector, on the one hand, has had some “extraordinary accomplishments” but, on the other hand, has all kinds of problems, including high rates of student expulsions and too many schools that are poorly run.
Duncan’s speech, from the Education Department website:
A lot has changed since I spoke here four years ago. I want to use this opportunity both to reflect on the theme of your conference — “Delivering On the Dream” — and to ask you to think ahead about what the charter movement should seek to accomplish in the next 20 years.
In the last two decades, charter schools have had some extraordinary accomplishments. And yet, we all know the dream of the charter movement is not