Duncan to Spend Billions to ‘Transform’ U.S. Schools

[Thrill]

April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to spend a record $5 billion to transform U.S. schools by rewarding states for innovation, providing merit pay to teachers and creating a national scorecard to identify failing schools.

The Education Department has already distributed $44 billion of its $100 billion in stimulus funds to stave off the firing of teachers, Duncan said yesterday in an interview in Washington. An additional $5 billion will be given as an incentive to states that are "fundamentally willing to challenge the status quo," he said.

Duncan, 44, the former head of Chicago's public schools, said the retirement of 1 million teachers in the "next couple of years" gives the U.S. an opportunity to attract and retain a new generation of educators. He said he plans to enlist President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama to help recruit teachers, and then reward the newcomers for working in struggling schools and districts.

"Talent matters tremendously," Duncan said. "If we can bring in this next generation of extraordinary talent, we can transform education, and our ability to do that over the next couple of years will shape education in this country for the next 25 or 30 years."

Duncan also aims to remake the No Child Left Behind law to set national standards of performance while giving states and school districts more flexibility about how they meet those goals. Under the current law, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, states set their own standards for determining what constitutes an adequate education.

‘Lying to Children’

"We're basically lying to children and families now," Duncan said. "When a child and a parent hear they're meeting the state standard, the logical assumption is that they're doing OK. In fact, in many places, if you're meeting the state standard, you're barely able to graduate from high school."

Too often, states weakened their goals so more schools would achieve them, leading to a "dumbing down," he said.

"We need national standards, and assessments to measure them," Duncan said. "The idea of having 50 states designing their own standards is crazy."

Believer in 'Outcomes'

The scorecard would include "a series of metrics that we'd put out every single year," he said. "I'm a big believer in looking at outcomes. I'm going to look at high-school graduation rates and college graduation rates."

The goal would be to expose discrepancies among schools and districts to force change, he said.

"I'm really hoping that transparency and truth is going to spur a sense of outrage amongst parents," he said.

Duncan said he is focused now on saving teaching jobs. As many as 600,000 teaching job may be lost because of the recession, Duncan said, citing a study by researchers at the University of Washington.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/axp_0t1dgo_q

[Botany]

1. I loves me some Obama

i don't care if the right wing even begins to understand this but this is awesome ....

spending money like this is "an investment" and will pay off many times over.

[madrchsod]

2. well good luck arne.....

you`ll be another in a long line of people who tried to "reform" education in america.

[earthside]

3. I Hate This Guy

Merit pay.

More high stakes standardized testing.

National scorecard for individual schools.

National standards.

National curriculum.

Arne Duncan is the dream education secretary of the Chamber of Commerce.

The total, complete corporatization of our schools is clearly his goal. Local control and local school boards will become irrelevant with this agenda.

Great for McGraw Hill, terrible for the education of our children.

[adnelson60087]

4. I agree wholeheartedly, except for the National curriculum

idea. It's not necessarily a bad idea, especially for those folks who refuse to accept modern Theories of science like Natural Selection, The Big Bang, etc. Maybe then they might teach them. But this high stakes testing is for the birds. Who decides which teachers get the merit pay? Why can't we have a real discussion on what might address our schools' needs? Why would Obama put this hack in charge of the Dept. of Ed??

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. I think a National Curriculum is a bad idea

Kids in Mississippi don't need to learn the same things as kids in California.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. I despise him

and I have less respect for Obama because he chose this man.

I weep for our once great public education system. And I deeply regret that I will be one of those million retirees who leaves a broken system that was not broken when I began teaching. I got to watch it fall apart and was powerless to prevent it.

[roody]

5. No doubt it will be lots of money for everything except

more kind adults in the classroom.

[Lorax]

6. Glad I got out.

National standards? National curriculum? I wonder how that will apply to special education. Special ed. teachers are being crushed by the demands of getting their students to meet state standards. I can't even imagine how much worse it's going to be.

I struggled with the decision to leave teaching. I even told myself that maybe it was only temporary. Maybe, if NCLB was fixed and standards were revised for special needs students, maybe I would go back to teaching. Maybe if the demands on teachers could be reduced by something even close to reasonable, I would go back to the classroom.

I'm glad I didn't bet any money on that. Looks like I'll never be going back. The other day my husband and I were discussing the possibility of me returning to the classroom. He response to me was, "I'd rather see you dance on a pole than go back into a classroom. It would be less damaging, both emotionally and physically, than teaching."

(Not that I"ll be dancing on a pole any time soon. ;) )

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. The smart money is going into the companies that make those *K#$@ binders.

>>>>>National standards? National curriculum? I wonder how that will apply to special education. Special ed. teachers are being crushed by the demands of getting their students to meet state standards. I can't even imagine how much worse it's going to be.>>>>>

It will apply as follows to special ed:

1. more bureaucracy
2. more money wasted
3. less instructional time.
4. more "data" committees
5. more micromanagement
6. more out of classroom positions for teacher burn-outs
7. more staff turnover
8. more chaos, disgruntlement, confusion.

You were smart. I'm not far behind.

[LWolf]

10. FUCK him.

I just spent 2 days in Portland discussing what we REALLY need to do to make sure we're closing achievement gaps and ensuring that all of the students in our care are making progress every year.

It has nothing to do with anything on Duncan's list.

Meanwhile, the so-called "stimulus" money, which has nothing to do with stimulating the economy or rescuing us from the MASSIVE budget cuts we are facing next year, is held out as another facet of the top-down authoritarian carrot/stick philosophy that has been destroying education for at least a decade now.

Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.