Stakeholders competing for $4.35 billion that the U.S. Department of Education will award to states with bold plans to improve student performance will stand a better chance if they stop fighting within their own educational systems.
“You’re not going to agree on everything, but keep coming together, stay at the table,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a sold-out audience at an education conference Tuesday at the University of Delaware.
Only half the problem in education is the lack of investment, he said, the other half is that people spend too much time fighting each other.
Disagreements aside, he rated Delaware as a good candidate for a chunk of the federal pie.
“Delaware has a chance, I think, to lead the country. This is a state of manageable size. … Delaware can help lead us where we need to go,” said Duncan, who spoke as part of the university’s “Creating Knowledge-Based Partnerships” conference, the fifth in a series designed to spotlight opportunities for partnerships among UD, government and business leaders.
Duncan prefaced his remarks by saying the United States has an unacceptable 30 percent drop-out rate, with 1.2 million leaving school each year before they graduate.
Many of those people are doomed to failure because there are simply not enough jobs out there for them, he said.
“Many other countries have passed us by, and collectively we pay a price,” he said.
Duncan listed a set of priorities that he believes will help turn things around educationally.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke yesterday at the University of Delaware about the need to reform education in America:
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