Education secretary calls for end to infighting
Duncan says bold plans will get stimulus funding
By EDWARD L. KENNEY • The News Journal • October 28, 2009

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.

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A focus on education has certainly paid off for Michael Bennet.  The Denver Public Schools Superintendent has been appointed to fill the seat of Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) who will soon become the new Secretary of the Interior. The choice of Bennet shocked many in Colorado’s Democratic circles and there’s speculation that his choice speaks to President-elect Obama’s interest in a national initiative on education.

That new initiative will come under the leadership of Arne Duncan, nominee for Secretary of Education and former head of the Chicago schools who may bring the reforms he supervised in Chicago to national stage.

It’s going to be an exciting year!

Duncan is generally considered a consensus-builder, who can bring groups that don’t always agree (teacher’s unions, school boards, parent associations, and other leadership) to the table and work out a deal. He’s held his Chicago position since 2001, presiding over the third-largest school district in the country and improved graduation rates.

He’s a strong advocate of early childhood education, a key initiative of Obama’s and no doubt a reason why Duncan was picked for the job. Obama’s pledge to devote $10 billion to improving pre-kindergarten programs and expanding their reach has been echoed by Duncan.

As for his work in Chicago, here’s what the education experts at the Center for American Progress have to say:

Duncan’s signature program in Chicago is Renaissance 2010, the goal of which was “to increase the number of high quality educational options in communities across Chicago.” The plan is an ambitious one for turning around Chicago’s education system by closing low-performing schools and replacing them with “smaller, entrepreneurial schools.” Under his watch, “high school graduation rates improved…(up to 55 percent from 47 percent), as did college-going rates (up to 50 percent from 44 percent).”

Like Obama, Duncan is a supporter of the accountability standards laid out in the often controversial No Child Left Behind program. And as the Chicago Tribune notes, he “isn’t afraid to rankle the teachers union.”

However, he also “helped craft a five-year teacher contract that promised significant raises each year in exchange for long-term stability.” Furthermore, he worked with the unions “to introduce a pay for performance program that offers bonuses for great teachers” through a federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant.

We look forward to seeing what Arne Duncan will prioritize at the Department of Education, and how he will work to make key education policies part of the overall stimulus plan President-elect Obama is putting together.