Secretary Arne Duncan sat down recently to answer questions he received from social media, email and regular mail.
Duncan responded to Dillon’s question about the future of charter schools, saying that “good charter schools are part of the solution, bad charter schools are part of the problem.” Arne noted that there needs to be more successful coordination between charters and school districts. ED recently announced new grants to help foster this coordination.
Ethan asked the Secretary how we can make our schools more competitive on a global scale. Duncan noted that 46 states have voluntarily adopted higher college- and career-ready standards, which will help put American students on a level playing field, and he noted that we have to look at high-performing countries like Finland and Singapore for new ideas on what works.
Duncan also received a question from Brett who asked about the importance of collaboration. Arne says that he can’t overstate the importance of collaboration on “multiple fronts.”
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In February 2008 ED made a business decision to suspend collections against most co-makers also known as cosigners and to terminate each co-maker’s relationship to the debt. Is this action in place yet. Thank you.
I am glad to hear Secretary Duncan address the crucial question of promoting our schools’ international competitiveness. He ought, therefore, to favor our (and any similar) proposal to give disadvantaged students the opportunity to leave their underperforming local traditional high schools to attend a magnet (One World Secondary) school offering mathematics instruction leading students to achieve the Singapore Cambridge O level standards in the tenth grade, standards that are much higher than those in our Common Core, which illustrates the failure of the Common Core to meet its mandate, which was to provide our students with internationally competitive standards. In Singapore the majority of students are prepared so that they can undertake calculus in the 11th grade; under the Common Core, most of our students won’t reach that level until after 12th.
Excellent question, though Secretary Duncan’s response was vague and disappointing–despite his lengthy response. He says good charter schools are part of the solution and bad ones are part of the problem. At first blush, it’s hard to argue with this. Upon reflection, it begs the question of how we distinguish “good” from “bad.”
Unfortunately, the ED’s charter replication grant program does a poor job of sifting good from bad, relying on self-reported assessment data and directing funding politically-connected charter management organizations that score high on surface measures, but sometimes serve “creamed” student populations.
As an advocate of the chartered schools concept, I find this simplistic and politically-driven approach very disturbing and fear that it will ultimately undermine the efforts of many effective chartered schools that serve our most disadvantaged students.
Does Arne agree with the president that an important strategy to making us internationally competitive is providing smaller classes? I know he’s spoken dismissively of class size reduction, despite the fact that it is one of only a handful of reforms that according to the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the US Ed Dept., has been proven to work through rigorous evidence.
Also, what does he think about the plans of the Gates-funded Shared Learning Collaborative to provide personal and confidential student data to third party for-profit companies, to help them develop and market their learning products?
I am trying to change the dates for the afterschool program at CISC Bucktown [Chicago]. Please help.
Do you know that entire districts can deny accessible materials to students with print disabilities? It’s true. It is a IEP team decision. But if parents attend a IEP meeting for 10 years and beg for access to books but the team (not counting the parents) say not the answer is no. Park 6 Wy denys accessible materials to every student that as a print disability and parents are powerless in IEP meetings , out numbered by administration that don’t know student. Paws Alt caused all IEP goals to be reduced and then you give waivers to provide even less education to those who are segregated and isolated in resource rooms doing nothing, But school puts straight A grades on power school for the accountability. My son is smart but has a print disability. The director of SS says no books then its no Books!!