arne duncan Calls himself "The CEO Of Chicago Public Schools" On Ed's Show

[Dinger]

Littel freudian slip there arne? weren't you a SUPERINTENDENT?

[Runcible Spoon]

1. Disgusting.

I can't believe anyone would support the corporatization of our school systems. Hands down one of the worst Cabinet picks.

[Critters2]

3. Chicago does call its superintendent "CEO".

I'm not suggesting Chicago isn't corrupt as all hell, because it is. I'm just sayin' they use the term "CEO of the Chicago Public Schools".

[Runcible Spoon]

5. Well, probably because they swallowed the same pedagogical nonsence Arne pushes.

Chicago School of Sociology had a big impact on some circles of pedagogy.

[Critters2]

2. No. In Chicago, the position is officially "CEO".

Don't know why, but that's what it is.

[Chisox08]

14. It became CEO when Mayor Daley took over the CPS system.

The idea was that if the schools was ran more like a business it would be more effective and more efficient. All it did in reality was to give Daley another yes man and force teachers to teach the test all year long instead of just the months leading up to the test.

[fascisthunter]

4. the Corporate Culture and It's Brainwashing Ideology

[FrenchieCat]

6. That was his official title......

and like I mentioned to you a couple of days ago,
there is no Education policy in the Obama administration set as of yet.

Mr. Duncan mentioned clearly on that show that they will be doing town halls
and listening to teachers, parents and students for the next few months,
and regardless to how he has been villainized, to date he has done nothing
in his current position that warrants demonizing him.

I sent a long letter to Mr. Duncan via whitehouse.gov in reference to my stance on education,
both in reference to the k-12th grade level, as well as the issue on higher education.

I sent both of my kids to private school, and we totally sacrificed just about any extra money we had, and then some to do so. Why? Because we lived in an area where the school were below sub-par
in every subjects.

Part of the problem with education funding stems directly from property tax, i.e., one's zip code (in California, anyways). Although we live in a nice enough area, we are included in an area that a big portion isn't all that. In a way, we face the same dilemna that my parents faced in the early 70s. My parents bought a house in the Bay Area El Cerrito hills (because of the superior school district). However, due to Integration legislation, the area where we lived was designated to be bussed to a school in the flatland that was, at the time considered subpar. So it was ironic, that my family who moved in order to offer their children a better education, ended up having their Black children being bussed back down from where they were trying to get away from in the first place.

I say all of this to say that education has many problems, and to believe that these problems haven't been with us for a very long time, and that somehow there is no new idea to be tried is very short sighted, IMO. And no, I don't think that just because someone is an educator, it provides them with more insight on what needs to be done to correct prominent problems in our education system as well as the issue of funding. I think that parents, and yes, even kids, may have answers that are just as good as those of Educators....because the problems vary.

Obama's idea of providing teachers with merit pay if they choose to teach in underpriviledged schools is one that I support, as it appears that unequal local/district education funding provides children in the richer areas of town way too many advantages, and so teacher incentives would be an excellent idea.

I will reserve judgement as to other proposals as they are made.....

Anyways....those are my two cents.

[alstephenson]

8. All good points, FrenchieCat. eom

[Dinger]

12. Well The change.gov Site (Of The President Elect) Referred To Him As Superintendent

http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/president_elect_obama_nominates_arne_duncan_as_secretary_of_education/


You make some good points Frenchie. I hope I can be fortunate enough to get to one of those town hall meetings, but it seems like they always fall on a school day, and that doesn't work for me. I would really like to hear Mr. Duncan talk about rural schools, because there are rural poor. The school I teach in has 80% of its students on free and reduced lunch. Though it is in a rural area, the student population is diverse, with approximately 50% Native American, about 40% White (Wish I had a better term, without a racial connotation to it), and the rest of the students are mainly Mexican-American and Hmong. The diversity at my school is the main reason I wanted to teach here, especially since it is in such a white, rural area. It is, however, a nice Democratic island in a very repuglican county. It is a challenge to teach in this school, and we have performed very well on standardized tests, despite being in an area with high poverty.
This is getting a little long-winded, especially for me (I don't often write much here), but let me give you a very recent example of a situation I observed. I teach third grade. I have a little girl, whose mother is incarcerated. She will be out soon, in about a month. The father of this girl, the mother's boyfriend, committed suicide about three weeks ago. This little girl came back to school so sad. My heart just went out to her. Now if she would have come back in October, when the state testing takes place, I am positive she would have performed poorly on the test. As a matter of fact, we did have a math test on the day she returned. She had missed about five days of school. She took the test, and did not pass it. I met with her privately, and made arrangements for some tutoring on the material she missed. She gave up her recess time, so I know she wanted to do better. She will retake the test next week. (We are on spring break now). I sent home a short "practice test" for her to look at over break. In the meantime, she did keep up with all her work. I am sure she will do fine on the test. Now, if it were a standardized test, the timeline is the timeline, period. Students who are absent on a testing day can make it up, but not if something happens outside of school that can affect their performance. I do see standardized testing as necessary, I do. If merit pay is attached to test results only, then it does not account for other factors in a child's performance on a test. I do not think that is fair.
Charter schools are funded by taxpayer dollars, but do not have the same accountability as public schools, by a long shot. In Wisconsin, charter and voucher schools are not required to test. And if they do, they do not have to report the results. I am sure there are some excellent voucher/private/charter schools, and I imagine that they do have accountability measures in place. Better schools will do that. Public schools do not have the option of picking certain students. Charter and voucher schools do. Yes, they do.
Something you said Frenchie was hitting the nail on the head, so to speak. When you talked about how schools are funded. I am finding myself wondering lately, what ever happened to "Separate But Equal"? Schools in poor areas, whether they are in rural or urban areas, do not have the same opportunities as students in wealthier districts. Not cool. I am happy to say that in Wisconsin, there are effort to make the school funding formula better for all districts, not just some. This is a rural school website I like to read: http://www.ruraledu.org/ There are some articles in it about how schools are funded, and suggestions for improvements, as well as the stimulus' package and its effect on poor rural school districts. Lots more there.
Anyway, this is waaaay longer than I intended it to be. In closing, I would really like to hear my president talk more about rural school issues. You can't solve rural school problems with urban school solutions.


Ding

P.S. Sorry for my typo in my OP. I never went back and checked it. I'm not feeling well the last few days, and I was tired and dopey (dopier than usual that is).

[whistler162]

7. In this case does CEO mean

Chief Executive Officer or Chief Educational Officer?

[Sabriel]

10. It's Chief Education Officer

It's an acronym with unfortunate connotations, IMO.

http://www.cps.edu/Note/Pages/SpringBreakishere.aspx

[hellbound-liberal]

9. Prince George's County in Maryland has a CEO as well.

As far as I knew it meant Chief Executive Officer.

[ColbertWatcher]

11. Arne believes schools are businesses.

He just can't shake that failed ideology.

[Dinger]

13. I Wrote A Transcript Myself

I must have too much time on my hands. I just want it for my records.

Ed: You know, when I was growing up, my mother was a high school. english teacher, and I remember my mother grading papers till 2- 3 o’clock in the morning . I said “Mom, why are you doing that?” Then of course she’d get up at 7:30 in the morning and get us all ready for school, and we’d be off and going. I said “Mom, why do you do that?” It was the reward of teaching. That’s what my parents taught me. It was the reward of helping other people out. And we can’t lose that fire. We can’t lose that vitality. We can’t lose that real passion in this country if we’re going to save public education. Now the conservatives, they’re all about school vouchers. They think these numbers that I showed you a moment ago are just way off the chart. Taxpayers should not have to “put up with” this Obama plan. This is all a fraud. Let me tell you something. The fraud has already been committed on the American People with No Child Left Behind. We made a deal with the last administration.
And then they didn’t fund it. Now it’s going to be up to the Obama Administration to keep its word to the American People so these school districts don’t have to make these gut-wrenching votes, to cut teachers, to not build facilities. There is one other number that is very startling that we are going to have to turn around in this country folks, and that is nationally, there is a 9.3 % drop out rate. Now if we throw a bunch of billions of dollars at that, is that going to going turn it around? But the startling thing is, ironically there are children that are being left behind in some portions of the country, and isn’t it interesting it’s in our inner city schools. In Cleveland, the dropout rate is 66%. In Indianapolis it’s 70%. This is staggering to me. In Detroit, when kids come into the high school, in ninth grade, three out of four do not get a high school diploma. This is not America. We are better than this. It’s gonna take a generational commitment if we’re going to turn this around. And of course you can go through all the statistics, that if you have a more educated population, you’re not going to have the crime. And that’s another story I’m going to have to do. Just how many prisons do we have in this country? This guy behind me (a picture of President Obama)
has got some heavy lifting to do, and we gotta help him out. His secretary of education is with us tonight. Mr. Arne Duncan. Mr. Duncan I have not had an opportunity to meet you., but I am certainly excited to have you on the program, and you got some big shoulders I see. You’re gonna need ‘em because this is gonna be a heavy lift.

Duncan: Thanks so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Ed: You bet. Mr. Secretary, all this money, is this actually gonna get to local school
districts? We’ve heard that song and dance before.

Duncan: It already is. As you said, one of the big issues with NCLB is guess what?
They’ve left the money behind. And this is a historic investment in public
education. As you said, over 100 billion dollars, 5 billion dollars for early childhood,
over 70 billion dollars for K-12, and over 31 billion dollars to increase access and
opportunity for students going on to higher education to college. So it’s never been
a bigger influx of resources. I am just so thankful for the President’s absolute
commitment. He totally understands that we have to educate our way to a better
economy. That’s the only way that we’re going to get there. Congress has been
extremely supportive. And as I said earlier, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to
to dramatically improve the quality of education. We were facing an education
catastrophe. We were anticipating as many as 600,000 teaching jobs being lost.
That would have been an absolute disaster. And we’re going to save literally hundreds
of thousands of teaching jobs around the country, and we’re going to push a very
strong reform agenda because as you said, we have to get dramatically better. The
status quo isn’t good enough. But this is a fantastic time to be working on public
education in America.



Ed: Well I’ll tell you what, it’s an awful lot of money to follow, there’s no question about
that. O.K. Do you believe that this is going to hold teachers in the profession that
might be thinking about retiring?

*Banner at bottom says: “More than 50% of teachers could retire in the next decade.”

Duncan: It will, and as teachers retire, we have a chance . . . that presents come challenges
Ed, but it presents some huge opportunities as well. And we can bring this next
generation of young leadership into the teaching profession. So teachers that want
to keep teaching , we absolutely want them to do that, but teachers that want to
retire, we need to bring that next generation of talent in. And so we’re going to work
very hard, the President, the First Lady, The Vice President, his wife and myself,
starting this fall, traveling the country, really talking about . . . if you want to serve the
country, if you want to make a difference in students’ lives, there’s no more
meaningful profession, there’s no noble a profession than teaching. It’s actually one
of the few benefits from such a tough economy as more more and more folks are
looking at the teaching profession.

Ed: Well you know, that’s a key point. I hope that’s the case because the starting pay
across the country is not very good. Now I want you to address the dropout rates.
75% in Detroit? I don’t mean to pick on Detroit, but that’s a microcosm of what we’re
seeing in a lot of big cities all over the country, which brings us to curriculum. Are we
going to see an easier curriculum to turn this around, or is it just putting money to it
that’s going to change it?

Duncan: No, you can’t water down the curriculum. What’s gone on in Detroit, now now they’re
talking about this since I the day I started my job, has been an educational travesty.
The education there has been perpetuating poverty. It perpetuated social failure.
The education system is a big part of the problem. That has to change. In Detroit
specifically, I have been pushing for mayoral control. You need when things are
so tough, you need everybody, the business community, the philanthropic
community, the religious community, the nonprofit social service agencies,
everyone has to rally behind the school children of Detroit. That leadership has to
come from the top. There has to be fundamental and dramatic change there.

Ed: Well o.k., fundamental and dramatic change. This is the $ 64 question Secretary
Duncan.. Will the Obama Administration scrap NCLB and start over because there
so many frustrated educators, professionals across the country. They’re just
throwing their hands up, and that’s one of the reasons they’re leaving the profession.
Will you scrap the program and start over?

Duncan: Well I’ve lived on the other side of the program for seven and a half years as
the CEO of Chicago Public Schools. I have very strong feelings about what
worked and what didn’t work. And a big part of what didn’t work was the unfunded
mandates, and again over $10 billion going in for Title 1, over $10 billion going in for
IDEA for special education students, so unprecedented resources. Well what I’m
going to do Ed, is to really travel the country to listen and learn, and talk to teachers,
and to hear their frustrations, and talk to parents, and talk to students, and we’ll come
back later in the year with a really thoughtful bill, and quite frankly, need to be some
fundamental changes, but the name itself I think is toxic. The NCLB name
fundamentally has to change, as well as some serious substance behind that as
well.


Ed: Alright, but it sounds like the standards that have to be met, the testing that’s being
taken place, that’s all gonna stay in place?

Duncan: Well I think we actually have to raise the bar. I would argue Ed that in many
states we have dummied down standards, and that is hurting children. I think we
actually have to raise the bar. Our children as you know, are competing for jobs
with children in India and China. And those students are going to school longer,
being taught to higher standards, so the answer to the dropout crisis, the answer to
our economy, is not to water things down, it’s to challenge students to do more, to
have the highest of expectations, but to provide the resources and the support
to help them get there, and to support great teachers and great principals as you
said, keep them in the profession.

Ed: Alright. Secretary Duncan, good to have you on the program tonight. We’re gonna
follow this story. This is one of the benchmark issues on the Obama campaign.
And a lot of people are counting on this money making a difference, and your
leadership is gonna be key. Good to have you with us tonight on The Ed Program.


Duncan: We have an extraordinary opportunity ahead of us.

Ed:I think we do.

[roody]

15. Has he ever set foot in a public school?