MONDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• "Duncan Wields $100 Billion to Make U.S. Schools Like Chicago's"
• "Administration Takes Aim at State Laws on Teachers"
• The Sue Duncan Children's Center
• Secretary Duncan's bio

E-mail a friend

Education secretary talks about the rising cost of higher education. (2:12)
 

Full interview. (13:17)
 

Tavis: Arne Duncan now serves as the U.S. Secretary of Education following his time as the CEO of the Chicago public school system. A passion for education runs deep in his family. In fact, his father was a professor at the University of Chicago while his mother ran an after-school tutoring program on Chicago's South Side.

He joins us tonight from Washington. Secretary Duncan, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Sec. Arne Duncan: Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity. How are you doing?

Tavis: I'm doing well, and yourself?

Duncan: Doing great, thank you.

Tavis: Let me start - I want to jump right into this. You have made a - put quite a focus on charter schools as I don't want to say the answer, but charter schools as one of the answers. Why so much focus on charter schools?

Duncan: It's a piece of the answer; it's definitely not the answer. What I've said repeatedly is that I'm not a fan of charters. I am a fan of good charters, and in too many places around the country, quite frankly, we have mediocre charters. But where a couple things happen - where you have a high bar to entry, when you only let the best of the best open schools, when you give those operators real autonomy from the bureaucracy, and when you free them from the bureaucracy and when you also couple that autonomy with real clear accountability, we see great things happen around the country.

So it's a piece of the solution for challenging the status quo and helping us get dramatically better. We want that option on the table.

Tavis: You conceded part of this out, because one could argue, as I will now, that while charter schools are good on one hand, on the other hand they're some of the most segregated schools in the country because those who found them and create them and run them get to pick and choose who they want to be in their schools. What about that?

Duncan: Well, that's actually not quite right at all, Tavis, to be honest. The good charter schools all operate by lottery, and so they don't select. These aren't gifted schools, these aren't private schools. These are public schools, public school children, public dollars, accountable to us. And in Chicago we open these only in desperately underserved communities.

And often what we've found, Tavis, is that you saw schools with very long waiting lists - six, seven, eight, nine applicants for every slot. And what you have is parents desperately looking for better options for their children, and I think we have a job to listen.

What I really like about charter schools the marketplace plays - while I'm a fan of them, I actually closed three for academic failure. They weren't working. And when children don't show up you close them down, and so that real accountability I think is a very, very positive thing.

Tavis: You think the numbers then indicate right now that the charter school works as well for students of color as it does for majority children? You believe that, sir?

Duncan: The vast majority of children in charter schools come from the minority community, and again in Chicago the overwhelming majority, 95, 96, 97 percent were African American and Latino young children, absolutely.

Tavis: Okay. You mentioned a moment ago the marketplace. There are some who think that the marketplace playing any kind of role in education is completely misguided. I take it you feel differently.

Duncan: What I think, Tavis, is that too often children from poor communities have had very few options, very few choices. And what's so interesting to me, Tavis, is that the wealthy in our country have had many educational options for a long, long time.

And I always think if it's good enough for wealthy families, it's good enough for families that don't have as many resources. And so the more children and parents have a variety of options to choose from, and ideally - and this works better obviously in urban areas, where you have a greater population, but think of in urban areas you have four, five, six great high school options, schools that focus on math and science, schools that focus on the finer performing arts, schools that focus on international baccalaureate curriculum. We started some single-sex schools.

The more there's a variety of choices - and every parent, as you know, Tavis, every parent wants the best for their child. It doesn't matter how much education they have or don't have, parents are absolutely attuned to what the best learning environment is for their son or daughter. And the more we can empower parents, give them some very good options and let them figure out what the best learning environment for their child is, I think that's usually important.

Tavis, we have to dramatically reduce the dropout rate. Our dropout rate is unacceptably high, particularly for African American and Latino children. It is devastating to our community and to our society and to our country. The more we can empower parents, the more we can give them great options, I'm convinced we can dramatically reduce the dropout rate, increase the graduation rate, and make sure so many of our young people have a chance to fulfill their great, great potential and go on to some form of higher education.

Tavis: I like options, I like choice, and I think you're right - every parent wants the best, and deserves, quite frankly, the best for his or her child. But I guess the question is when those options, when those choices are linked to a profit motive, what's the end game? Where do we end up here?

Duncan: Well, this isn't about a profit motive, and again you're just looking for great, great educators. The overwhelming majority of these schools are not-for-profit, and so that really misses the point. It's about creating great options for children.

And what we saw was schools and communities that often historically had 30, 40, 50 percent dropout rates, we saw some innovative new schools come in and those schools had 95 percent graduation rates - dramatically better. And 95 percent of those students who graduated went on to college. That's the kind of success we need.

We have pockets of excellence, we have islands of excellence around the country, Tavis - intercity communities, rural communities, you name it. We have more great schools today than at any time in our country. What we have to do is we have to scale up what works. We have to learn those best practices and make sure that every child has a chance to get a great, great education.

Tavis: You have taken great credit, as you should - I cast no aspersion on you for this, and for that matter the president and all those in the Obama administration have talked repeatedly about the fact that in the stimulus package there was $100 billion - $100 billion set aside for education. More money for education, quite frankly, than for just about anything else in that stimulus package.

I think that's a good thing on the one hand, but how do you respond to folk who say that money simply is not the answer?

Duncan: Oh, I couldn't agree more. Money is absolutely not the only answer, and what we have said is that with unprecedented resources has to come unprecedented reform. So simply investing in the status quo isn't going to get us where we need to go.

As a country, Tavis, I really think we've lost our way, educationally. The president has drawn a line in the sand. He's really challenged us and said by 2020 he wants our country once again to have the highest percent of college graduates in the world.

A lot of folks today think that's still the case - it's not. We've flatlined for a couple decades and a number of countries have passed us by. And so I'm convinced we have to educate our way to a better economy, and I think this is the civil rights issue of our generation.

So money alone doesn't begin to be the answer, but with unprecedented resources, if we can have dramatic reform at every level - early childhood, K through 12 and the higher education level as well, then we have a chance to do something simply extraordinary in this country. This is a historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We have to make the most of it.

Tavis: To your latter point about this being a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the hopes of Americans riding high on you, the new education secretary, and the president, Barack Obama, can we draw a line in the sand here? Every president in my lifetime has said that he wants to be the education president. If in four years or eight years what you've said to me now is not the case, that is if the high school dropout rate in communities of color and across the country have not dropped, what should we say then about what you all attempted to do?

Duncan: Yeah, I absolutely want to be held accountable, and all of us do - every educator, every teacher, every principal, every superintendent. We want to get dramatically better and we cannot continue to have a dropout rate that is devastating around the country.

So again, I want to be held accountable every single year. I'm going to publish a public scorecard of what we're doing around the country, and we're going to track our progress. We're going to be very, very clear and transparent about that and hold all of us accountable for making sure that our children have to be successful.

And we're going to challenge everyone. We're challenging ourselves to behave in very different ways, we're challenging teachers, principals, and Tavis, probably most importantly our students and our students' parents. Parents have to step up, they have to turn the TVs off at night, they have to spend time reading to their children and getting to know their teachers and their principals and exchanging numbers.

Our students have to understand that there is no positive future out there for them without a minimum of a high school diploma. Our children who drop out today, Tavis, are basically guaranteed a life of poverty and social failure, and we have to tell them the truth and we have to do everything we can to raise expectations and give them the opportunity to fulfill their true potential.

Tavis: Speaking of accountability, there are some people already raising issues of accountability with regard to the administration, specifically with regard to HBCU, who's better known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities. I was just online, literally today, and see that there's a campaign now kicking up around the country to come after you and the president, respectfully, to put back money that was taken out of the budget for HBCUs. What happened and what are you going to do about it?

There's a two-year set of money that was set aside by Congress that ended, it sunsetted. And so we put more money in our budget, in the education budget this year, and as we go forward, stay tuned. The HBCUs are absolutely critical - I would argue more critical today than at any time historically. HBCUs produce - you may not know this - 50 percent of our nation's minority teachers, and we desperately need more great mentors and role models.

So we're going to work very, very closely with the HBCU community and we have to make sure those universities are successful. So stay tuned on that one.

Tavis: But back to the question, though. The money that was taken out that's got this campaign kick-up that you're well aware of, what happened there?

Duncan: The money wasn't taken out. It was a two-year appropriation by Congress that ended. So it just simply sunsetted.

Tavis: And the administration is going to do what about the sunset?

Duncan: Well, we're looking at that as we speak. So again, we increased the money by 5 percent in our budget. It doesn't cover the differential there, and going forward we're going to work very hard to make sure that HBCUs have the support they need not just to survive but to thrive.

Tavis: Working very hard - does that mean you can commit yourself now to cover that differential?

Duncan: I can't commit that today. It would take obviously Congress' support, but it's something we're committed to doing, I'll say that.

Tavis: Okay. We talked about colleges and universities a little bit earlier in this conversation. I was just looking at the new issue of "U.S. News and World Report." As you know, every year they come out with this annual edition ranking the nation's best colleges and universities.

The average cost now - and I'm rounding these numbers up - the average cost now for a college education per annum in this country now is $25,000 for a public education. For a private school the annual cost now is $40,000 per year. Your thoughts on those numbers?

Duncan: They're high and they're getting high at a rate that we think is accelerating maybe too fast, and so a couple of things are happening. Part of that $100 billion is $5 billion in our investment in early childhood, $70 billion for K to 12, but north of $30 billion to increase access to higher education. Increase Pell grants, increase Perkin loans, increase tuition tax credits.

At the back end we've put in place income-based repayments so that folks that want to enter the public sector or want to become teachers, want to go into the nonprofit community, will have a chance to do those things and not have these overwhelming levels of debt that prohibit them from following their passion.

What I think is going to happen - so we've tried to put again unprecedented resources, the most money since the GI bill, to make college more accessible and more affordable. But let me tell you, Tavis, what I think is going to happen is parents and students are really smart, and those schools where tuition is going up exponentially high, folks have a lot of options out there.

And you're seeing some other universities be smarter and more creative and go to three-year programs and go to no-frills programs. I think you're going to see them capture a larger share of the marketplace that again, parents and students are going to vote with their feet. And when costs are skyrocketing, we think those colleges are going to pay a price for it.

The other thing we're pushing very, very hard, and you know in our budget is over the next decade we want to have almost $90 billion in new money for Pell grants, Perkins loans, and we're going to do this without asking for a single additional dollar for taxpayers.

What we're going to simply do is stop subsidizing banks and invest all of those resources into our students, into our young people who are chasing that dream of going to college.

And so we think we have a chance to bring unprecedented resources for the next decade without going back to the public simply by doing the right thing by children and stopping subsidizing banks.

Tavis: Finally, we've talked a lot about what you and what the administration can do, ought to do, and is committing to do over the next four, maybe even eight years, who knows. What's your message to parents tonight? What do parents and everyday Americans do about turning around this education crisis?

Duncan: Well, I think we all have to do more and so this is a collective responsibility. This is an exciting time. We're obviously getting ready to go back to school. And what I would ask is that parents absolutely engage. I'm a father of two young children; I have a kindergartener and a second grade going back to school. And it's so important that my wife and I read to our children every night, that we turn off the TV, that we get to know our children's teachers, that we're volunteering at the school and participating.

Parents have to be a full and equal partner in our children's education, and when you have that collaboration between the home and the school, great things happen. When that collaboration doesn't happen, our children suffer. So it's so important that all of us step up, all of us move outside our comfort zones and make sure we're doing everything we can to support our young people's dreams around the country.

Tavis: Thank you for your family's legacy on education and for the work you're doing now, and thanks for the opportunity to talk to you, Mr. Secretary.

Duncan: Thanks for having me tonight. I appreciate the chance.

Tavis: My pleasure.