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Education chief
favors longer school year
From Rachel Streitfeld WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Those lazy days of
summer may become a thing of the past if the new secretary of education has
his way. Arne Duncan, the Cabinet secretary charged
with overhauling "When I go out and talk about that, that
doesn't always make me popular with students. They like the long
summers," But Duncan said American
students are "at a competitive disadvantage" because the "It doesn't matter how poor, how tough
the family background, socioeconomic challenges," More time in school is one of several ideas
under consideration as The lanky former college basketball player and
father of two speaks quickly, with remarkable energy
in the face of daunting challenges. Thirty percent of high school students drop
out before graduation, and another 50 percent won't finish college, according
to Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank. For Latino and African-American students, the
numbers are more dramatic. About half of them will graduate from high school,
the Washington-based group said. As school administrators struggle with dropout
rates, they also are confronting drastic budget cuts amid national economic
uncertainty. Districts are slashing jobs and putting off plans to repair
crumbling school buildings. "What's going on, state after state, due
to this tough economy, is devastating educationally. And we can't afford to
get worse now. We have to get dramatically better," said Duncan, former
chief of Chicago Public Schools. President Obama and lawmakers have directed
billions of dollars to the Department of Education through the stimulus
package, and they propose to send more in the 2010 budget Obama announced
Thursday. "Thanks to the stimulus package, we have
the chance to save literally hundreds of thousands of teacher positions. This
is a huge, huge deal," he said, citing a "We're going to be able to avert maybe
not all of those cuts but a huge percentage of those, and that's very very important," he said. But the new funds may be only enough to keep a
crisis at bay, said Kevin Carey of Education Sector. State and local
shortages are forcing schools to make do with much less. "The economic situation is hurting school
budgets," Carey said. "The stimulus package that just passed will
help that somewhat, but there still isn't a whole lot of new money to pay
teachers more, reduce class sizes, reduce high school dropout rates." "If teachers aren't making it, we want to
support them and help them develop, but ultimately if it's not working, our
children deserve the best," He faults No Child Left Behind for standards
that he said don't accurately monitor some children's progress. "When you're told you're meeting those
standards, you think you're doing OK. You're really not," "Our children are not competing for jobs
down the block or in the district or in the state -- they're competing against
children in Carey said "There are 50 states, there are 14,000
school districts, 90,000 schools, and Secretary Duncan is responsible for
every one of them. But they all have their own ideas, their own funding
sources, their own local leadership," Carey said. "Our children in this country have one
chance at education. One chance. We can't wait. We can't wait seven or eight
years. We'll lose a generation of kids," All AboutArne Duncan • Education Policy • Barack Obama |
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