Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education, came to speak at Columbia today. I tried to read a bit about him before going, wanting a bit of background, but Wikipedia (my scholarly source for all information) was surprisingly tight-lipped about him. The article talked about his biography but didn't say a thing about his philosophy. I know more about Michelle Ree, the superintendent of D.C. schools who didn't actually get chosen to be the secretary of education. So I was particularly interested in hearing what he had to say.

In introducing Duncan, Susan Fuhrman, the president of TC, went over some of his more impressive feats while he was superintendent of Chicago schools – huge increases in student achievement and graduation rates, tripled applications for teaching positions in the district, etc. Impressive, but I have to say I'm a little put out that he's never taught himself and has had only administrative and policy-making experience.

Some of his more memorable points:

-Schools of education (not TC of course) are doing an inadequate job of preparing teachers for the classroom.

-Schools of education are the "Rodney Dangerfields" of the academic world because they "get no respect."

-Universities often use schools of education as "cash cows," collecting lots of tuition from education students and redirecting it to more expensive (and more academically impressive programs) like chemistry, physics, etc.

-Approves of teacher training programs that have students in real classrooms, not lecture halls, as much as possible.

-Would like to see continuous, valuable professional development in schools where experienced teachers serve as mentors.

-Stressed that money is not the best way to reward good teachers and schools, although it is a small factor, and that more important to teacher satisfaction are things like adequate time for group planning and student assessment, high quality administrators who give them full support, and the resources they need to do their jobs.

Hard to argue with any of that, really. Very like a politician, except that he didn't feel slimy like some politicians can.

For the full transcript of his speech (or the webcast), follow this link: http://www.tc.edu/duncanwebcast.