Transcript: Interview with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward spoke with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Tuesday about the Obama administration plan to reform education. Our story on the interview is here. Below is a transcript of the interview.

The DC: … As far as the spending freeze that the president announced or is going to announce, is that going to have any impact on education funding?

AD: Well, I’ll just say, obviously, the budget will come out next week, but we feel very, very good about how things are going and, you know, stay tuned.

The DC: Okay, does that mean you don’t know? Or you just can’t say?

AD: It means stay tuned.

The DC: Alright, one other just kind of big picture question I had was we’ve seen health care hit some turbulence and just the agenda right now from the White House is hitting some turbulence overall. Do you think that education may become an unintentional beneficiary of this where it’s one of the good stories the White House has to tell? Do you think they might be turning to this more often in this year because of some of this political turbulence?

AD: Yeah, it’s a good question. I don’t really sort of focus on the other stuff. I do think obviously education is the one issue that folks can rally behind on a bipartisan basis. That this has to be the issue that politics and ideology go to the side, and so far, you’re seeing – whether it was my confirmation hearings or all the work we’ve done this year, or traveling the country with Rev. Sharpton and former Speaker Newt Gingrich, to the most recent meeting last week with the Big 8, when we started talking about reauthorizing EFCA – I think you’ve seen us from day one trying to absolutely work in a bipartisan way because I think that’s the only way we need to go educationally. I do think, you know, House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, everybody wants to accomplish something. Everybody wants to see education, you know, improve in this country, and I’ve been so pleased to see a common sense of urgency. So I do think, you know, obviously there’s a million things that could go wrong, but I do think there’s a real possibility to do something great for the country here and to dramatically improve the quality of education, and to do that it’s only going to happen if we work in a bipartisan way. There’s no other way for this to be successful.

The DC: So far, you have seen bipartisanship from Republicans or it’s remaining to be seen?

AD: Absolutely, absolutely. It literally from, you know, before I started. It started beginning with the confirmation hearings, all the way through last year whether it’s support of ARRA, whether it’s the Big 8 meeting we did last week, you know, the House and Senate leadership, you know, four top Dems, four top Republicans. There’s been an absolute sense of bipartisanship. I’ve traveled the country with Republican senators and governors and local leaders, Democratic senators and governors, and this is the one issue everybody knows we need to come together on. It’s actually interesting when you talk to some of the folks in Congress, someone like Rep. Kildee, he’s just convinced that in the history of education, the only times when the country has really done the right thing is when we’re working in a bipartisan way. So this is not some new idea. He gave me a really good history lesson on progress over the past couple decades, and he was pretty clear that that only happened when folks put aside politics and ideology. So it was really fascinating to hear.