Transcript: Interview with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

The DC: Alright, real quick then.

AD: That will be the last one. I need to run. Thanks, Jon.

The DC: Okay, I was going to ask about highly qualified teachers …

AD: Okay, go ahead. One more. There’s time.

The DC: Okay, well I was going to ask about highly qualified teachers, but I think instead I’ll ask about vouchers because that’s been a real controversial thing in D.C. Juan Williams had some real, real tough words recently and that’s been a longstanding criticism. Why hasn’t the administration done more to stop Congress from ending this program?

AD: Well, I think, as you know, we’ve worked very hard to make sure that students who are in the program have the chance to stay in those schools. And the program was due to end and we pushed very hard to make sure that children who are in schools and safe and happy and learning had a chance to continue to stay in those schools. What we said going forward is what we want to do is make sure that every child in D.C. has the chance to go to a great school, not just peel off 1 or 2 percent from a school and leave the rest to drown. And a big part of Race to Top, as you know, is our turnaround initiative. The goal of turnaround is not to save one or two children. The goal of turnaround, the turnaround work, is to transform the opportunities for every child, 100% of children in those low-performing schools. And we want to work with D.C. and other school districts, urban and rural, who have the courage and commitment to fundamentally change what’s not working, and to do it at scale. That’s where I think we need to invest our time, energy and resources going forward.

The DC: It does sound though that you feel like the voucher system is in some ways not the best approach.

AD: Well, again, those students that are already in schools what we worked really hard to support that. I do think we can be working to save every child, not just pull one or two into a life raft and leave the other, you know the rest of the children in the school to drown. That, to me, is more the unacceptable. What this country hasn’t done, Jon, at scale is to turn around schools. I challenge the country to think about turning around the bottom 1 percent, the bottom thousand schools every single year. This work is tough and hard and controversial, but if you do that, three, four, five, six, years in a row you will eliminate those schools who are perpetuating poverty and social failure and come back with dramatically better options and do it as a country. And I think we have a unique opportunity to do that. It’s going to be very, very tough but that’s going to fundamentally change education in our country, this country, if we have the courage to do the right thing by children here.

Allie McCubrey contributed to this report.