UPDATED
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been out of office for months and is now working for the . But on Wednesday, he sat down for an exit interview at the NewSchools Venture Summit here, with Jim Shelton, his former deputy. (Shelton was recently tapped to lead the education work at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropy funded largely by the couple鈥檚 Facebook shares. More on what they鈥檙e up to these days below.)
Shelton started with an easy question: What is Duncan most proud of his over his seven-year tenure as secretary?
Duncan ticked off three things: pouring $1 billion into early childhood education, an all-time high graduation rate (), and increasing Pell Grants. Not on the list: The two K-12 initiatives he鈥檚 best known for, the $4 billion into Race to the Top initiative and the $3 billion School Improvement Grant, both of which have yielded mixed results so far.
Shelton also wanted to know what Duncan sees as his three biggest failures.
Duncan ticked off one he鈥檚 mentioned a number of times before鈥攏ot being able to get Congress to go along with an even bigger investment on early childhood education. The fact that so many of our children enter kindergarten behind means 鈥渨e鈥檙e just setting our kids up for failure from the start,鈥� he said.
He also mentioned that the Obama administration failed to get immigration overhaul done and, therefore, didn鈥檛 give immigrant kids a path to citizenship. 鈥淲e could not get our Republican friends to back that,鈥� he said.
And he brought up another missed opportunity, the failure to get meaningful gun control legislation done: 鈥淚n our worst nightmare we never imagined we鈥檇 have 20 babies killed and five teachers and a principal.鈥�
Not on Duncan鈥檚 list of failures? Two things that many other folks would probably cite: requiring states that wanted flexibility from the mandates of No Child Left Behind to tie teacher evaluations to test scores at the same time that assessments and standards were changing, and hugging the Common Core State Standards so tight that they became politicized.
Duncan had some other鈥攑retty powerful鈥攖houghts on the gun violence issue.
鈥淲hat I always thought is that people didn鈥檛 care about black and brown kids and that it would take white kids鈥� getting hurt to force change. But Sandy Hook didn鈥檛 change that, he said.
And he had some thoughts on education鈥檚 place in the American political system more generally.
鈥淥ur nation is struggling right now, this is not a shining moment for American Democracy,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f we did a better job educating all kids our nation would be a lot stronger now. Our economy would be a lot stronger. So this is more than doing the right thing for the black community, the Latino community, although that鈥檚 desperately important, desperately urgent. Our nation is struggling now and I worry going forward if we don鈥檛 take this on and take this on at scale we鈥檙e not going to be able to rise as a nation.鈥�
Watch part of the interview here:
from on .
Priscilla Chan Talks Philanthropy
Before Duncan and Shelton spoke, Priscilla Chan, who with her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, chatted with Stacey Childress, the chief executive officer of the NewSchools Venture Fund. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is a separate entity from Facebook, is involved in education and other issues.
Chan, a pediatrician by day, talked about her own background, growing up in Quincy, the 鈥淕ood Will Hunting鈥� section of Boston. Her parents, she said, didn鈥檛 go to college, she applied to Harvard University not because she thought it would be a good fit, but because it was a school nearby, that she had heard of. She credits her teachers鈥攊ncluding her robotics coach鈥攚ith helping her figure out how to navigate the path to college.
鈥淚 know that showing up there freshman year changed my life,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 got there because of a lot of luck. ... We want to take the luck out of that experience鈥� and make sure every student has the opportunity to take advantage of college, she added.
Chan said she and her husband鈥�who have bet big on personalized learning and meeting the needs of disadvantaged kids鈥攍earned from their experience in education philanthropy in Newark. (The couple poured $100 million into the troubled district, with mixed results.)
鈥淲e鈥檝e seen that this work is a very long-term investment,鈥� she said. Some of the investments the couple made in the district, she said, seem only now to be paying off. And they learned the 鈥減ower of listening to the community and getting a sense of what families are asking for, what teachers are asking for.鈥� (Zuckerberg had a similar take in this interview with my colleague, Ben Herold.)
In fact, Chan got teary-eyed as she talked about a school the couple has started from scratch, the Primary School, which seeks to pair education and healthy services, and was inspired by one of her patients. K-12 education and health, she said, need to go hand-in-hand.