In a remarkable body slam on the system he once ran, former Obama-era Education Secretary Arne Duncan says in a new book that America does not value teachers or students.
And in How Schools Work, out Tuesday from Simon & Schuster, Duncan declares that “education runs on lies.”
Writes Duncan, one of the nation’s longest serving education secretaries, “That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former secretary of education, but it’s the truth. How schools work best is often by confronting and fighting these lies, but this is exhausting and sometimes perilous work usually undertaken by an isolated teacher or principal. So, the lies persist.”
Over 243 pages, the one-time Chicago schools chief cites several problems with schools, from poor teacher pay to gun violence and a tendency to shrug off problems.
He is forceful when writing about teachers and students and the “lie” in America that the nation cares about both.
“The lie underneath all of this is the one that says America values its teachers. But the truth is we don’t. If we really valued the women and men dedicated to educating our children, then our teachers would be more respected, better paid, and have tons of support from all levels of society. They could count on us. But, as it is, they can’t count on us, and we should be ashamed because of it,” he writes in the book.
And his is a bigger indictment on how students are treated.
“The root lie on which all of the lies in this book is built,” he writes, “is far, far worse, and should be the ultimate source of our shame. The truth is that we not only don’t value our teachers. It’s that we don’t value our kids.”
He suggests a doubling of spending on schools, which is about $650 billion on public schools alone. He said that rises to $1 trillion if private schooling and money raised by parents and outside groups are added in.
Still, he adds, “are we coming up short everywhere? Absolutely not. I’m not throwing the entire system under the school bus.” But, he adds, the nation has to have a discussion on fixing education and spending on it.
