Latest news with #ArneDuncan
Forbes
17-06-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Why Smart Philanthropists Are Reinvesting In Education Now
Click on the homepage or scan your news alerts, and you will be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the dozens of crises and the 'five separate dooms promised this decade alone,' to crib from James Stafford's poem 'This Spring.' It's hard to know what the right next step is and not to feel paralyzed into inaction. Today, more than 70 education leaders across the political spectrum came together with an answer. Speaking in a unified voice, itself a distinction in this time of increasing polarization, former Secretaries of Education Arne Duncan and John King and heads of major education philanthropies and nonprofits called on fellow education colleagues, philanthropists, and advocates to 'step up and recommit to education as the cornerstone of social mobility, economic opportunity, and inclusive democracy.' Titled 'A Dream Worth Pursuing: Recommitting to Education,' the letter invited action, asking colleagues to 'invest more in bold ideas, innovative solutions, and collective action that can pave the way to a more hopeful and prosperous future for all.' [Full disclosure: I am one of the signers.] Education is foundational to every other facet of society and area of change, signers explained, with Peggy Brookins, President & CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, calling it 'the long-term plan for a stronger nation.' Auditi Chakravarty, CEO of AERDF (Advanced Education Research and Development Fund), described education as "the core underpinning – essential infrastructure for our society." 'Education undergirds everything else--national prosperity, civic competence and unity, individual prospects, upward mobility, and so much more,' said Chester E. Finn, Jr., Distinguished Senior Fellow & President Emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Several signers specifically highlighted the connection between public education and democracy. As Michelle Boyers, CEO of the Give Forward Foundation, put it: "Schools are the foundation of a future of a democratic society." Dr. Gisele C. Shorter, President and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, called public education the 'cornerstone of our democracy' and the "strongest tool we have to build generations of engaged leaders and citizens,' adding, 'what happens in public schools has ripple effects that impact the health and future of our families and communities.' The prevailing sense was that whatever issues might be closest to your heart as a philanthropist would not see progress without ensuring every child has an education that can prepare them for the future. 'If you believe in the importance of a thriving society and democracy, if you believe that we need a skilled workforce, and if you believe that we need future problem solvers to address our most pressing issues,' said Frances Messano, CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, "we can't give up on our current generation of students." Multiple leaders noted with concern that philanthropy is pulling back from education just when bold and sustained commitment is most needed. ""Historically, high-net-worth donors were focused on K-12 [education] Signers across the board noted that the decline in investment is compounded by current attacks on public education and the loss of federal funding, hitting schools at exactly a moment when students and teachers are in need of greater support. This decline, they argued, was short-sighted and counterproductive. "The urgency of the moment demands all the more that we really prioritize those kind of fundamental, foundational skills that young people will need to navigate an increasingly chaotic, volatile, uncertain future," said Chakravarty. Looking across Burroughs Wellcome Fund's broad portfolio, Louis Muglia, its president and CEO, said, 'Dollar for dollar, those investments [in education] make the biggest impact.' There are bright spots. Several signers noted the collaborative funds and rapid-response grant opportunities that have cropped up since the start of the year. The Spencer Foundation, The Kapor Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have created a rapid response funding opportunity for teams whose grants have recently been canceled by the National Science Foundation to enable them to complete critical projects. Leaders consistently emphasized that education transformation requires sustained investment over many years. "Commit to [your vision] with patient capital and focus on long-term implementation – changing government bureaucracy is not a 1-2 year project" was how Boyers put it – explaining why Give Forward was making 10-year grants to school-improvement efforts in the Bay Area. 'Change takes time,' Chakravarty agreed. "Building new strategies, implementing new solutions, all of these things take time. . . Unfortunately, that means there are no quick fixes." Iyengar took an evidence-based approach: "Any movement that's driven systemic change and population-level outcomes, they have a set of donors who provide patient, long-term capital... None of those organizations would have been successful if the donor had backed out when something didn't go right." It's because flexible and sustained funding enables organizations to 'advance interconnected strategies to accelerate their impact while building the infrastructure needed to do so,' explained Brookins. While there was unanimity about the need for more flexible and sustained philanthropic investment in education, there were differing perspectives on its role. Some elevated the need for more support for proven strategies. 'We know exactly what to do,' Iyengar said, pointing to playbooks for district-level transformation from the District of Columbia and state level transformation from Tennessee and Mississippi, 'but we lack the commitment to do it.' People pointed to decades of positive progress in districts and charter management organizations that have closed achievement gaps. "Despite political, cultural, and health-related disruptions, educators in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C., have demonstrated real progress in student proficiency by applying a rigorous, uniform approach to instruction," said Itai Dinour, Executive Director of the Carmel Hill Fund. These leaders question the notion that philanthropy needs to find the next breakthrough innovation, advocating instead for doubling down on proven organizations and approaches. Others disagreed, emphasizing instead the unique role philanthropy plays in fueling innovation. 'While limited public resources may keep the train on track, philanthropy has always driven innovation,' said Brookins. Muglia of Burroughs Wellcome put it this way: 'The goal [of philanthropy] is not just to keep education static but have it evolve to meet the needs of society.' There's a murmuring in education circles that education entrepreneurs aren't putting forward sufficiently bold ideas that funders can get behind. Across these interviews, a different picture emerged. 'There is no shortage of bold ideas and innovations in education,' Messano shared, citing the close-to 1,400 applications for funding that NewSchools Venture Fund received this year alone. Several leaders suggested the problem was a limited definition of who counts as an innovator or expert. 'Seeing enough 'big bets' requires widening the aperture of who you're listening to,' said Dr. Shorter, a perspective that was widely held. 'Listen to the experts,' was how Brookins put it. "And by that, I mean those doing the work and are in the weeds daily. The educators, the school leaders, and the students. Ask them what they need." Auditi agreed, saying that part of why she signed the letter was to expand who we see as experts and remind people to listen to them: to 'educators, school districts and community leaders, folks who are close to the problems and challenges and needs.' Iyengar offered a provocative thought on what drives change more broadly: "I think donors are looking for unicorn breakthrough idea that will change the world, but the history of movement building says it's a bunch of efforts pulled together that will really drive meaningful change." * * * In a time of scorching divisions, interviewees felt compelled by the call to act with collective spirit. They were motivated to speak out in a shared voice about the enormous potential of our nation's children and a belief that, as Brookins put it, education was our way of 'fulfilling a promise to our youngest generation and our ancestors' at the same time. The letter closes with a call to action: 'let's commit to this for the generations, for our children and our children's children, to build the future we all want to live in. Our students and our country's future urgently call on us to recommit to their potential and to the limitless potential of what they can achieve when we invest in them and tackle the challenges that hold back their learning.' The opportunity to sign on remains open.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Student visa pause ‘extraordinarily disturbing': Arne Duncan
After ordering U.S. embassies and consulates to stop scheduling student visa interviews for international students, the Trump administration is also weighing putting a 15 percent cap on the enrollment of international students. A U.S. official said the halt is temporary. The State Department is also weighing the expansion of 'social media screening and vetting' for applicants. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, President Trump said the expansive screening would determine if foreign students were 'troublemakers' and wants to ensure that any admitted students are those who 'love our country.' In an exclusive interview with NewsNation, former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who served under former President Obama, said the administration's move was the opposite of its 'Make America Great Again' slogan. 'We attract the best and brightest students from around the world, and we only help ourselves,' Duncan said. 'These are future innovators, job creators, entrepreneurs.' He added, 'These are researchers who can help us find the next cure for cancer, and to lose their talent and expertise is extraordinarily disturbing.' The former Education chief also noted that it puts the country in a 'very bad position,' and even though it is a temporary decision, it could leave a 'chilling effect' on the U.S. that could last for a long time. He said it could deter international students and even U.S.-born students from applying to certain colleges. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
29-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Student visa pause ‘extraordinarily disturbing': Arne Duncan
After ordering U.S. embassies and consulates to stop scheduling student visa interviews for international students, the Trump administration is also weighing putting a 15 percent cap on the enrollment of international students. A U.S. official said the halt is temporary. The State Department is also weighing the expansion of 'social media screening and vetting' for applicants. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, President Trump said the expansive screening would determine if foreign students were 'troublemakers' and wants to ensure that any admitted students are those who 'love our country.' In an exclusive interview with NewsNation, former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who served under former President Obama, said the administration's move was the opposite of its 'Make America Great Again' slogan. 'We attract the best and brightest students from around the world, and we only help ourselves,' Duncan said. 'These are future innovators, job creators, entrepreneurs.' He added, 'These are researchers who can help us find the next cure for cancer, and to lose their talent and expertise is extraordinarily disturbing.' The former Education chief also noted that it puts the country in a 'very bad position,' and even though it is a temporary decision, it could leave a 'chilling effect' on the U.S. that could last for a long time. He said it could deter international students and even U.S.-born students from applying to certain colleges.
Boston Globe
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Has America given up on children's learning?
He has begun a bevy of investigations into how schools handle race and transgender issues, and has demanded that the curriculum be 'patriotic' -- a priority he does not have the power to enact, since curriculum is set by states and school districts. None of it adds up to an agenda on learning. Democrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one. Governors and congressional leaders are defending the Department of Education as Trump has threatened to abolish it. Liberal groups are suing to block funding cuts. But none of that amounts to an agenda on learning, either. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up All of this is true despite the fact that reading scores are the lowest they have been in decades, after a pandemic that devastated children by shuttering their schools and sending them deeper into the realm of screens and social media. Advertisement 'Right now, there are no education goals for the country,' said Arne Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama's first secretary of education after running Chicago's public school system. 'There are no metrics to measure goals, there are no strategies to achieve those goals and there is no public transparency.' Advertisement Many Americans will recall that on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush was in a second grade classroom in Florida as children read a story called 'The Pet Goat.' What they may not remember is why Bush was there that morning. The president was promoting No Child Left Behind, which he was struggling to get through Congress. It would eventually pass with bipartisan support, instituting a national program of annual standardized testing in reading and math. While Obama critiqued how No Child Left Behind was carried out, he agreed with its core vision and advanced it. States were prodded to adopt the Common Core, a set of shared curriculum standards, which brought changes like more thesis-driven writing assignments and a greater emphasis on conceptual understanding in math. In those years, Washington sought to hold educators accountable for raising students' scores on tests linked to the new standards. Schools could be labeled 'failing.' Teachers with low evaluation scores could even lose their tenure protections. It worked, at least for a time. Achievement in reading and math increased, especially among the lowest-performing students. But tying punishments to test scores led to a predictable outcome: a curriculum that, in too many schools, centered on test prep. And with principals focused intently on raising scores in reading and math, they whittled away time for social studies and science. All of this contributed to a potent anti-education-reform movement, led by teachers and parents. On the right, there was resistance to any kind of federal mandate over local schools. On the left, a vocal group of parents began to refuse standardized tests. The politics of top-down school accountability had become untenable. In 2015, Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, largely unraveling his own education agenda. Bipartisan school reform was dead. Advertisement Since then, Republicans have embraced a free market vision of parental rights, in which as many tax dollars as possible are freed to help parents pay for private school tuition, homeschooling and for-profit virtual schooling. That movement accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when conservative parents organized to resist school closures, mask mandates and progressive ideas about race and gender in the curriculum. Meanwhile, Democrats drew closer to their traditional allies, the teachers unions. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the party had engaged in an internal debate on whether to expand the number of public charter schools, an idea that Obama supported. Many charters were built around the conviction that poor children deserve an academically rigorous education -- but they largely were not unionized. President Joe Biden, a staunch labor ally, marginalized the charter school sector, despite the fact that it has created thousands of quality public schools. In one classroom in Louisiana, you can see several ideas that have emerged far from the spotlight of national politics. One recent afternoon at Highland Elementary School, where 70% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a group of fifth graders sat, rapt, as their teacher, Lauren Cascio, introduced a key insight: that the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation all occurred during the same period of human history. Cascio reviewed vocabulary words that students would need: heretic, rational, skepticism, heliocentric. Then, over the course of an hour, 10- and 11-year-olds broke into groups to discuss why Leonardo da Vinci was interested in human anatomy. They wrote about how the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo differed from those of the ancient Greeks. Advertisement Unlike in many elementary school classrooms, the students did not have computers or tablets on their desks. They had open books, which they were avidly marking up with highlighters and pencils. The work in Louisiana has been celebrated by the Knowledge Matters Campaign, an effort led by Barbara Davidson, a policy advocate and veteran of the Department of Education under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Davidson has worked to amplify the ideas of a loosely organized network of educators, curriculum-writers, parents and local policymakers who are rejecting ideological approaches to education, and instead, are focused on how to maximize learning. It starts with reading. One positive development of the past decade has been a shift toward a research-backed focus on structured phonics in the early grades -- to successful effect. But now, some of the attention has shifted to additional aspects of literacy instruction that are backed by cognitive science, and crucial for turning beginning readers into proficient ones; namely, the finding that to become a good reader, children need a strong vocabulary and knowledge about the world. The subjects that best build vocabulary and knowledge are social studies and science -- the exact subjects that the Bush-Obama reforms often stripped from the school day. But students face an additional challenge that didn't exist during the education battles of the 2000s: ubiquitous screens. Children cannot learn to focus their attention on books or anything else if they are constantly distracted by addictive technology. The push to ban phones in schools transcends partisanship, and parent activism has helped a dozen states ban or limit cellphones in schools. Still, many educators say that screens remain a problem. Advertisement Some teachers are moving in-class reading and writing back to paper. Among them is Jon Gold, a middle school history teacher in Providence, Rhode Island, who frequently writes on how to enrich the curriculum and use technology in smarter ways. He now requires his students to close their laptops and read on paper. 'Their reading comprehension is stronger,' he said. The country is deeply polarized. But a survey of some of the most exciting work happening in schools shows that educators and parents have the ability to embrace new ideas and come together around the goal of giving the next generation a quality education. It could even be the beginning of a political platform. This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chicago Teachers Union members overwhelmingly ratify new contract with CPS
The Brief The Chicago Teachers Union members voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new contract last week, the group announced on Monday. About 97% of the members who weighed in voted to approve the deal. CTU has nearly 30,000 members. The contract includes teacher and staff pay raises, class size limits, more planning time, and more funding for various programs. CHICAGO - The Chicago Teachers Union overwhelmingly voted to ratify a new contract with Chicago Public Schools last week with 97% of voters supporting the deal, the union announced on Monday. About 85% of the nearly 30,000 members of the CTU voted on the latest proposal last week and the votes were tallied over the weekend. Every member had a chance to vote on the contract. The contract still requires final approval from the Chicago Board of Education. What we know The contract will be in effect through the 2028-29 school year after approval from all levels. The contract took almost a year to negotiate and was won without a strike vote, the union pointed out. The CTU said the contract includes funding for 90 new librarians, 215 additional case managers, 400 more teachers assistants, and 68 new centralized technology coordinator positions. In an announcement, the CTU said the new deal "will represent a major leap forward in the transformation of a district that is still recovering from the gutting and financial irresponsibility" of former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former CPS CEOs Arne Duncan and Paul Vallas. The union also called out sitting district CEO Pedro Martinez saying he was an obstruction to the process. Dig deeper The four-year contract includes an overall pay raise of at least 16% for all teachers, with annual increases between 4% and 8.5%, plus step increases based on a teacher's years of service. The starting salary for new teachers will increase to nearly $69,000, while the median CPS teacher will earn more than $98,000 by fiscal year 2026. Other key provisions include: Class size limits: Kindergarten capped at 25 students, grades 1-3 at 28 students, grades 4-8 at 30 students, and high school classes between 29-31 students. CPS will increase funding for additional teachers and aides to help manage larger classes. Teacher prep time: Elementary school teachers will receive 10 additional minutes of daily planning time, bringing the total to 350 minutes per week. Additional professional development days will be restructured to provide more teacher-directed prep time. Expanded benefits: CPS will provide 100% tuition reimbursement for up to 300 teachers seeking bilingual or English as a Second Language endorsements. The district will also expand medical and dental benefits for employees making under $90,000, increase coverage for therapies, and guarantee access to abortion coverage, infertility treatments, and gender-affirming care. Student and school resources: The district will triple funding for athletics, add teacher assistants to all general education pre-K classrooms, increase funding for fine arts education, and expand the number of "sustainable community schools" from 20 to 70.
