The White House Bulletin April 20, 2009

HEADLINE:  Duncan Portrayed As a Champion of National Education Standards

Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute and former managing editor of Time (4/27, 3.35M), writes, "National standards have long been the third rail of education politics. The right chokes on the word national, with its implication that the feds will trample on the states' traditional authority over public schools. And the left chokes on the word standards, with the intimations of assessments and testing that accompany it. The result is a K-12 education system in the US that is burdened by an incoherent jumble of state and local curriculum standards, assessment tools, tests, texts and teaching materials." Isaacson adds, "As a candidate, Barack Obama was ambiguous about his commitment to the education-reform agenda of standards, testing, accountability and greater choice. But such doubts were quelled by his pick for Education Secretary: Arne Duncan, who was a cool and driven reformer as CEO of the Chicago public-school system." According to Isaacson, "Duncan's position on common standards is clear: 'If we accomplish one thing in the coming years, it should be to eliminate the extreme variation in standards across America,' he says. 'I know that talking about standards can make people nervous, but the notion that we have 50 different goalposts is absolutely ridiculous.'"

In an interview with Time's Richard Stengel (4/27), Duncan says of No Child Left Behind: "It was dramatically underfunded. ... What I think No Child Left Behind got right was, it forever put a spotlight on the difference of achievement between white kids and children of color - African-American and Latino. Forevermore, our country can't sweep that under the rug. Those conversations are tough and hard, but they are real. What NCLB did was, they were very loose on the goals -- 50 states could create their own goals and 50 different goalposts, and [what] that led to was a real dumbing down of those goals. What they're very tight on is how you get there. I think what we need to do is fundamentally reverse that - I think we need to be really tight on goals and have these common college-ready international benchmark standards that we're all aiming for, but then be much looser in how you let folks get there."