Free Republic

Arne Duncan is not waiting (we can't wait!!!) for Congress to change the way America’s schools operate… The secretary of education is using grant money and waivers to change education policy, ..Duncan has used $4.35 billion in money from the 2009 stimulus bill to give grants to states that improve academic standards, lift caps on charter schools, and reward good teachers.

There have been many frauds of historic proportions — for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff's hoax has made headlines. But the biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong — namely, the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups. The latest example of this hoax is the joint crusade of...

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan got a $50,000 payout in unused sick and vacation leave when he left his job as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools system to join the Obama administration. According to a new report by the watchdog group Better Government Association, the secretary was able to take advantage of department policy to covert unused, accrued benefits into a cash payout. Since 2006, Chicago's school system has paid $265 million to employees under this policy, with $227 million for sick days alone. The policy was put into place by the Chicago school board and predates Duncan, a...

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a federal law making it illegal to lie about being a war hero is constitutional and making false statements is not always protected free speech. ... The Colorado case involves Rick Strandlof, who was arrested after claiming he was wounded in Iraq as a Marine and had received military medals. His lawyers have acknowledged the claims were false.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks public-school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and has called for doubling teacher salaries. In a new paper co-authored with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation, I look into whether teachers really are desperately underpaid, or underpaid at all. Jason and I find that the conventional wisdom is far off the truth.At first glance, public-school teachers definitely look underpaid. According to Census data, teachers receive salaries around 20 percent lower than similarly educated private-sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says teachers’ benefits are about the same as benefits in the private sector. But both the salary...

If Education Secretary Arne Duncan has his way, kids would be spending a lot more time at school — and a three-month summer would be a thing of the past. Duncan joked with attendees at a luncheon at the National Press Club Tuesday in Washington that he would like schools to stay open 13 months out of the year. Then he told the audience of over 100 that he seriously supports longer school hours. “In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year,” Duncan said....

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been a presidential candidate for barely two weeks, but already polls indicate he's even with President Barack Obama. So the administration trotted out Education Secretary Arne Duncan to knock him down a peg. Texas schools have "really struggled" under Gov. Perry, Mr. Duncan told Bloomberg's Al Hunt Aug. 18. "Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college ... I feel really badly for the children there." It's cheesy for a Cabinet officer to be so political. But that's not why Mr. Obama shouldn't have used the former...

Time Magazine’s Andrew Rotherham professed to being “confused” over Arne Duncan’s attack on the performance of Texas schools — and his ignorance over the performance of the Chicago school district Duncan actually ran. The Dallas Morning News’ editorial writer Rodger Jones isn’t confused at all. He’s irate. In a column that appeared in yesterday’s newspaper, Jones prints the response to Duncan from Robert Scott, Texas’ education chief, but not before getting in a few shots himself at Duncan’s “lies”: Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s insult to Texas public education was a politically motivated distortion that doesn’t become a federal official in...

More than 150 years ago, Horace Mann fervently hailed education as "the great equalizer in the conditions of men." Horace Mann, generally considered the father of US public education, counted on good schools to fulfill American democracy. Poorer children, via effective education, would rise as far as their talents and hard work could take them. Social mobility would be guaranteed; merit would be the chief determiner of success. Shirley Tilghman, the president of Princeton, recently praised Mann's vision, and lamented that we are not honoring it. She pointed out that our K-12 education system is "leaving vast numbers of students...

Gov. Rick Perry today released the following statement regarding sanctuary city legislation: "As the special session appears to be winding down, I am disappointed the Legislature did not address sanctuary cities. Working with legislative leaders last weekend, we worked to include sanctuary city legislation in Senate Bill 1. Unfortunately, SB1 Conference Committee [Republican] Chairman Robert Duncan ultimately refused to allow language related to the ban of sanctuary cities into the final version of Senate Bill 1. Because of this action, the special session will not provide our peace officers with the discretion they need to adequately keep Texans safe from...

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will give remarks at the Department’s first-ever Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) youth summit at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 7, at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C. The two-day summit, “Creating and Maintaining Safe and Supportive Environments for LGBT Youth,” will take place Monday-Tuesday, June 6-7. Duncan will highlight the administration’s commitment to ensuring equal access to education for LGBT students as it does for all students. He also will discuss the Department’s Office for Civil Rights recently released guidance on the protection against harassment in an education setting based on gender,...

Obama Administration Holds LGBT ‘Youth Summit’ – Gov’t ‘Has Finally Come Out of the Closet,’ Official Says Monday, June 06, 2011 By Penny Starr (CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke at the first “Federal LGBT Youth Summit” on Monday after being introduced by a homosexual on her staff, who said the secretary “gets us” and is “tireless” in her support of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender youth. “Your federal government has finally come out of the closet in support of LGBT youth,” said Pam Hyde, HHS administrator for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services. “It’s great...

A bipartisan group of eight House members has penned a letter to President Obama urging a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in the wake of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) spearheaded the letter, which is also signed by three other Republicans and three other Democrats: Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Rush Holt (D-N.J.), John Campbell (R-Calif.), John Tierney (D-Mass.) and John Duncan (R-Tenn.). ..."we urge you to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan that are not crucial to the immediate national security objective of combating al Qaeda."

An estimated 82 percent of U.S. schools could be labeled as "failing" under the nation's No Child Left Behind Act this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday Department of Education estimates the number of schools not meeting targets will skyrocket from 37 to 82 percent in 2011 because states are toughening their standards to meet the requirements of the law. The schools will face sanctions ranging from offering tutoring to closing their doors "No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," Duncan said in a statement. "This law has created a thousand ways for...

Arne Duncan is renewing his criticism of the No Child Left Behind law passed under George W. Bush as the education secretary visits a high school with the former president's brother. Duncan, who will accompany President Obama to Miami on Friday to visit the school, wrote in an op-ed that the education measure has denied students an “American birthright.” “Under the 2002 No Child Left Behind law ... millions of children continue to be denied their one shot at an American birthright — an education that opens the door to college, careers, and opportunity,” Duncan wrote in the Miami Herald,...

U.S Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told CNSNews.com today in a video interview that “nobody” can be satisfied with the reading and mathematics scores achieved by eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools, noting that “they’re clearly not what they should be.” However, Duncan declined to pin the blame on teachers for the unsatisfactory performance of Wisconsin public schools, arguing that "we can point fingers lots of places" and that “everybody” from parents, to school administrators, to the local community, to the business community also needs to be challenged to make the public schools better. In the latest round of National...

When it comes to school choice, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are for it and against it. They've been proponents of charter schools but have opposed allowing parents to use tax-funded vouchers to enroll their children in private schools. In 2009 Duncan and Obama allowed a voucher program for 1,700 low-income students in Washington, D.C.—the first federal program of its kind—to expire, although a U.S. Department of Education analysis last year found it had improved graduation rates by 12 percentage points. Now House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is pushing a bipartisan effort to resurrect the program....

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and filmmaker Spike Lee teamed up Monday to urge more black men to consider teaching. More than 1 million teachers will retire during the next decade, according to federal estimates, and leaders have embarked on a nationwide drive to build a more diverse teaching force. Duncan on Monday took the campaign to Atlanta's Morehouse College, the nation's only all-male historically black college. Teachers should look more like the people they serve, Duncan said. While more than 35 percent of the nation’s public school students are black or Latino, less than 15 percent of the teachers...

VIDEO HERE OF HOUSE FLOOR SPEECH ________________________________________________________ The text of Rep. Duncan’s speech is copied below: Mr. Speaker: A nationwide revolt is developing over the body scanners at the airports, and it should. Hundreds of thousands of frequent fliers who fly each week are upset about getting these frequent doses of radiation. Parents are upset about being forced to have their children radiated or being touched inappropriately by an unrelated adult. There is already plenty of security at the airport, but now we are going to spend up to $300 million to install 1,000 scanners. This is much more about...

President Barack Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, have spent the past two years beating back the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and their allies to reform the nation's woeful public schools. By November 3, Obama and Duncan may find themselves with a different obstacle in the form of Republican Minnesota Congressman John Kline. With Republicans poised to win back control of the House of Representatives, the former Marine Colonel and think tank executive will be reshaping federal education policy as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. A former Marine helicopter pilot who...