U.S. education secretary calls on NAACP to focus on schools

By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS

Calling education “the civil rights issue of our generation,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Wednesday issued a national challenge for whole communities to get involved in improving public education.

“The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve it in the classroom,” Duncan told NAACP delegates meeting in Kansas City for the group’s annual convention.

“This is not just a moral obligation; it is our economic imperative,” he said. “Everyone has a responsibility. Every one can step up. Education is our national mission. Education is our best hope.”

He said community leaders “must be at the table when decisions are made about how to improve struggling schools.”

The Obama administration is making $4 billion available to improve the 5 percent worst-performing schools in the country, Duncan said.

“But what our resources cannot buy is courage,” he said.

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This man has a lot of damn gall to be scolding anybody on the subject of education.

The convention is here 10 miles from my house. I would have loved to go hear Arne and take a sign or two along with me :evilgrin:

After all, it's not like I'm busy getting ready for a teaching job or anything, there are no teaching jobs around here, thanks to this administration.

Things are a mess with us here. 40% of us still don't know where we will be working and the district still hasn't laid off any teachers. We go back to work in 4 weeks. But where will we all be? But I keep telling myself that I have a job and need to be grateful.

At this point I'm hoping that I'll catch on with a full time sub gig for a year. If not, well come August I'll try to find some sort of job somewhere. I've got my wonderful wife backstopping us on finances, along with some money I have. But it is depressing to have gone back for four years, do the work, get the grades, and upon graduation, nothing.

About ten percent of the folks I graduated with (aprox. twenty people) have found teaching jobs. Those are either in the St. Louis area, down in S. Missouri, or out of state altogether. The MOJOE job fair was depressing this year, most of the districts had nothing open, simply taking applications for their future use. Wichita was hiring though, across the board. Do you know what's going on there?

But sadly, since I'm middle aged and have responsibilities, I can't move. A friend of mine from Jordon told me I should go teach in Dubai for a couple of years, apparently real good money (six figure salaries). I would jump on it if I were single and younger, but that's not the case.

Good luck to you, no matter where you wind up, keep me updated.

It's urban but I like urban. I met their union leaders at a national conference a few months ago and liked them very much.

Wichita as a city has a pretty vibrant Democratic community. It used to be a Democratic stronghold in Kansas and was taken over by the anti choice assholes. But it is turning around again. We have a couple DUers from Wichita.

Don't stress too badly. When I finished school, the baby boomers were entering the work force and there was way too much competition for a beginning teacher to find a job. So I subbed for two years. There will always be a need for subs:) Then I found a job in a Catholic school where I was very happy for 5 years before I got the job where I am now. And the year I got hired here they had 200+ openings and couldn't fill them all. Much had changed in just a few years. This too shall pass. We will always have schools and we will always need teachers to work in them.

Arne's afraid of you!

:spank:

:rofl:

Since SES is the single biggest factor affecting student achievement, is Arne proposing a massive investment in infrastructure and programming to make poverty a thing of the past?

Wanna fix schools? Fix poverty first.

"Everyone has a responsibility" but he's only holding one group accountable.

And: He said community leaders “must be at the table when decisions are made about how to improve struggling schools.”

But for many charters he's taking away local control. In NO, control is with a charter-master in Chicago.

OTOH, this is the first I've heard him come close to admitting that factors outside the classroom affect education. Is he hearing the lamentations of teachers? Nah, he's too arrogant to listen to the hired help.

The inner-city black community needs to address the fact that its children hold strong anti-education beliefs and act so poorly in school that it's nearly impossible for them to learn. I just finished teaching in Kansas City for two years, and I've never seen anything like it in my life. Half of the students wanted to learn, but the other half were so disruptive that they prevented learning from taking place.
This idealistic picture of inner-city students yearning to learn but somehow held back by teachers, schools, etc. is ridiculous. Step into any KCMO school and you'll be shocked at the out-of-control students that you'll see running the building.
http://www.topix.com/forum/source/fox4kc/TR0J1FF6CF7TQ2F98

Two years. Posting from Brooklyn. Sounds like a TFAer who wasn't renewed. Probably stuck in a school with a poor administrator who gave little to no support. Damn.

for this job (along with having a rich mommy and daddy), so basketball has clearly been good to him.