Parent Cortical Mass

Rep. George Miller on No Child Left Behind

During "Education Nation" last fall Rep. George Miller discussed briefly the "new take" on No Child Left Behind. New ideas includes setting national "college and career ready" standards, developing better assessments than fil-in-the-bubble tests to measure student learning, and getting greater teacher and parent buy-in to the changes.

   

Watch his two minute explanation of how problems with NCLB might get fixed when it goes up for reauthorization.

Arne Duncan

Secretary of Education

Arne Duncan is considered the most powerful Secretary of Education ever, for one reason: money.  Unlike the past eight Secretaries, and because of the Great Recession, the Education Department received a windfall 100 billion stimulus dollars to invest in public schools.  To create incentives for President Obama’s reforms, Duncan put 4.35 billion of these dollars into a fund he named "Race to the Top” and then invited states to compete for these funds. To be eligible, states had to strike down laws that were obstacles to the administration’s reforms. Because the Great Recession left states financially strapped, their cooperation to change laws was unprecedented.

Before his appointment as Education Secretary, Duncan ran the Chicago Public Schools.   As CEO, he was the very model of a modern education leader, in charge of a mayor-controlled school system.  Proponents of this new model of leadership make this case: if a mayor takes away authority for a city's schools from the elected Board of Education and gives that authority to an appointed, business-style executive, then that executive can by-pass the conflicting groups in the educational bureaucracy that hinder progress. The new leader can make top-down decisions that will allow rapid change and, therefore, big gains in student achievement.  In practice the model achieved rapid change, but the gains in student achievement did not materialize as expected. To those who believe schools should be improved using free-market reforms like choice, competition, and accountability, Arne Duncan is their champion. 

Because of his control over Race to the Top funds, the support he receives from billionaire corporate executives, and his full court press on education reforms, Arne Duncan is PCM’s selection for the most influential education leader in America.

-- Go to PCM's Top 10 Influencers List --

Bill Gates

Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Bill Gates’ is PCM’s second most influential education leader for two reasons: the billions of dollars in his Foundation and his longstanding commitment to education.  By using his “philanthro-capital," Gates can impact public education policy without needing to be elected and reelected. 

His alpha-executive skills, sharpened in the fast-moving business world, get put to nimble use by partnering with political leaders possessing the skills to manage slow-moving government institutions.  Gates partnered with Arne Duncan when Duncan was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools.  He also partnered with Joel Klein, former Chancellor of NYC Education Department, investing 150 million dollars into the city’s reforms.  Joel Klein was the lead prosecutor for the Justice Department in the anti-trust case against Microsoft, so they found common ground in education.

The Gates Foundation acts as an R & D unit by funding research to discover the best ways to raise student achievement.  To get Gate’s funding, the investment must be scalable and have a financial model that allows it function on public funding after the Foundation withdraws.  Since 2000 Gates invested more than 2 billion dollars into “small school” high schools.  After a decade the research concluded that, even though high school completion rates improved, student achievement didn’t budge.  Undaunted, Gates said, this is what happens in R&D—finding out what doesn’t work makes us smarter and informs our next steps. 

In the Foundation’s 2011 Annual Letter, Gates outlined their next two areas of investment—researching the best methods to increase teacher effectiveness and on-line learning technology.

-- Go to PCM's Top 10 Influencers List --