At a recent Business Roundtable event, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former Indiana governor and current Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, and former Michigan governor John Engler discussed American education and the reform movement.
All three panelists agreed that while the U.S. is making progress on education thanks to reforms, the pace of progress needs to be accelerated.
As reported by the New York Times, Duncan addressed how some of the current debate over charter schools can hinder progress:
The battle is not traditional versus charter. We have one common enemy, and it’s academic failure. Where charters are reducing academic failure and increasing graduation rates, and sending kids to college, we need to replicate that and learn from it and support it. Where do we have success? Where are parents and students voting with their feet – where you have 1,000 to 2,000 kids looking for that kind of option? They are telling us something. We’ve got to listen. We owe it to them to listen. Take those lessons into traditional schools. And where traditional schools are doing that same thing, we’ve got to listen.
