Arne Duncan's vision

Here's a roundup of the points made by Arne Duncan during his talk last week at the Education Writers Association conference:

-- While it's important have research-based reform, "the unproven program is absolutely worth trying. If we never try new things, we'll never find new things that work." -- Charter schools have been demonized by unions and lionized by the right, when the reality is that "some charters are good and some charters are bad." He said he is "fundamentally for choice and competition," and the number of charters should be expanded. He called for states such as Michigan to lift their caps on the number of charters. He also said that underperforming charters need to be shut down. -- Big proponent of basing teaching pay on performance to reward the best teachers. But he also said it's very important to work with unions in developing how that would happen. -- Also is pushing for much better teacher-evaluation systems, such as videotaping teachers in the classroom to review and analyze what they do right and wrong. He said that when he played basketball, his coach would rerun the tape of his mistakes "15 times and, trust me, you really learn from that." -- Says his department has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on reform efforts. "Those districts and nonprofits making a different in student achievement, you want to partner with you and scale up those efforts." -- On the stimulus money for schools, "this is a real test of states' ability and creativity. There's a huge opportunity at the back end for more money, if you are creative with your stimulus dollars." -- Also suggested districts should spend their special-ed stimulus dollars on a "massive investment" in professional development for all teachers to help with work with all kinds of students. On Title I stimulus dollars, "I'd invest in time, time, time. I believe our school day is too short, our school week is too short, our school year is too short. I'd be investing in time and I'd be doing that this summer." -- Wants to focus on high school graduation rates to measure school district performance, but says he wants to back off four-year graduation rates because than schools don't want to help struggling students who take longer. -- Says he's a "big believer in value-added education," which is looking at growth in test scores versus just the scores themselves. Incidentally, the audience at Duncan's speech was standing-room-only and the crowd seemed very impressed. He is an impressive guy.