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of a yearlong celebration of 150 years of teacher preparation at
Duke, the summit brought current Secretary of Education Roderick
Paige together with former secretaries Lamar Alexander, William
Bennett, Lauro Cavazos, and Richard Riley. While the secretaries
brought various experiences and ideologies to the table, the meeting
was notable as much for its point of agreement--public education
needs fixing--as for the civil disagreements about accountability
and testing.
As the sitting secretary, Paige spoke extensively about the Bush
administration's education agenda, which had been largely codified
by the January signing of the No Child Left Behind Act, a $26-billion
federal education bill that included mandates for broader educational
testing, increased local control, character education, greater tutoring
for children in failing schools, and stricter accountability.
" 'No Child Left Behind' helps us look at schools, governance,
and the federal role in education the right way," Paige said.
"It reminds us that the goal of schools is not diplomas, but
educated citizens, and it assures us that the responsibility for
student performance lies not just with educators, but also with
communities.
"In order to eliminate the achievement gap and improve student
performance across the board, we must hold educators accountable
to the bold proposition that every child can learn. There is no
middle ground for excuses. Either educators believe that every child
can learn, or they do not. When they begin to make excuses for our
children based on race or socioeconomics, those who make excuses--and
our children--fall prey to what [President Bush] calls 'the soft
bigotry of low expectations.' "
Paige said the new law mandates more educational testing, and
defended that position. "The 'No Child Left Behind' law is
all about discovering and disseminating the information about student
performance that assessments will provide. Test scores will be disaggregated
by poverty, race, ethnicity, disability, and limited English proficiency
so that we can see where the achievement gap exists and attack it
so that no group is neglected. School districts and schools that
fail to make adequate progress toward statewide goals will, over
time, be subject to improvement, corrective action, and restructuring
measures aimed at getting them back on course to meet state standards."
The theme of character education was reinforced by Bennett, who
has spent the years since his Reagan-era service as a public moralist
and think-tank director. Despite opposition to morality-based teaching,
he said, children must be educated in values--values that should
be inculcated by their teachers. "If you want people to learn
about morality, then you put them in the presence of people who
embody morality."
Riley, secretary of education during all eight years of the Clinton
administration, became the lone Democrat at the summit when Shirley
Hufstedler, President Carter's appointee, was forced to cancel her
appearance at the last minute. Responding to the Bush agenda, Riley
called for caution and the establishment of clear, across-the-board
standards by which to judge accountability. "I believe in standards,"
he said, "but not standardization."
Alexander, a former Tennessee governor whose tenure as education
secretary was followed by two runs for the White House, departed
from the more traditional Republican local-control stance by repeating
his longstanding call for broad, federal, G.I.-Bill-like legislation
that would improve the quality and accessibility of primary and
secondary education on a nationwide level.
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