Acting Education Secretary Champions Economic, Racial Integration
January 25, 2016
by Richard Kahlenberg
The American Prospect
“Indeed, the National Coalition on School Diversity on January 21 wrote the Education Department to encourage racial and socioeconomic integration under the sweeping new education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Duncan instead favored plans to bring in charter school operators or fire teachers. Duncan defended this approach, writing that as the head of schools in Chicago, ‘we moved the adults out of the building, kept the children there, and brought in new adults.’
This rankled many educators. At a 2009 conference of the National Coalition on School Diversity, Louisville, Kentucky, public school administrator Pat Todd received an outburst of applause when she complained that it was difficult to sustain integration programs at the local level when all the rhetoric in Washington was about the virtues of charter schools and paying teachers based on test score gains.”