Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Credit: Department of Education)

Arne Duncan’s administration of the Education Department saw plenty of notable accomplishments: billions of new dollars for preschool, a rewrite of the country’s primary K-12 education law, and a record high school graduation rate.

Yet for all he achieved in his seven years, Duncan said he’s disappointed to leave office without having made sufficient progress in several other areas, including school desegregation.

He sees the connection between his top three self-proclaimed disappointments — failure to further expand preschool, offer financial aid to undocumented students and clamp down on gun violence. They all reflect an unwillingness to protect and invest in children, he said.

“It’s just not seeing our children as the assets — as the extraordinary potential — that they truly are,” he said in a recent phone interview.

More notably, perhaps, is Duncan’s admission that he couldn’t do enough to desegregate the country’s schools. In some regions, America’s schools are now more segregated than they were in the late 1960s.

“I would give myself a pretty low grade on that,” he said.

Duncan said the department poured millions of dollars into magnet schools, public schools with a specialized focus or curriculum designed to draw a diverse group of students. Some, like those in Hartford, Connecticut, are making a big impact, but the program largely failed to make a noticeable difference integrating the country’s schools.

“I don’t so much blame those districts and schools,” he said. He posited that perhaps his department didn’t ask grant recipients the right kinds of questions, or didn’t give the money to the right places.

The country “can and should do more” to integrate schools, both by race and income, he said. Duncan said he’ll never advocate integration achieved by forced busing, but instead thinks schools should offer a wide variety of excellent choices to entice all types of families.

Duncan was one of President Obama’s original Cabinet appointees in 2009. He left office at the end of the year and returned to Chicago, where his family had moved last fall. Duncan said he’s been talking to people locally and nationally about what he’ll do next but for now is enjoying time with his two kids, Ryan and Claire, helping with homework and making them breakfast.

Duncan’s successor, John King, has a “huge interest and passion and expertise” in school desegregation, the former secretary said. He predicted King would make the issue a primary focus during his limited time in office. (King signaled during a Martin Luther King Day speech that he intended to do just that.)

Although Duncan painted desegregation efforts as largely a flop, there were both successes and failures at all levels of education — preschool, K-12 and higher education, he said.

For the youngest children, Duncan was pleased at the federal investment during his tenure, which topped $1 billion, but was frustrated he couldn’t persuade congressional Republicans to do more.

In K-12, he touted the country’s record high school graduation rate. Although that rate, around 82 percent, has risen, and dropout rates have fallen for every racial subgroup, there are still around 750,000 students leaving school every year with “basically no chance of being successful,” he said.

And in higher education, Duncan cited funding increases to the Pell Grant program, higher college attendance and graduation rates for students of color, and a new emphasis on campus safety and preventing sexual assaults. He’s discouraged, though, that the United States no longer leads the world in college completion rates. The top spot is shared by Canada and Russia, where 53 percent of 25- to 64-year-olds have a “tertiary” degree, according to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. In the U.S., it’s 41 percent.

“In every area, I am both proud of the progress and frustrated that as a nation we’re not getting better, faster, and there’s still tremendous unmet need at every level,” he said.

Perhaps Duncan’s biggest priority in recent years — expanding federal supports for preschool programs — is also one of his biggest letdowns.

“We’re cutting off our nose to spite our face. It just makes no sense,” he said. Duncan and other pre-K backers often point to research that investing in early learning programs saves money in the long run as children are kept out of costly special education programs and are less likely to be incarcerated or become teen parents.

He also cites two areas that were arguably not under his purview — the failure to pass a bill allowing federal financial aid eligibility for undocumented immigrant college students and any kind of substantive change to gun laws — as among the areas he would’ve liked to see a different outcome.

A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling requires states to enroll students in public elementary and secondary schools no matter their immigration status. (The Education Department during Duncan’s tenure released written guidelines reminding districts of that obligation, particularly after waves of unaccompanied children came to the country from Central America in recent years.)

If those students make it to college, though, they aren’t eligible for federal student loans or Pell Grants.

Duncan said gun violence was the hardest issue he dealt with during his time as Chicago’s school superintendent, and the problem has only gotten worse.

He compared the U.S. to Australia, where a conservative government changed gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting in 1996. A generation of children have grown up there not knowing what a mass shooting is, while in the U.S., such violent events seem to happen several times a week, he said.

Testing backlash

“Other nations just value their children, value lives, more than our nation does. There’s no other way to put it,” he said.

Duncan also defended his administration’s emphasis on tying teacher evaluations to student test scores in part through No Child Left Behind waivers and Race to the Top grants. Some have said those policies caused a proliferation of tests, a factor in the national backlash to testing and the opt-out movement.

It’s important, Duncan said, to compare a new policy to what was in place before it. In this case, some states had laws totally barring tying test scores and evaluations.

“It was unbelievable to me,” Duncan said. “It was basically saying that great teaching doesn’t matter.”

A total ban on linking test scores and evaluations doesn’t strengthen teaching as a profession, nor does it help kids, he said.

The administration also challenged states to think about the amount of time spent on testing, he said.

“My hope is that five years from now, [states and districts will] be much smarter” in how they implement testing and teacher evaluations, he said. “The way to get better [at it] is not to put your head in the sand.”

#EDlection2016

Duncan said he’s been frustrated that education issues haven’t been more prevalent — or oftentimes mentioned at all — in the presidential campaign. In particular, he thinks all candidates should have to answer how they’ll increase access to early childhood education (and if they won’t, why not), what their goals are for high school graduation and dropout rates, and how they’ll get the U.S. to once again be the global leader in percent of college graduates.

“This is in our nation’s interest. A good strong military is our best defense, but a good education system is our best offense,” he said.

The other education issues that have come up in the campaign so far — say, Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable comments on charter schools — are “small-ball sound bites,” Duncan said.

No one person or party has a monopoly on good ideas on how to tackle those issues, he said, it’s just essential to have the conversation at all: “We’re fighting for kids here and we’re fighting for our country.”

This article was produced in partnership with The74Million.org.

“This involves 26,000 of our children at LA Unified,” said Dean Tagawa, the LAUSD administrator for Early Childhood Education. “To have expanded Traditional Kindergarten at LAUSD is huge.”

Tagawa gave a report this week updating the Early Childhood Education and Parent Engagement Committee on the expanded TK program in the district. The district allocated $14.3 million to the program that would otherwise have reduced the number of pre-school children served. The remaining 173 schools that have SRLDP students will move to TKE programs in the 2016-2017 school year.

The expanded programs are full-day programs and won’t require new classrooms or new equipment because some will replace SRLDP pre-school programs that are being phased out. However, the teachers require professional development training. Most of them started in August, and some will start in October. Some principals will complete their training by January 2016, and teacher assistants are starting their training this month.

“The training of the teachers has gone well so far,” Tagawa said. “A lot of them were a little overwhelmed at first.”

Tagawa said that early education shows a vast word gap between those who have pre-school education and those who start school at age 5. He said studies show that there is a reduction in Special Education referrals and remediation and intervention for students who get early education.

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The bill is sponsored by Early Edge California, an educational advocacy group that is working to ensure that children have early experiences to be successful learners by the end of third grade. The agencies are hoping that the broad coalition will be an impetus to win the governor’s support.

“AB 47 will keep the promise to preschoolers,” said Deborah Kong, president of Early Edge California. “Far too many of our vulnerable children are starting behind and staying behind simply because they don’t have access to a preschool program. AB 47 helps us right this wrong.”

Support also comes from State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, who issued a statement saying, “Preschool programs are a wise investment for our society. Research shows that these programs help lower the achievement gap and the high school drop-out rate, while also reducing crime and teenage pregnancies.”

The President’s Council of Economic Advisers showed in a study that every dollar invested in high-quality early education can save more than $8 in the form of students being held back, dropping out or getting involved in crime.

Known as the Preschool for All Act of 2015, AB 47 was proposed by Assembly Member Kevin McCarty and would ensure that all eligible 4-year-old children who aren’t currently enrolled preschool or transitional kindergarten will have access to the California State Preschool Program by June 30, 2018. Funding is contingent upon appropriations in the annual budget. The Assembly voted 69 to 4 and the Senate approved it 28 to 11, with Republicans joining in support.

McCarty, a Democrat who represents parts of Sacramento, said, “Thanks to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the Legislature, and to this broad coalition of supporters who helped me push this bill to the Governor’s desk. I am proud to author a bill that invests in quality early childhood education and puts California’s future first.”

LA Unified is listed as a supporter along with the Los Angeles Urban League, Los Angeles Universal Preschool, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Jewish Community Relations Council and United Way of California. School districts including Alamada, Butte, Santa Barbara, Compton, Santa Clara and Sacramento are also in support.

Click here for a full list of supporters.

In the plan, none of the new classes will require additional classrooms, nor result in any change of teachers, according to district officials. The $14.3 million to pay for the transition was approved by the school board earlier this year and will be an ongoing transition into this school year.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines spoke yesterday at the Edward R. Royal Learning Center and said, “This district moved this year with a TK program. A program that moved from part time for very young children to six hours and we are going to move thousands of more children for next year.”

Cortines added, “Let me tell you the problems — not problems — the issues that we are facing in middle school and high school, they are solved when children first start their education. We need to make sure we put the emphasis on the early education.”

The program involves nearly 14,000 students. The Preschool for All bill, AB 47, that the governor must take action by Oct. 11, would provide sufficient funding to guarantee “every low-income 4-year-old with access to preschool” by 2017. 

The district plan is to provide quality preschools for low income children who turn 5 after December 2 in a six-hour program that runs 180 days, following other elementary school calendars. It sets a 24-students-per class maximum and will be part of the Breakfast in the Classroom program.

The pre-school program will follow the standards included in the Preschool Learning Foundations, not the kindergarten Common Core State Standards. The curriculum has structured and unstructured chances for children to build socialization and communication skills. They don’t plan a nap time, but instead will have story time and quiet games.

Because the children will be in classrooms previously using the SRLDP classrooms, the district doesn’t anticipate any increase in need for classroom space. The district also provided a timeline for professional development training for these transitions for principals, teachers and teacher assistants. A parent engagement program will be developed by January 2016.

The district is also working with 13 schools that have a California State Preschool Program for 3-year-olds in three-hour programs.

The state research showed that preschool programs provided a return of $15,000 for every child served. The state pointed out that investing in “high-quality preschools, the overall savings in prison system expenditures alone are estimated to be $1.1 billion a year due to the reduction in prison population by 13,000.”

To find out which schools are starting with the transition to TK, click here.

The district’s School Readiness Language Development Program (SRLDP) is just one of a handful of programs for district pre-schoolers, but it is the only one that is entirely financed by general funds with no supplemental contributions from state or federal revenue to help cover the $36 million price tag. That makes it perpetually vulnerable to cuts, especially in lean years, and next year is no different.

With the district facing a $113 million deficit in 2015-16, Superintendent Ramon Cortines has proposed cutting SRLDP over the next two years, a decision that would impact 10,000 children, nearly a third of the district’s 35,000 four-year olds enrolled in preschool.

But even as the district program teeters on the precipice of extinction, the state Assembly Committee on Education is pushing AB 47, the Preschool for All Act of 2015, legislation that would provide sufficient funding to guarantee “every low-income 4 year old with access to preschool” by 2017.

While the bill is far from becoming law — it will be heard next in the Assembly Appropriation Committee later this month — the prospect of future state support has some LA Unified school board members calling on Cortines to continue funding SRLDP until a decision is made at the state level.

In recent days board members Bennett Kayser and Monica Ratliff met with the district’s chief lobbyist, Edgar Zazueta, to develop a strategy for seeking help from the state to keep the district program alive.

“It doesn’t make any sense for us to cut this program if AB 47 passes,” board member Steve Zimmer told LA School Report, “because then we know that there’s a pathway to ongoing funding, and it’s not an indefinite budget liability.”

At that point, he added, “it’s just our job to create a bridge until 2017, and we can absolutely find a way to do that.”

The pre-school language program has been praised for its effectiveness in helping to close the achievement gap between some of the district’s wealthiest and poorest students. That is why Zimmer says, even if AB 47 doesn’t pass, “it’s going to be very hard to justify essentially shutting down a very successful program that benefits students in the most peril, that helps them be the best prepared they can be.”

“If our children come to kindergarten with gaps in their preparation that we know we could have addressed through SRLDP it will be a pox on our budgeting house,” Zimmer said.

Cutting the program to save $36 million — a drop in the bucket as part of the district’s $7.3 billion annual budget — is also incredibly short-sighted, according to Zimmer, who recognizes the benefits of enrolling young children in district run-programs.

Enrollment in district schools is expected to decline in the 2015-2016 school year for a 12th consecutive year. In the most recent year for which the district has figures, 2013-2014, the K-through-12 enrollment was 651,322, a 2 percent drop from two years before. District officials estimate that every 3 percent drop costs the district $100 million in funding.

Reasons for the declines are blamed on a lower birth rate and attrition to charter schools, which are why Zimmer says sustaining early education programs is vital to the district’s mission of increasing enrollment.

While the district is footing the bill for pre-school, those children are more likely to enroll in local public schools over the next 13 years, which, over time means hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

In the case of the 10,000 SRLDP students, who, according to Zimmer, have “outstanding track record of enrolling in LAUSD schools,” they represent $104,220,000 in Average Daily Attendance revenue if they were to enroll in kindergarten at a district school. Were they to remain in the district through graduation, they would bring an additional $1.35 billion.

“My best chance of competing with charter schools is to have students enrolling in a high quality early education program at a school where that child can enroll as a kindergarten student because then they stay,” Zimmer said. “And isn’t that what we want?”

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