Duncan Aims to Make Incentives Key Element of ESEA
December 1, 2009
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Monday that he envisions a significant new emphasis on federal incentives for high-performing schools, districts, and states in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, expected to be taken up by Congress as early as next year.
Mr. Duncan said the Department of Education is considering proposals that would offer increased autonomy, recognition, and resources for states that commit to adopting college- and career-readiness standards, and for schools and districts that make significant progress in student achievement.
“Under [the N o Child Left Behind Act] there are basically no incentives. There was nothing. There are 50 ways to fail, and if you succeeded there was nothing there for you,” the secretary said in a wide-ranging interview with Education Week reporters.
He said he’d like to change that when Congress and the administration move to revamp the ESEA, whose current version is the No Child Left Behind law. The law was originally slated for reauthorization in 2007.
“Whether it’s additional resources, whether it’s greater flexibility on additional resources, whether it’s shining a spotlight on them, … there’s a whole package of things” the next version of the law could include to reward excellence, Mr. Duncan said.
Through the coming reauthorization, the department is seeking to build on the emphasis on teacher quality, data, standards, and support of low-performing schools that is at the heart of the education portion of the economic-stimulus law enacted in February, Mr. Duncan said.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discusses the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act during an interview with staff writers from Education Week on November 30, 2009, in Bethesda, Md.
—Video by Charlie Borst/Education Week
That law—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—will provide up to $100 billion for education, and includes an expanded role for the federal government in using competitive grants to reward states and districts that make significant progress in those four areas. The main vehicles are $4 billion in grants under the Race to the Top Fund and $650 million through the Investing in Innovation Fund.
Mr. Duncan said those programs could help inform the department’s efforts to include incentives in the new version of the ESEA.

 ;
Policy ‘Lever’
The department also would like to imbed so-called growth models, in which schools get credit for improving the progress of individual students, into its new definition of performance targets for schools, said Carmel Martin, the department’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, who is helping to lead the ESEA-renewal effort. She also took part in the Nov. 30 interview.
And officials would like to use the ESEA as “a lever” to prod educators to use data to improve student outcomes, she said. Secretary Duncan specifically cited Louisiana’s model of using student data to improve teacher preparation as an example.
The Education Department will also seek to retain the NCLB law’s practice of disaggregating student data to shine a spotlight on different student populations, such as students in special education, and keep in place the law’s focus on closing achievement gaps between racial minorities and students in poverty and their more advantaged peers, Ms. Martin said.
But the department would like to give states and districts greater flexibility on intervening in schools that struggle to meet the goals of the law, Ms. Martin said. The federal government has already begun to experiment with that concept through a differentiated-consequences pilot project, started during the tenure of Secretary Duncan’s predecessor, Margaret Spellings. ("States Get Flexibility on Targets," March 6, 2006.)
The new version of the ESEA should also include a focus on students’ nonacademic needs, Ms. Martin said, including health and safety, and making schools into community centers. And she said the department would seek an emphasis on innovation and evaluation, building on the proposed guidance for the Investing in Innovation, or i3, program.
Mr. Duncan said he is already reaching out to those on both sides of aisle in Congress to pave the way for a bipartisan reauthorization of the ESEA. Other major Obama administration efforts—including the current push for a health-care overhaul and the stimulus program itself—have struggled to gain support from Republican lawmakers.
“We really want this to be a bipartisan effort; we’re spending lots of time in the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle,” Mr. Duncan said. “Education is the one area where we have to rise above politics. Everyone sees this as an issue that we can come together behind. I think we have an opportunity to do that.”
The secretary made it clear that teacher quality is going to play a central role in the ESEA reauthorization, and he spoke emphatically about the importance of using teacher evaluations to improve student outcomes, particularly in the lowest-performing schools.
“Teacher evaluation in this country is fundamentally broken,” he said. “In a country where teacher evaluation is divorced largely from student progress, student success, how do you defend that?”
And he reiterated that the administration still places a major value on merit pay, saying that the federal Teacher Incentive Fund, which gives grants to school districts for performance-pay programs, was “the best thing the previous administration” did.
High Competitive Bar
Mr. Duncan said the department will have high expectations for states seeking a slice of the Race to the Top Fund, which will reward states for embracing certain education redesign principles. And he warned that there will be states that lose out.
“There’s going to be a very, very high bar,” he said. “People won’t believe it until we do it.” He said states that miss the mark on the first round of funding, to be distributed next spr ing, could retool their applications to have a shot at phase two, which is slated to be given out sometime later next year.
“There will be lot of money left in the second round,” he said.
Asked whether he would urge President Barack Obama to seek a second round of federal recovery aid for education beyond the current stimulus law, Mr. Duncan did not answer directly. But he cautioned that states and districts—many of which are still in dire financial straits, despite the infusion of federal cash—should not bank on getting a second helping.
“This is a really tough time around the country. It’s tough for states, it’s tough for districts, it’s tough for families,” Mr. Duncan said. “And so, can I sit here today and say we’re going to have a second round of this? No, I can’t. I can’t begin to say that. … [There’s] no guarantee whatsoever.”
At the same time, the secretary suggested that the economic crisis has created some opportunities.
“What I’ve also said is when times are tough … painful as it is, you often have the kind of fundamental breakthroughs that you need, and they’re sometimes easier to get than when times are easier,” he said.