[indistinct conversations] good morning. Thank you for joining us, whether in person, on our webcast, or on cspan. I am john, a fellow here at the center for education policy. We are here today to talk about education policy and the 2020 election. Education doesnt always grab headlines during president ial campaigns. That is certainly the case this time around. That being said, there are truly consequential issues and big policy ideas being talked about as part of these campaigns. To help us make sense of what is going on we have a wonderful , group of panelists. Arne duncan served as education secretary from 2009 through 2015. I believe he was the ninth secretary. He is now a managing partner at the emerson corrective and a nonresident senior fellow at brookings. Dr. John king served as secretary of education through 2016 into 2017. I think he was number 10. Dr. King is currently the president and ceo of the education trust. To help guide our discussion, we have allison klein, her current beat is workforce issues. For many years she has covered education politics and policy in washington and beyond. And with that i will welcome the , three of you to our stage and hand it over to allison. [applause] allison thank you for joining us. Im not going to introduce these gentlemen because they have already been introduced. We are going to dive right into questions. I know you have been following the campaigns. Senator sanders have called for a moratorium on Charter Schools. I know you have both been supportive of charters in secretary king, you are an attorney and civil before, during, and after your time at the department of education. Do you worry that the Current Administrations embrace of choice has hurt charters among democratic constituencies . Sec. King it is not about the current policies around choice but about secretary devosand her history around choice. The reality is there are really highperforming public charters that are contributing very positively to the Public Education landscape. I think about the charter sector in boston or new york. On the other hand, there are charter sectors that are quite terrible, the one in michigan. Secretary devos has been a champion of low regulation, low oversight, low accountability for charters. As a result, in michigan, you have a proliferation of low performing charters, Something Like 80 forprofit charters, schools that exist to take advantage of communities rather than serve and that has hurt the sector. When you have an administration so hostile to civil rights and to the interests of low income students and students of color, championing a policy isnt right and they are right to be skeptical. Mr. Duncan we, as democrats, shouldnt blame the republicans for our policy choices. We shouldnt be swayed by that. There are amazing Charter Schools are transforming lives and he helped start one of and one of them. And there are low performing Charter Schools. As democrats and citizens, we should have a moratorium on bad schools and we should want a lot more good schools, whatever that might be. Traditional, charter, magnet. It is the wrong frame. Allison i hear that. Secretary duncan, you said one of your big regrets was not getting prekindergarten investment over the finish line during your tenure. You had something much more ambitious in mind. Has there been enough discussion about issue in the democratic primary . Should the next democratic president pick up on that and how they get it done . Why werent you able to get it done . Sec. Duncan i put it both in my successes and failures category. We got an additional billion dollars to provide access for hundreds of thousands of additional threeyearolds and fouryearolds across the country. I am proud about that. I would have loved to have had 10 billion or 20 billion. Begin to raise the top we did raise the top competition for states to come in and had 36 states applied and could only fund about half of the first 18. One of the states we couldnt fund to expand prek was mississippi and the governor was a hard conservative and he and i agree maybe 10 of issues but he was broken hearted that we couldnt expand prek in mississippi, and i was, too. I remember the phone call like yesterday. The huge desire, demand was there from the public and from from republicans and democrats across the country, the fact we couldnt get congress to step up and do more. I am biased. If i had one additional tax dollar, i would put it into high quality prek because it is a game changer for kids. Dr. James heckman talked about a 71 ry for every dollar we miss we get back seven dollars and less teenage pregnancy, less incarceration, more people in the workforce for all scarce tax dollars, i dont know how often we get 7 back for a dollar we put in. That is the final thing i will say. The United States ranks 28th or 29th relative to other countries providing access to prek. We should be a shame we send so many 5yearold to kindergarten year to 18 months behind. We often dont catch those kids up. Those young people often become dropouts. Yes, we should debate it and put it out there. It is just getting them off to a good start in life. There is nothing democratic or republican about that. Sec. King we wanted to give access to prek for low and for all. Said iters of congress was too expensive. Members ofsame congress voted on trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the top 1 . This is a question of what we care about and what we are willing to invest in. We ought to invest in universal prek for threeyearolds and fouryearolds and we need a Huge Investment in zero to three. We need much better access to quality childcare, particularly for low income families and communities of color. That is all doable in the wealthiest country that has ever existed. Allison we have seen proposals to significantly ramp up the federal share of education money including title i. , is that the right way to go or do you worry about not enough money without additional accountability in the system . Sec. King we always do that. We are both very polite. I think there is an opportunity to blend or connect a significant new investment of dollars with smart policies around how we strengthen schools. We need both. The history is that states that have done both together or see the benefits. Think about massachusetts in 1993. They passed the education reform act and had a huge infusion of new dollars to the high needs communities along with raising learning, investing in teacherprofessional development. They also included significant Accountability Measures where the state was able to take action where schools were failing. Massachusetts went from the middle of the pack to the number one performing state. My hope would be that the next administration would put in very significant increase in dollars around title i and also pair that with intentional efforts to increase school integration, intentional efforts to make sure kids have access to diverse, quality teachers, efforts to make sure all kids have access to a wellrounded curriculum that includes art, music. We have to think about the more dollars in conjunction with the things we know will make a difference for kids. Sec. Duncan in education, we get into these either or debate. I always think it is both and. We need more people going to college and preparing for careers. It is always both and. You cannot be a pro teacher and not be pro teacher quality. Title i, you cant be pro more money for poor kids and not explicitly be saying you want more poor children to graduate from high school and go on to college. You have to pair these things. These values are not in conflict. They complement each other. Allison a number of candidates said they have wanted to use federal money to increase teacher salaries. A big proposal senator harris put out, for instance. At the same time states are , backing away from something you both championed, should the evaluation. Should the federal government be boosting teachers salaries . Should the feds be on the hook for Something Like that . Should different kinds of evaluations or more accountability play into that . You feel like the crisis has gotten so bad in some places that extra pay is needed no matter what . Sec. Duncan it has broken my heart that a number of states, North Carolina, arizona, where , lets be honest, you have had Republican Administration that starved Public Education. Teacher pay is not kept up with the rate of inflation or whatever. With a the teacher teacher in d. C. From North Carolina who was actually selling blood, plasma, to make ends meet. That is unconscionable. We absolutely need more money. Teachers should be paid a living wage. Teachers are the most altruistic people you will ever meet. They do not go into education become millionaires but they should not have to take a vow of poverty either. You need to sustain that. You cannot be pro teacher and not talk about quality and how important teachers are. Yesterday i met someone from tennessee and we saw a huge growth and improvement. They did a lot of Different Things in their mind the thing that drove their improvement the most was taking teacher evaluations seriously. We have to try and do both these things, pay teachers a living wage and evaluate. This is a little off topic but the one thing i have thought about would be maybe a little bit of a political compromise is its not how much you pay teachers but it is there ability to make more money earlier in their career and every teacher contract is very slow and you have to stay in the system for 34 years and millennials dont want that. I would like to see districts think about it being more like two tracks. One is the more traditional lane if you want that. And another highrisk, high reward where a young teacher can make 100,000 in their 30s. The union could negotiate both of those so that youre not diminishing any power but it is saying to teachers young, old, you have two different choices and you figure out what is best for you and your family in your current situation. It is a different way of thinking about it and would help us retain much more talent than we are today. Sec. King we absolutely should be paying teachers more in rate more and we should have a federal state partnership that uses federal dollars to push states to invest more. As we do that, two things we have to do is we have to diversify the teaching profession. A majority of our kids in the nations Public Schools are kids of color. Only 18 of teachers are teachers of color. Only 2 of teachers are africanamerican men. We know that matters for kids of color to have access to teachers of color. It is important for white kids to see teachers and leaders of color in their communities. A smart, comprehensive strategy would include diversifying the profession and making sure we get the strongest teachers to the kids with the greatest needs. You want to have incentives that attract people to work in high needs rural and urban communities and attract people to pursue fields of study where we have huge shortages. Secondary, stem, bilingual teachers, teachers for disabilities. You can imagine structuring a package that accomplished the goal of raising salaries and lifting all but also try to get at the equity challenges. Sec. Duncan if we think Great Teachers matter, and most of us do, so Great Schools are not there without great principles. We have lots of debates about that. We have 15,000 School Districts in our country. I dont know of a single district in america where they systematically find and identify the best principles and best teachers and place them with the kids in communities that need the most help. If we think that principals and teachers matter, it is a little stunning to me that not one district out of 15 has taken that step. Allison desegregation is an issue that has emerged in the democratic debates and i know both of you value diverse schools. We were talking about it right before we came in here. How much power did you feel like you had as secretary to influence that discussion beyond , obviously, drawing attention to it through the bully pulpit . What you think a new administration could do for that problem . Sec. King we both certainly tried to talk about the importance of it and persuade communities to Pay Attention and to be incensed about socioeconomical integration. We posed to congress 120 million to support local efforts to integrating schools. We heard from members of congress, too expensive. But all the money towards the tax cut for the top 1 . That was a missed opportunity. The bill is still out there. There have been some champions in that effort. That is an opportunity our next administration would have. There are ways to think about how you would link other federal funding streams to the goal of diversity, whether it is diversity in charters and thinking about that as an area of emphasis for the Charter School program or thinking about that as an emphasis for how people might use title i dollars, expanding the Magnet School program. There are a lot of levers that are available but they have not been used since the early to mid 1980s. There is also a need for real enforcement from the department of education and from the justice department. We know other districts are doing things that intentionally exacerbate segregation and we ought to take action where it violates civil rights law. Sec. Duncan john did a better job of talking about this than i did. There are federal incentives that could be put in place. Not all of this actually takes any money. Sometimes it is as simple as redrawing school boundaries, neighborhood boundaries around schools and it doesnt cost a penny. It is politically difficult and challenging. We live in a country where people often choose to self segregate and choose to live in places that have less diversity. Federal incentives help. But trying to get parents and students to understand the benefit, not for the black kids or latino kids, but for all kids in that environment and having a diverse teacher force for kids. There is more beyond money that gets to the challenges where we struggle with race and diversity that are hard to talk about but are coupled. Allison we have seen a lot, including originally from senator sanders, on free college for all students. Other candidates like former Vice President biden are pushing for something more conservative, Free Community college. It is something the Obama Administration championed also. What do you think the right strategy is for Higher Education . Should the federal government be on the hook to pay for all college for all kids, a portion of it, or just low income kids . Sec. Duncan before i did free college i would do free prek. I would prioritize that. Secondly, free college is not even a democratic idea. A state that has done this the best is tennessee. They have made Free Community college is a hallmark. It is in investment into human capital. I think the k to 12 model education is obsolete. We should move to a prek to 14 model. K to 12 drove the middleclass and a booming economy for the past 100 years. I would argue it is insufficient for the next 10, let alone the next 50. Our babies have to get off to a good start. Getting a good job with a High School Diploma is hard these days. Some form of education, some form of Higher Education, learning beyond high school has to be the goal. The thing that troubles me in this debate is there is no talk about results and outcomes at the Higher Education site and accountability. There are a whole bunch of colleges i would like to send students to but there are colleges i dont want anyone to go to for free. They are not learning anything. Those colleges are getting rich and leaving them in worse situations than they started. For me, thinking about Community College, not just for the young, but older and we have to talk about results. Are they being admitted or are they at walking out at the backend with skills . We tried and failed on this, all of the funding for Higher Education, 100 of it goes to inflict. It goes to enrollment. We dont do a penny of grants or loans for Higher Education for those that are increasing Graduation Rates for pell grants. Not even more money but changing how we Fund Education just a little bit of money around outcomes and we would see huge change and got zero of that done. Sec. King i agree completely on the urgency of the completion agenda. The reality is we have a National College dropout crisis. For every 10 white students that start a bachelors degree program, six will have graduated six years later. Of every 10 latino students who started a bachelor program, five will have graduated six years later. For every africanamerican start a bachelor program, four will have graduated six years later. We have Community Colleges with Graduation Rates in the teens. That is a problem we are to tackle so the folks dont just start but actually finish. That requires investment and policy change. The other observation i make a about free colleges that the devil is in the details. Looking across states, there are states that say they have free college but what they mean is that they put a tiny little bit of money for middle and upper income students to get subsidies for tuition and nothing for the low income students because the y are structured in a way that doesnt match the tuition structure of further investment and the kinds of support that low income students need. We have students in colleges today who are hungry, homeless. We should be talking about the total cost of college, not just tuition. Those details matter. There are states that have catches in their free college program. If you move to another state, then your Free College Tuition converts into a loan. Lots of fine print. That is a problem. I am glad we are having this conversation about the need to invest in public Higher Education. The reality is that in nine out of 10 states, they are spending less on Higher Education than they were in 2008. We should be talking about the investment and making College Accessible for everyone. But the details of the policy matter and we have to design them in a way that is focused on equity, and focused on low income students and students of color who are most vulnerable in our current Higher Education system. Sec. Duncan if you look at any state over the past 10 to 20 years, look at the percent of increase or decrease going into Higher Education or look at the increase or decrease for incarceration. I guarantee you every single state, the rate of increase from incarceration that you spend is going faster than Higher Education. We just accept that we dont vote on it here it is a given. We will lock someone up for 60,000 but we will debate forever about more teacher pay. I want to challenge us as voters across the political spectrum to think about that. The larger challenge i had is that so much of this, free college is a prime example free example. Free college is a strategy. We never talk about goals. For me, what is the goal . The goal is not free college. The goal would be to lead the world in college completion. A generation ago we led the world. If you want to keep the jobs in america, we have to lead the world. We are the first generation to flatline and 12 countries have passed us by. We never step back and say to what end . A moratorium on charters, to what end . What academic dividends come from no more charters . I would propose goals. I think we should try to lead the world in access to highquality prek. It is still hundreds of thousands of kids dropping out each year. I wish the Current Administration had a goal to getting it of 90 . You will never hear the Current Administration talking about better education outcomes. I would love to lead the world in college completion. If we started every conversation with here are the goals, then there be policy debate about how to achieve those goals but we never come up for air. We play small ball. We get caught in weeds and never talk about where we need to go to break property and to keep poverty andles of to keep good jobs in america. We need to elevate the conversation to a different level. Allison so we are not seeing a ton of talk in the campaign about some of the things the Obama Administration pushed hard on, especially in the first term. There are rigorous standards including common core, teacher evaluation, robust status systems and fixing low performing schools. You had ambitious plans for that. Do you think enough progress was made during your tenure that there is nowhere to go on issues and that is why people are not talking about them . Or are the candidates avoiding them because you faced serious political backlash for those issues. They can be tough to wrestle with. Why do you think we are not hearing about them . Sec. King a couple observations. Part of why we are not hearing about standards is that 40 plus states are still doing the college and career ready standards. The challenge, statebystate, is now at the level of do they have the right curriculum available to teachers and are they doing the right work on Teacher Professional Development . We have treated them as a local control issue. Issues. Some states are doing smart things. Louisiana has tied access to funding for curriculum to districts choosing curricula that are highly related that as rated by reports as well lined to their colleges and they will reap the benefits of that. There are districts that make investments in teacher training because Higher Standards in math require much more understanding of math concepts as well as how to teach them and they are investing in that. I think that is a good thing. That issue is underway. It could use more resources. On the data systems piece, i am optimistic that if there is a Higher Education act in this congress that it will include the College Transparency act and we will see better postsecondary data that can be connected to k12 data. That is a placer has been Good Progress and momentum. Place there has been Good Progress and momentum. On the low performing schools, and this goes to the point earlier about sometimes things are about money but political will and courage. I think there is a reluctance to talk about struggling schools in and what it would take to improve performance in troubling struggling schools. I hope we hear more about that. The reality is in state after state, you still see very large achievement gaps for low income students and students of color. Given that a majority that are students of color, and we dont have a future if we dont get better at educating lowincome students and students of color. I hope there will be more conversation about that. And more conversation about the federal role in leading on this. Because of things started early in the administration, we had National Attention on Graduation Rates and dropout factories. We cut the number of high school that would be described as dropout factories in half over the course of the administration. Thousands upon thousands more students graduated from high school. That is powerfully important and we need that conversation amongst the candidates. Sec. Duncan talking about goals and not strategies and why the strategy is important. Why its important to have high standards . We just talked about cost and too expensive. We never talk about the cost of remediation. We spend 7 billion to 9 billion each year to have College Students take college cushion to take high school classes, noncredit bearing classes. That is all of the tax money going into that every single year. That means that young people arent prepared to take collegelevel classes that are credit bearing. This stunned me. The average high school gpa for a College Student taking remedial classes guess what that is . In high school, it is 3. 2. These werent 1. 3 or 1. 7. They had a better than a b average in high school and the go to college and they dont have the skills necessary to take credit bearing classes in college. That is not the students fault. It is our fault as educators that we failed to prepare them. That is the need for high standards. So common core sounded like a good name. We didnt anticipate obamacare. We didnt anticipate the pushback as strong as it was for the first black president. We didnt anticipate the pushback from obama care to obama core. We should have called it the highly uncommon core. It was unique to every single state. At the end of the day, that is a branding issue. What we need is to make sure we are raising high school Graduation Rates. We need to make sure High School Graduates actually can go to college and take a collegelevel class. That is the simple goal we are trying to accomplish. Allison you both have spoken passionately about safety and i about gun safety and i know that is what you have been working on. You see that as an education issue . Do you think it will motivate young people and parents during this campaign . It has mostly motivated folks who really dont want to see gun control get out and vote. Do you see that starting to change . Sec. Duncan i will just take one second and say that i love i lead the chicago Public Schools for 7. 5 years before i came to d. C. Im happy to talk about things i am proud of in terms of improvements. I will say the place where i dont think i failed, where i know i failed is we, as leaders, we failed to keep our students alive. During my 7. 5 years, on average we had a student killed every two weeks due to gun violence. Never once in the school, but on the neighborhood, block, bus going home, in the living room. Shot by an ak47 from hundreds of yards away. I thought things couldnt get worse when my family and i moved to d. C. I thought chicago was rockbottom. But things got a lot worse. I have to say we are motivated by our successes and hunted by haunted by our failures. This is why is my lifes work is to try to remove fear and trauma and violence in chicago that is overwhelming for kids on the south and west sides. President obama dealt with the president deals with hardest issues on the planet. He said his hardest day in d. C. Was the day of the sandy hook massacre. He went down the next day and Vice President biden and i went down a couple days later. You never forget. I will say, and im not proud to say that when i was in chicago, i thought was that no one cared black and brown kids were black and brown kids were getting killed and it would take white kids getting killed for anything to change and then sandy hook happened. No one ever in their worst nightmares imagined 20 babies, five teachers and a principal being slaughtered. The fact that as a country we got nothing done in terms of Gun Legislation subsequent to that taught me a painful lesson that we dont care about brown kids and black kids, but we dont care about white kids and we dont care about life. We care more about guns. I have been deeply pessimistic on this. The parkland massacre changed some things. Those young people. We sent kids from chicago down and they spoke at the rally. We have failed on this issue. I think our young people are leading us to a very different place. After sandy hook, i was extraordinarily pessimistic. I am more optimistic now that i than i have ever been, not because any of us in this room but theg it 18yearolds and 20yearolds are leading us, as they did with the Civil Rights Movement and more protests. We need to get to a better place. In chicago, im in schools all the time on the south and west sides. 100 of people know someone who has been killed. And i have to say how many of you know that five to 15 have been killed . Half to one third of their hands are still up. I have never been to an actual war zone, but our kids in places like chicago are living in war zones and it is highly unacceptable. We are making progress and violence is going down but we have a lot of work to do. Sec. King i am so grateful for the work arne is doing. Part of the work you are doing points of that we have to have a strategy that is about having fewer guns and having fewer guns that can inflict mass casualties. That is about changing laws and we have this moment where young people are raising their voices to try to change the laws and we have violence taking place that is about intersecting issues in communities. Lack of access to Economic Opportunity. Lack of access to substance addiction treatment. History of racism. Policies of mass incarceration. All of that intersects into this toxic mix that results in communities that are awash in violence. We have to do work on that so that the education dimension to this issue is both about changing gun policy but also about changing our social policy and changing how we think about communities. Sec. Duncan for this audience, it is important. School shootings are horrific but 98 of people kids killed are not killed in school. This is not a School Safety issue. This is a societal issue and the vast majority of People Killed are killed at the park, mall, movie theater, walking down the street. It is related to schools but to echo the point, i am working with men who are most likely to shoot and be shot. They have lived with trauma all of their life. Many have been shot multiple times. One guy has been shot 23 times. Many have done their fair share of shooting. We dont have one bad man we are working with. We are giving them an opportunity to move out of the street life and move out of the illegal economy and give Economic Opportunity and have life coaches and trauma care. We have lots of guys get there get their High School Diplomas and a bunch going to college. I want this audience to understand that in these situations, the men caught in this life are the solution, they are not the problem. We have to walk with them and learn with them. But they are going to lead chicago and baltimore to better places, not me or john. Allison i have a few more questions. We will move through them quickly. The Trump Administration has talked about vocational education. Secretary duncan, he pointed out they havent really provided new funding in this area. Do you think Fouryear College is a must for all students, and what would you want to see this administration or another administration do to strengthen job training . Sec. Duncan the Trump Administration does not want an educated citizenry. That is not in their interest. Are an authoritarian leader, you want to be the source of truth. When you say the media is the enemy of the people, you dont want people to be able to think for themselves. All the things we talk about, how to think critically, way how to weigh arguments, the Current Administration has zero interest in doing that. They are not going to do anything. The less educated we are, the more we will follow an authoritarian leader. I just want to be honest and upfront about that. We can debate the intricacies all day but this is a fight, can we preserve our democracy and can we remove a criminal enterprise from the white house . This is much bigger than any education policy. Does everybody have to go to a fouryear university . Of course not. I think everybody has to graduate high school. I dont know any jobs for a high school dropout. I do think everybody has to have some of education and high some form of education beyond high school. Whether it is for your fouryear, community, or training. Other countries track kids at 13 to 14. I reject that 100 . Just want to give kids free great options and let them figure out what is their passion what they want to do. The final point is none of us , will ever be done learning. The day any of us stop learning is the day we become obsolete. How we teach young people to be lifelong learners and all keep improving our skills has to be the mentality. Sec. King we ought to be willing to invest in that because our future depends on it. We need more young people who leave high school with a plan and with a path to Economic Opportunity. I think about the partnerships and kids graduating with a High School Diploma or an Associates Degree that are first in line for a job at ibm. We made an effort to replicate that across new york state, we more demand for employers and University Partners then we could meet. We had folks in the health care industry, advanced manufacturing, i. T. , were eager to partner with schools so that young people would leave ready for what is next. I was just in somerset county, maryland visiting a tech center that was newly built. I was struck by how motivated the kids are in the kids in the Biomedical Program how excited they were about what they were learning. There is huge potential in smart career and Tech Education but we have to acknowledge the risk that in some places, career and tech is used as a way to track them to less opportunity for jobs that used to exist 20 years ago and dont anymore. We need to invest intact we need to also invest in the goal and it should be for postsecondary success and a successful career. Allison neither one of you has endorsed candidate in the demo cratic primary. Do you want to make some news today . Tell us who you are supporting or who you are intriguing. Or who you find intriguing. Sec. Duncan are you ready . [laughter] sec. King what want to say is in 2016, there was very little discussion about education. And i have been heartened that there have been more candidates talking more about schools and education so far. That is a good sign about our direction as a country. Sec. Duncan we are not going to make huge news. Sorry. Two things. I will repeat what ive said. This election will not and should not turn on any one education policy. This is the most consequential election of our lifetimes. I hope we are never in this position again as a country. I am not scared by what i am i am not a scared guy, but i am scared our country and for our democracy. This is not a time to support any given candidate on some agreement or disagreement on an education policy. We are fighting for our country. Some things that i took for granted has been rocked to the foundation. That is what is at stake. It is not left, right, republican, democrat. It is democracy versus not a democracy anymore. It is that real. Having said that, in a normal election, i just wish education should be the ultimate bipartisan or nonpartisan issue. It is a nationbuilding goal. I desperately wish we had more people go to the voting booth voting around education. The fact is, almost none of us do. In the 2018 midterms, i saw 6 vote based upon education. I have never met a candidate that was antieducation. I never met a candidate that did not like photo ops with kids. But i know very few candidates who say i want reelected because im going to raise high school Graduation Rates. I want to be reelected because i am going to close achievement gaps and fight former prek. I dont blame any of the politicians but i blame us as voters. If we voted based upon these issues, we would have more candidates across the political spectrum who would be in office based on their ability to increase achievement and close those gaps and have prepared for work. So thats my hope going forward. Allison thank you. Im sure you all have great questions. Tell us your name and the organization you work with for context. Thank you. Leon. Im working with an organization but im a counselor in montgomery county. My concern is that not every student comes into the classroom to learn. What suggestions and proposals would you have, in terms of going forward, as to how to assist the School System and the teacher and parent your those and prepare those students do into thatnot fall everyday category . An aside is secretary devos has legislation that is apparently being looked at in congress right now that is geared towards Charter Schools . Could that be tweaked to possibly give some support to those students . Sec. Duncan a couple thoughts. One is that i think the agenda, the voucher agenda of the administration is not intended to address equity goals. I do think there much more we itso connect school intended to undermine Public Schools. Unfortunately, i dont think there is a lot of room for conversation around that proposal. I do think there is much more we could be doing to connect schools with other support to support address kids needs. One thing we did was in the Obama Administration is we had an initiative and the idea was consistent with trying to match schools with other supports around Mental Health services, around parent education, starting with new parents, new babies, and helping them support their kids academic and social and emotional development. Matching schools with programs after school and in the summer, access to health care, access to dental care, access to vision care. We should remove barriers that get in the way of kids success. Too often, people say well, theres nothing we can do in school because kids are poor and have challenges outside of school. That cant possibly be true. Schools save lives every day. I always tell folks both of my parents passed away when i was a kid school saved my life. School saved lives and we should invest. When some say school is all that matters and that cant possibly right either because if kids are home and hungry and dont see glasses to see the board, that will hurt their education. We have to say, how do we connect supports in the community with schools and how do we invest in those things . If we invest in School Counselors and Mental Health services, we will more than save the cost later when those kids are successful instead of ending up in prison or addicted to substances or reliant on social services. So, if we were smart about our investment, we would divide provide those supports to our kids. Sec. Duncan ill tell you one quick story that, after the freddie gray riot, there was a school in baltimore that was beating all the odds and results were way better than the more affluent communities. I said i want to go see this. We went a couple weeks after. It was liberty elementary. And they were crushing it. Getting outside results. Why, how,ted to hear what were you doing. Amazing teachers, obviously the extra neri principal, the extraordinary principle, but that school had turned itself into a food bank and that school was i think it was 16 tons of food a month. I cannot draw a direct line from 16 tons of food to a better result, but i know theres a direct line there. Thats not in any principals job description, but he identified a real challenge in his community. My mother always says its hard to learn when your stomachs growling. If you meet kids and families where they need food, glasses, classes, trauma support, then we can talk about the high standards. Thats the ticket and the foundation of the physical and emotional and Mental Health wellbeing of our kids. Schools have to do that, they have to do it with the community, not in isolation. As john said, these things are not in conflict. Thats the kind of leadership our kids and communities need. And our communities deserve. Allison did you have one right here . Why dont we take a few at a time . Did you have one to . And then one in the back. Im with the National Association of programs. It was mentioned investing in Higher Education is not a partisan issue in the states. First free dollar education and the governor in texas provided needbased to dreamers. And then there were outpaced performance. So then my question to the secretaries would be, what would you see as what should be the federal state partnership and how do you go about accountability . Allison and then theres one in the back and you can decide which ones to respond to. Hi, my name is lisa. Im an Internet Center for American Progress and a former seat this teacher. I was actually part of a Charter School and were a part of some of the strikes last year. I actually wanted to hear if there are any particular initiatives coming out to address specifically the special Education Teacher shortage in and the funding shortages w ere experiencing in the classrooms. Thank you. Im from teachers colleges. I have a question regarding the College Enrollment rate has dropped continuously for eight years in the United States. Can you just make some comments regarding that . Allison can you make comments on that . Sec. King Higher Education, a great opportunity in the reauthorization conversation to increase investment. Id love to see doubling or tripling of pell grants and a massive investment into helping low income students to not to start but finish. I would love to see investment in evidencebased support. Theres a program at City University of new york which has been shown to double completion rates in Community College through wraparound supports, better advising. That program is being replicated in ohio. And looks like the results will be similarly positive. We all invest in those types of programs paragraph to have an accountability system that looks at are our students able tog, and are they pay off any debt they may have and are they able to get good jobs . We worked very hard on this in the administration and the Current Administration has rolled back a lot of the work we tried to do on forprofit colleges that were fleecing students and taxpayers. We ought to have an accountability that shuts down the bad actors. We ought to have an accountability system for schools that serves the highest needs students but focuses everyone on outcomes. The last point id make about the Higher Education act, i would love to see a significant investment in hbcu and msis. Theres just no question that hbcu and msis give access for are driving access to the middle class for low income students and students of color all over the country and have a long tradition of doing that. I was just at the university of maryland Eastern Shore last week and my grandmother graduated from there in 1894. So thats many generations of folks all across america whose lives have been changed by those institutions and yet we are under investing in them as a country. So theres lots of opportunities around the Higher Education act. As the population of students who are High School Graduates , you know the population of 18yearolds goes down, weve got to think about differently what college means and who they are and do more to support College Students who are parents. Today, a quarter of College Students are parents and yet its very rare to have good childcare programs on campus. We need a lot more of those. We need to have more adults in college and have more support with things with transportation, housing, and food. So, as we change how we think about who College Students are, we can help the students we have and also attract other folks back in. One of the great things about the tennessee effort is that theyve expanded their College PromiseProgram Beyond just immediate High School Graduates to something called tennessee reconnect to help working adults come back to school to finish. We should see a lot more states doing things like that. Sec. Duncan so, two things on teacher hiring shortages and that not everyone is going to agree with, but i want to restate what we both talked about of having some incentives. Having Great Teachers and great principles go to underserved communities. The fact that we have been unwilling to step into that space. Charlie did a little bit a while back. And would move a teacher five principals to a school. I remember talking to a principal at a highperforming school who went to a struggling school. I asked why he would do this and he said it was a privilege of a lifetime to have this opportunity. Thats the mentality we have to have in education is thats its a privilege of a lifetime to go work on a native reservation or in the low income areas. Whether its special ed, math and science, where we have areas of critical need, a piece of attracting teachers should be additional compensation. Those are the two fundamental changes i would make is to identify excellence, reward excellence, and encourage that to work with kids in the communities who need the most help. And then when we have areas of and science, math pe sometimes, we should compensate based upon that and our lack of creativity from the School District side is pretty stunning. And part of the problem that feeds this engine, or the engine that feeds this problem is that you dont hear any schools of education steering kids in one direction or another. There may be lots of jobs are part lots of jobs for them or very few jobs and theyre not helping to push this in the right direction. Morally, thats bankrupt. Allison i want to think both of these gentlemen for their time and sharing their time with us. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] a new cspan shows just over half americans the 2020 president ial election will be open and fair. Theres a significant partisan gap on the question. 72 of republicans are confident. Only 39 of democrats share that belief. 58 think foreign governments are among the threats to the oftem while only 41 republicans a chair on the concern, more than three quarters of democrats and half of independents leave foreign governments may interfere with u. S. Elections. 31 believe the federal government has done enough to protect elections from foreign interference. A great deal or fair amount in confidence. And justof democrats over a quarter of independents agree. You can find all of the results, including whether americans think residential candidates should be required to release their tax returns and whether citizens should be required to show government id to vote at cspan. Org. Trumpurday, president delivers remarks at the 14th annual value voters summit in washington, d. C. Live at 6 15 p. M. Eastern on cspan, online at cspan. Org, or listen free on the cspan radio app. This columbus day weekend on American History tv, saturday at 10 00 p. M. Eastern on railamerica, the film, the whole world is watching, about the antivietnam war demonstration in washington, which resulted in the largest mass arrest in u. S. History. A thousand swarmed onto washington circle. Over a thousand more hit georgetown. Eastern, at 2 00 p. M. Artist harvey pratt shares his vision for the Upcoming National native American Veterans memorial on the national mall. In the middle is a 12 foot stainless steel circle. And at the base of that is a fire. To so you can use that fire light your sweetgrass and sage and things that you use. And you can touch the water and use the fire. We call that the drum. And monday, columbus day at noon. Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg and centre mayor discuss the judicial impact of the first woman on the u. S. Supreme court, sandra day oconnor. If you read between the lines, what she saying what shes saying, if you want to improve the status of women in the nursing profession, the best thing to do is to get men to want to do the job because the pay inevitably will go up. [laughter] past onre our nations American History tv every weekend on cspan3. A threejudge panel from the d. C. Circuit court of appeal has ruled that President Trump and his Accounting Firm must comply with congressional subpoena for the president s financial records. House oversight and Reform Committee chair, representative Elijah Cummings of maryland, issued the subpoena back in april, 2019. The panel of judges hearing this case were david table, patricia valletta, and naomi rall. Here is that oral argument. This is an hour and five minutes. Is she with us . [inaudible]