The New America Foundation beat me to the punch with its "20 Questions for the Secretary-Designate." They are pretty good, if somewhat leading. Example: "Would you say that universal pre-k education is (a) the best idea to come along in 100 years; (b) the key to America's future prosperity; (c) such an obvious solution that we shouldn't even be having this debate; or (d) warm and fuzzy like a new puppy?"
So I'm going to be both more modest and more ambitious. More modest by only offering one (timely!) question, and more ambitious by just coming out with the answer, too. Here goes:
Question #1: Mr. Duncan, by all accounts it appears that the Congress is about to spend upwards of $750 billion of taxpayer money to stimulate the economy. $200 billion of this will likely go to bail out the states, and, since one-third to one-half of state budgets go to the schools, $75-$100 billion of that will end up in k-12 education coffers. As Secretary of Education, are you going to have any involvement in that part of the bailout? If so, will you attach any strings to that enormous infusion of cash?
Wrong Answer #1a: Are you kidding me, I'm going to stay as far away from this stimulus package as I possibly can!
Wrong Answer #1b: Did you say $100 billion?
Wrong Answer #1c: Any education belt-tightening would be a national tragedy. We must do everything we can to keep our schools from losing a penny, as all 100,000 are incredibly efficient organizations, and it's the efforts of our public sector employees that make private sector growth possible in the first place.
Right Answer: Yes, I've been actively involved with crafting this part of the stimulus plan, as we understand that the state bailouts will represent the largest transfer of funds from the federal government to local schools in history, and we want to get it right. We certainly don't want to create even more "moral hazard" by encouraging profligate spending and irresponsible behavior in the future. Look, our schools have seen a huge increase in their budgets in recent decades. We're basically spending twice, in inflation-adjusted dollars, what we were spending when our nation was declared "at risk" 25 years ago. And it's hard to argue that our citizens are getting twice as good a product as a result. That money has largely gone into teacher union contracts, both for more teachers (and smaller class sizes), for higher pay, and especially for generous retirement benefits that we can no longer afford. Encouraging teachers to retire at age 57 made sense a generation ago, when people lived into their 60s, but we can't afford it anymore. But that doesn't mean we should force people to work in the classroom forever. We need a complete overhaul of the way we pay people in this profession, encouraging higher salaries for new teachers, much more differentiation in pay (particularly related to performance), and a fair pension system we can afford. If states want this stimulus money, they are going to have to demonstrate that they are serious about moving on all of these fronts, lest we end up in this position again a few years down the road.
Likely Answer: We are not yet prepared to discuss the details of the stimulus package...
