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I think it's my job to tell the truth.

Arne Duncan

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Arne Duncan
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: November 6
Basketball Player
Politician
Sociologist
Teacher
United States Secretary Of Education
Chicago
Illinois
Arne Starkey Duncan
Thinking
Tell
Truth
Think

More quotes by Arne Duncan

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It's fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from sort of white suburban moms who, all of a sudden, their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, their schools aren't quite as good as they thought they were. And that's pretty scary.
Arne Duncan
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Hungry children are distracted children. We want to make sure nothing gets in the way of our children performing well academically, including hunger.
Arne Duncan
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We need to lengthen the school day. We need to lengthen the school year. Our calendar is based upon the agrarian economy. Children in India and China are going to school 25, 30, 35 more days a year. They're just working harder than us. So, we need more time, particularly for disadvantaged children, who aren't getting those supports at home.
Arne Duncan
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State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue, legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges, in turn, answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes.
Arne Duncan
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When I ask teachers why they teach, they almost always say that it is because they want to make a difference in the lives of children.
Arne Duncan
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No one is mandating merit pay.
Arne Duncan
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To be clear, we the Department of Education want curriculum to be driven by the local level. We are by law prohibited from directing curriculum. We don't have a curriculum department.
Arne Duncan
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I just think we can't do enough of this [student exchanges]... And when you get young children traveling internationally, I think they come back different people. And you can't put a price tag - you can't put a value on that.
Arne Duncan
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To encourage more top-caliber students to choose teaching, teachers should be paid a lot more, with starting salaries more in the range of $60,000 and potential earnings of as much as $150,000.
Arne Duncan
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Money is not the reason that people enter teaching.
Arne Duncan
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My vision is that schools need to be community centers. Schools need to be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day six, seven days a week, 12 months out of the year, with a whole host of activities, particularly in disadvantaged communities.
Arne Duncan
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The jobs of the future, as you know so well, are knowledge-based. You need college-educated folks to do this work. And so the consequences for our country are absolutely devastating if we don't start to behave in very different ways.
Arne Duncan
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Whether you look at these recent PISA results, which we are mediocre at best, whether you look at a 25 percent dropout rate in this country, whether you look at, in one generation, we're not doing what we need to be doing to keep America great.
Arne Duncan
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Wherever you find something extraordinary, you’ll find the fingerprints of a great teacher.
Arne Duncan
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We've seen more reform in the last year than we've seen in decades, and we haven't spent a dime yet. It's staggering how the Recovery Act is driving change.
Arne Duncan
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We need to invest in very different ways. Get the students the support they need, get them the best principals, get them the great teachers, and I promise you those students would do extraordinarily well. I have seen it all my life.
Arne Duncan
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The arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds students will go on to graduate from college.
Arne Duncan
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Even in a time of fiscal austerity, education is more than just an expense.
Arne Duncan
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Far too many of our children today, our students, need remedial education. We have been lying to them. They're not really ready for college. That's not higher education's fault. That's our fault K-12.
Arne Duncan
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The cost of college should never discourage anyone from going after a valuable degree.
Arne Duncan