Chicago's Public School CEO - Arne Duncan

You spoke recently at the annual conference of The Coalition for Community Schools in Chicago and made a very powerful statement in support of community schools. Your endorsement of jointuse, community schools is not the norm for school superintendents. What motivated you to adopt this facilities agenda?

Creating community schools and extending learning time is one of our three core strategies to try and transform the Chicago public schools. We are making a huge investment in this area, and I fundamentally believe as many schools as possible, and ideally all schools, will be open much longer hours and will become the community anchors that welcome not just our children but older brothers and sisters as well as family members. I am absolutely convinced that families that work together and learn together and see the schools as the focus of their community life are going to do better.

I think I mentioned at the Coalition For Community Schools conference that it is fascinating to see that the Chicago public school district probably had our best year in decades academically last year, with 74 percent of schools at both the high school and elementary school levels showing test score improvements and all time highs. Actually 80-81 percent of our community schools showed improvement.

We are actually starting to have quantifiable data demonstrating the academic benefits, let alone the social and the emotional, of the community schools initiative.

Former Clinton Secretary of Education Richard Riley often said the our schools should be the joint and shared-use centers of their communities. But many school superintendents, challenged by school construction and modernization issues, focus their tenure on simply building "seats". They assert that's all they can effectively focus on. How are you, from your perch as CEO of the school system, able to build community-centered schools in Chicago?

We too have huge budgetary constraints. Unfortunately, Illinois ranks 49th in terms of funding. We are actually in the bottom quartile in terms of the state's share of education funding, so we have had to make some very tough choices and frankly cut spending in many areas. Chicago has had to eliminate about $250 million in spending over the last two years. Having said that, obviously in my position you have to invest in a couple of core strategies. So, while we are cutting in many other areas, this is one of three areas in which we are making heavy investments and really trying to leverage resources, and trying to do a much better job during the school day. I simply feel that 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., five days a week, nine months out of the year -- simply doesn't cut it. Our students today need much, much more than that, and we have to think about schools being open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, 11 months out of the year. If we are truly trying to make a difference in students' lives, if we are trying to make sure that our students graduate and go to college, this is an integral part of what we are going to do and we are going to invest in it ourselves. Because of this effort and because of the partnerships that have developed here, across the state and nationally, this is probably the best money I've spent in terms of leverage. For every dollar I spend we are getting $5, $6 or $7 coming in from local non profits, and the foundation community, from the state, and from the federal 21st Century Learning Center Program. This has been an investment with extraordinary leverage from other funding sources.

Of course those NGOs are leveraging school facility dollars as well. Give us some examples of how one smartly leverages school facility investments.

We simply say that the schools being open only 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. is not acceptable. Our students definitely need more. Those hours of 3 p.m.- 7 p.m. are hours of great anxiety for parents. They are times of high crime for students and risky and self-destructive behavior. The incremental cost of keeping those buildings open is very small relative to the tremendous benefits, academic and social, of keeping them open longer hours. In every one of our city schools I've mandated that we cannot do this alone; we have to bring in a nonprofit partner to leverage their resources and leverage their expertise, bring their staff and ideas into the building. While there are some incremental costs for us, there are tremendous dividends and tremendous benefits from bringing in these local non-profits and social service agencies that worked in the communities for years and, quite frankly, historically were kept out of schools; they weren't welcomed in. We're trying to dramatically change that culture of exclusion.

Can you give us some actual examples of Chicago's joint use school facilities?

Sure, we have a couple of fascinating examples. I'll start with one that people know nationally, the Boys and Girls Clubs. The Boys and Girls Clubs have actually closed three of their sites. They've gotten out of the real estate business, stopped paying rent and all of those overhead costs, and are simply running programs out of our schools. So, we run the schools from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. and they run the school from 3 p.m.-9 p.m. It has dramatically cut their overhead and their funders love it because all of their money is now going to kids through tutoring, and mentoring, and academic programs. This is the type of facilities planning that we want to continue to do much more of in the district.

Superintendent, in California voters approved an initiative to fund 0-5 programs for children and families. LA's First 5 Commision recently committed to universal education for all 4-year-olds and hopes to find programmatic linkages to K-12 schools. Has Chicago's School District embraced Pre-K?

We've invested heavily in it. We don't have a statewide initiative like that. However, we've invested extraordinarily heavily in early childhood education and we serve about 30,000 students through our Pre-K program. We are trying to do the Pre-K program as much as we can as a full day, year round program. We do not have universal access here and we would have to dramatically increase resources to do an additional 5,000 kids over the next two years. We would love to move to a universal access situation, not just for 4-year-olds, but for 3-year-olds as well.

Los Angeles is in the midst of a Mayoral run-off election, and two of the issues being debated by the candidates are: 1) whether to break up LA's 700 sq. mile, 26 city unified school district, and 2) whether L.A.'s Mayor should take control of school governance. Chicago's Mayor does have authority over the schools. What are the pluses and minuses of mayoral involvement in school politics? How does it work?

For me this is a hugely important issue. When the mayor took over in 1995, it was really the turning point of the Chicago public schools. You may remember former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett came out in '87 and called us the worst school system in America. He probably wasn't far off the mark when he said that. The improvements have been just dramatic, just remarkable. We have cut in half the number of students in the bottom quartile, and we have doubled the number of students in the top quartile. Our 8th graders are beating national averages for the first time ever in both reading and math. Graduation rates are at an all time high, and attendance rates are at an all time high. None of that would have happened without the mayoral takeover. We've invested $4 billion in our capital program creating 40,000 more seats, many new schools, additions, annexes, and upgrades.

We have an appointed board rather than an elected board, which you don't have in L.A. We have one team, one team that is working on behalf of all children, one team that is willing to make the tough decisions and tough choices, and I would strongly advocate that in L.A. the people give the mayor control of the schools. I think that it is frankly the only way that you are going to be successful in urban areas. Many other cities have followed Chicago's example. The mayor in Baltimore is actually going to take over there. I think it is absolutely the right thing to do.

With community schools a Chicago City and School District priority, schools are being built adjacent to parks, linking those two public services together. Can you elaborate on the value of joint use from the school district's perspective?

For public education to really reach its potential, you have to rally the entire city behind the effort. You have to have the parks, the police, the private sector, the philanthropic community, the not-for-profit, social service agencies, and religious leaders backing you. Again, rallying the whole city, you can do some things differently. We share space with parks and use parks after school and actually during the school day. I think the problem is that public education has been an island. Our mayor is adamant that the best gift he can give to the city is well-educated children. There is nothing more important, and the entire city has gotten that message, and, again, that transformation started the day he took over.

A number of urban schools districts, with support from the Gates Fdn, have adopted a small schools facilities agenda. Elaborate on Chicago's approach to creating small schools?

That's hugely important to me. I went to a small school all of my life and that was a formative experience. I think large American high schools are fundamentally broken. I think it is an obsolete model. I think that is far too easy for students to fall through the cracks. We are trying to reinvent the American high school for the 21st century here and we think you really have to have smaller learning communities. We think you have to have groups of 400 to 500 students working together with small teams of teachers who know those students personally. We need much more personalized instruction. We want to have a range of different types of schools so the students and parents have great choices. The students in large schools feel like they are anonymous. They feel no one cares about them; even an adult with the best of intentions has a hard time reaching students in a centralized environment. We think that model is quite frankly a failed model. We are doing everything we can to move in the opposite direction. We are even putting 3, 4, or 5 schools in the same building and breaking it up by floor or by wing in order to create a much more personalized environment with real discipline and structure that teenagers today really need.

Chicago has uniquely linked the small schools movement with the community schools movement. Why and with what results?

This is my vision for what a school should be. The two, in my mind, have to be linked. I think schools have to be smaller. These are commonsense approaches, but they are really essential in shaping our overall strategy for change. I think that schools have to be smaller and they have to service students beyond the normal 5 or 6 hours a day that they've done for the past 60 years.

Your formal training is not in education. How much credibility do you have when talking to teachers unions and administrators who might be resistant to your education reform agenda?

It is funny. The reason I was late talking to you today is that I just had a real good conversation with the head of the union. I think that people really want what is best for children and we are going to make some hard decisions and we are going to do some things. We are going to close schools that are failing academically, and that is very controversial. That is something that the union might not ever support, and I appreciate that, and I understand that, but at the same time it is my job to make those tough decisions and to create better options for students. What the public doesn't see is that on 90 percent of the issues -- more master teachers, more nationally board certified teachers, better career paths – we have common agendas. The controversial issues get all the press. But we are actually laying out our lobbying strategy to increase funding together with the Chicago Teachers Union. Big picture, we have much more in common than not, and I think by working together we really do have the opportunity to make Chicago the best big city school system in America.

New Schools/Better Neighborhoods recently publish a monograph with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, which asserts that true educational equity requires more than better funding formulas, it requires healthy neighborhoods and involved families. Fifty years after Brown vs. Board of Education, do you share NSBN's conclusions?

That is absolutely right and I have said repeatedly that we are desperately under-funded. It is not just money and it cannot just be the Chicago public schools. It has to be a city wide effort with everybody engaged. To me, part of the reason why public education has largely failed in areas over the past 40 or 50 years is that it became isolated; it became an island without the investment, without the commitment, and without the engagement from the broader community. The more we open our schools up and the more we get people to invest and to see the extraordinary potential of our students, the more we unite to improve schooling.