ASU+GSV 2026 Summit | | Unknown
Speakers
- Margaret Spellings, former US Sec of Ed
- Arne Duncan, Emerson Collective
- Ben Wallerstein, Whiteboard Advisors
Key Takeaways
- Secretaries of Education Margaret Spellings (Bush administration) and Arne Duncan (Obama administration), moderated by Ben Wallerstein (Whiteboard Advisors), demonstrated bipartisan alignment on education as a civil rights issue while reflecting on the erosion of cross-party collaboration since the No Child Left Behind era (which passed 87-10 in the Senate).
- Duncan, who now runs Chicago CRED focused on gun violence reduction, made a striking argument for Education Choice Accounts based on his visceral experience with ICE raids in Chicago, framing it as refusing to "fund my oppressor" versus funding local children.
- Both secretaries lamented that the U.S.
- currently has zero national education goals, no strategies, no metrics, and no public transparency -- a dangerous vacuum.
- They agreed on "nation-building goals" including early childhood access, third-grade reading, high school graduation rates, and college completion, with Spellings adding that higher education has been "so dumbed down, grade inflated" that the diploma proxy has lost public confidence.
- Duncan issued a pointed warning on "alternative pathways" in education, noting they are "almost always for other kids -- that's for Black and brown kids, that's for poor kids."
Notable Quotes
"Right now as a country, we have zero education goals. Nothing. I ask any of you, what's our goal for education for the country? Nobody here could give me an answer."
ā Arne Duncan
"If we're going to spend a bunch of federal money, we ought to get something for it. We tried to put the money out and hope for the best for a long, long time, and we didn't have very much to show for it."
ā Margaret Spellings
"Where I worry on the pathways, alternative pathways, that's almost always for other kids. That's for Black and brown kids. That's for poor kids."
ā Arne Duncan
"I don't wanna fund my oppressor. That's insane. I wanna fund kids who are too far behind."
ā Arne Duncan
"There's really a lot more in common than there is that divides us, especially around education."
ā Margaret Spellings
Full Transcript
Welcome, everyone, it's great to be here, it's an honor to be here, and I'm sure a head scratcher for my parents and my sister that I'm up here with two former U.S. Secretaries of Education as the sole member of my family, that's not a teacher, but super grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation, and as always, extraordinarily appreciative of Debra and Michael for putting so much effort into creating a really inclusive environment here and bringing so many different voices and perspectives to the table for so many years. Just to start off, if you all can maybe just tell us what you're doing now, what's the life of a former U.S. Secretary of Education, what are you passionate about and what are you choosing to spend your time on these days, and maybe we'll start off with Secretary Spellings.
I am the leader of the Bipartisan Policy Center, and as you can see, my bipartisanship is breaking out everywhere, my work is nearly done, so I'll soon be returning to Texas. But our middle name is policy, and our first name is bipartisan, and I believe, and why I stay on the field every day like you, is that, you know, there's really a lot more in common than there is that divides us, especially around education. You wouldn't know it by some of the things that are coming out of Washington, but people care about kids, they want their children to succeed, they want them to have the skills to access the economy, they want them to be able to read and participate in our society, and so that's why I'm here and passionate, and, you know, Arne and I are, we can get along, can't we be friends? We are friends, I mean, game over, but anyway, I think it's important for those of us who have done this work and seen some fruit in the labor to stay committed to it and keep on, because we know what to do and we can do it.
My day job, I run a small nonprofit called Chicago CRED, it's laser focused on reducing gun violence in my hometown of Chicago, it's the hardest work I've ever done, the most heartbreaking, honestly, but also the most inspiring, hopefully the most meaningful part of my job, and I'm passionate about the work I do, and I'm passionate about helping people over time, we just had our safest year in 60 years, which is great, day to day is very tough, one of our young guys was shot in the back Friday afternoon, got out, working with him Saturday to help stop the retaliation, he was amazing how he handled that, so that's 90% of what I'm doing. 10%, I'm deeply worried about our democracy, and what, so I'm trying to do what I can to help people, and I think it's so important for us to do things together, she's probably getting sick of me, I got here at 5 o'clock yesterday, this is our third event together, in like 12 hours, but we're friends, I think deep respect goes back a long way, and just talking backstage to you, that your young people don't know what that looks like, they've never lived in a place like this, they've never seen a place like this, and I think it's so important for us to do things together, and I think it's so important that we do this together, and I don't know what the other people, the people that are here today, that have never lived in a world where people from different parties can actually work together towards a mutual goal, and I think education should be the ultimate bipartisan, nonpartisan issue, so 90% focus on getting less folks shot at home, 10% trying to work on democracy, and whatever we can do individually, collectively, to help provide some leadership on the education front, I'm all in for that. I remember, fondly, you coming in, working in the White House before you were U.S. Secretary of Education, you had, like, you know, George Miller and Senator Kennedy, and President Bush, and, you know, and Judd Gregg, everybody's like... John Boehner.
John Boehner, and, you know, Lamar, I mean, I guess he wouldn't marry, but, like, high-fiving one another, you know, over the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Eighty-seven to ten in the Senate. Eighty-seven, ten in the Senate. You look at, like, you know, you see these clips of, like, President Bush congratulating Speaker Pelosi, you know, in the state of...
And this is, like, you know, a fiction, I think, to folks in their... You know, who graduated from college in 2020, 2019. So, maybe just to sort of, like, you know, translate that fiction into reality, maybe just talk for a minute about some areas where you two have alignment. And I know you've been spending a lot of time together over the last couple days.
Well, we have more alignment than not. We believe that every kid in this country can and should have the opportunity to be successful, that that's going to take a commitment to basic skills like reading and math and the tools that we know are table stakes, whatever AI brings us or doesn't. We know that accountability and transparency is critically important. We know that the right calibration between a federal role and the state compact, we are...
We, you know, grew up in states, cities and states, and we know that's where the action is. And we believe that resources can be deployed around big goals effectively when we get that compact right, that calibration right between states, federal authorities and local governments, if we have a belief that everybody can get there. We can get into a debate on nuances on policy, but just sort of big picture, we both think education is a civil rights issue, that we have a history in our nation where opportunities fundamentally unequal, and the only chance to build a successful life, the only chance to have upward economic mobility and support a family and own a home is to have a great educational opportunity. And that's not the norm historically, and it's not the norm today.
And so I made more than my share of mistakes. She probably didn't make as many as I did. But I think that was sort of the North Star for us, is how do we create opportunity for kids in communities that are underserved? And, you know, suppose you can't talk about equity now or whatever, this is a fight for equity.
Unapologetically a fight for equity. And we are growing more unequal. And just the loss of talent, the loss of entrepreneurs, the loss of job creators in our country, I just think we can't afford to leave that talent on the sidelines. So we can talk about all the, you know, how to get to those goals, but I think that's been the driving force for both of us, is how do we get better, faster as a country?
How do we give more kids a chance to be in rooms like this? I say that, you know, the ticket to entry here is, I think, probably 100% of you have a college degree. To get into rooms like this, you have to have a college diploma. Most of America doesn't have that.
So most of America is locked out of rooms like this. Something's wrong with that. That's what's dividing our country now. That's what we fought and are trying to continue to fight, to have more people have the chance to be in rooms like this.
Let's come back to college in a second, but you're talking a little bit about state role. I mean, the No Child Left Behind Act, arguably, like the high watermark of sort of a muscular or more prescriptive federal role in education, K-12 education, was really like a reflection or manifestation of what was happening in states at the time. States were laboratories of innovation. Those practices were sort of enshrined through federal policy.
But it was a federal policy predicated on what was working in states. You know, Arne, when you were secretary, you, and secretary of spelling, you had Katrina kind of open the door on some of the waivers. But there was a policy of broad based waiver of federal requirements, district level, state level. And so just in terms, just playing devil's advocate.
I wouldn't be a good moderator if I probably wouldn't. But, like, you know, if you think about the federal role versus the state role, I live in Alabama. Now it's not where I'm from. People are talking about the southern surge, what's happening in Mississippi and Alabama.
In the absence of a really muscular federal role, states are stepping up. So what's concerning to you as former U.S. secretaries of education with respect to returning more power to the states? Well, notice how left behind in the elements of it that are still on the books today, by the way, measure every year, disaggregate the data, you know, et cetera. Those are still on the books.
And the Mississippi miracle and the Alabama and Louisiana and all the southern surge, that is made possible because the federal government had a research role, we talked about this a second ago, that was proffered initially by the Clinton administration to bring us the national reading panel that wrought the science of reading, et cetera. And so these ideas and theories and policies were incubated in places like Texas and North Carolina, bipartisan, Jim Hunt, George Jeb, et cetera, and in cities. And so, you know, it was really a ground-up deal. And so I say to my conservative friends, look, if we're going to spend a bunch of federal money, we ought to get something for it.
If it is supposed to be in service to student achievement around a civil right, let's see how we're doing. Are we getting anything for it? We tried to put the money out and hope for the best for a long, long time, and we didn't have very much to show for it. And we're back to that again, by the way.
So, anyway, I believe that we can get this right. It is not against the law to improve student achievement in states, and never has been. Show us your work. Show the work.
Yeah, so it's interesting. The Southern surge is real and powerful. I spent a couple days in Jackson, Mississippi, really trying to understand it. And, again, it's not the Mississippi Miracle.
It's the Mississippi Marathon. It was like 20 years, and other folks are doing well. But, Ben, we have to be very honest here. That's a handful.
handful of states, maybe.
If you look across the country on NAEP, it's a disaster. So let's not think this is some massive innovation coming from the states. If you have five states, 10% of our states moving, 40 states flat or declining, that's not something, 45 states, you know, flatline or declining, this is not a time where we can say this is going great. And so I don't, for a second, think this is a time to take the foot off the gas and push harder.
What I do think at the national level, we should have a couple goals that I call nation building goals, not left or right goals. Access to high quality early childhood education, which is arguably the best investment we can make. A focus on third or fourth grade reading scores, which we know is critical. Raising high school graduation rates and rigor.
And then raising college completion rates. For me, if we could be clear on those goals at the national level, and states have some flexibility of how to achieve those. I always say, tight on goals, loose on means. But those should be goals that our country should unite behind for the next 20 years, 30 years.
But right now as a country, we have zero education goals. Nothing. I ask any of you, what's our goal education for the country? Nobody here could give me an answer.
We have no strategies to achieve goals. We have no metrics to measure goals. We have no public transparency. So we're lost now.
And that for me is not a good place for our country, for our economy, for our democracy. You know, the thing about the goals that Arnie talks about is people understand, what does that mean? What does it mean to get out of high school? What does it mean to read on third grade level?
And so that's what's lost. Right now we're talking about pathways and work. What is a pathway? What is it?
What's the rigor of it? For whom, when? How much? And so I think we've kind of lost our way because of this, what are our goals?
Dang it. We've got six minutes and seven seconds. So I'm gonna go pretty rapid fire here and just get into the weeds because that's kind of where I live sometimes. So one, reading.
This drives me crazy. So I wanna give you some credit here and just get your perspective. So National Reading Panel, Clinton Initiative, publishes the findings. Everybody's sort of like, you know, it's controversial, but we figure out a lot of stuff with respect to the science of reading.
Federal government formulates policy in the form of reading first, pretty prescriptive, muscular federal role, $2 billion carve out from Title I. Tripled funding. It works. It works.
Like over quite some period of time, Bush administration threw into the Obama administration, but eventually that program was dismantled. Then we have a podcast, sold a story, and all of a sudden everybody's like fired up about the work that you were doing in 2000, 2001. So I just wanna acknowledge and give you credit for that because it had a profound impact on kids and families all around the country. But just curious, like your, just your thoughts.
Like, are you indignant? Like what do you? No, welcome aboard, everybody. Welcome aboard.
Yeah. Welcome aboard. So yeah, I mean, I think the object lesson there is that this stuff is political and why it's important that we continue to keep the band together, like we had in the No Child Left Behind era of the business community and the civil rights community coming together and insisting upon clear goals, high standards, measurement, transparency, disaggregation, and so forth. And so look, you know, it pisses me off, but hey, what are you gonna do?
I love it. Welcome aboard. I love it. All right.
So then, you know, maybe like in somewhat of a similar vein, I just wanna just also just acknowledge, I mean, your, I think it was Washington Post op-ed on ECA. Like, you know, it's interesting, you go back and look at the history. So you had like Milwaukee voucher experiment, you know, and I remember you had Clinton and the, you know, pushing charters. Senator Lieberman, my home state senator.
And so people think about like, you know, charters as being some sort of like right way, but it was Minnesota, it was Pennsylvania, you know, back in like 91. Arizona. But now what's pretty cool is, I mean, like, I'm not sure, Arne, you could choke down the words, big, beautiful bill act, but yet you did that piece and talked about why the ECA and what was happening was important for states to get behind because it was good and it created pockets of liquidity for kids and families. But maybe just, I'd love to get your take on what you see as like a bipartisan future for school choice as well.
And maybe just some of the rationale behind your support of that. Yeah, very personal. I'm just getting very, very honest. So ICE invaded Chicago.
I deal with gun violence every single day, gang violence. ICE was the largest, most resource, best armed gang I've ever seen. What I saw in the streets was horrific. It's something I'm never gonna forget.
And what they did to our community was horrific. And that was federally sponsored gun violence. About a month ago, I went to Minneapolis and spent time with the educators and faith leaders there. What happened there was exponentially worse than what happened in Chicago.
I sort of read about and think you understand, but you really don't. So right now, if I have a tax dollar in Illinois, Chicago, do I wanna send that to Washington to fund ICE to come terrorize my community? Or do I wanna take that tax dollar to help a kid in Chicago or downstate go to afterschool or summer school or get some tutoring or get whatever? For me, that's not even close.
I don't wanna fund my oppressor. That's insane. I wanna fund kids who are too far behind. And so for me, it's very just practical and real.
This is not whatever. It's a very clear choice. I'm always been a believer in choice. I want high quality options for kids.
I want accountability where we have choices, not unfettered accountability. I put hundreds of millions of dollars behind charters to replicate and grow. I also went to the National Charters Conference and said, 200 of your schools are dropout factories and you need to close them. So for me, the goal is not choice.
The goal is better student outcomes. I'm gonna go back to our goals and where you have great choices, that helps you have more good, high quality student outcomes. All right, minute 22. So, yeah, thanks.
Um. College. You talked about sort of degree as a gatekeeper. I think your administration was sort of typified in part by like sort of the college for all push.
You know, and we do now have this emphasis on sort of pathways. Nobody likes to say alternative pathways. You know, and I think we have this like cognitive dissonance around college. I was just visiting a really amazing charter school, you know, 100% low income, vast majority first-gen college students if they go to college, touting a 96% college admission rate.
That's what we for many years thought of as a great school. 40% of those students ever graduate from college. And we need lots of people doing jobs that are high-paying, you know, that the economy needs, that don't necessarily have degrees. So how do you think about just sort of reconciling the historic like college for all push with the realities of the labor market and multitude of pathways to sort of economic mobility? Sorry, I'm not giving us much time.
Okay, all right. Well, it's a both and situation. And you know, whether you're gonna be a plumber, electrician, or a PhD mathematician, you gotta be able to read and compute at some level of proficiency. And we are so far behind in doing that right now.
Higher ed has been so dumbed down, grade inflated or whatever, that people don't have an understanding or confidence in what that proxy, that diploma means much anymore. And so I think, you know, we gotta get our act together here about how are we gonna evidence value in the economy and value for what you pay? And we got a long way to go to do that. Just quickly for me, a high school diploma is critical, but it's insufficient.
It's some form of education beyond that. For your university, to your community college, vocational training, I don't care what that is, but it's gotta be more than a high school diploma. Where I worry on the pathways, alternative pathways, that's almost always for other kids. That's for black and brown kids.
That's for poor kids. And if that's what they wanna do, fantastic, but I don't wanna say that path is for you and this path is for kids that look like me, look like us three up here. I just wanna make sure they have lots of great options and let them pursue what their dream, what their genius, what their passion is. Yeah.
We're over time. I just wanna, just on a personal note, just acknowledge how much just respect and appreciation I have for both of you. You can be doing lots of stuff with your time, and I know that you're in the arena fighting hard around bipartisanship in Washington, and I see it day in and day out, and you're engaged and working extraordinarily hard. And Arne, I think you're one of the people I just admire most.
I think you're like feet on the street, and I know how viscerally you feel and experience just the importance of the work that you're doing, working with guys like I grew up with and keeping them alive, which is a first order of business. So just huge thanks to you both for being here, and thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you. Thank you.
You
This transcript was put together by our friend Philippos Savvides from Arizona State University. The original transcript and additional summit resources are available on GitHub. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.