U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan touted President Barack Obama’s early childhood education plan during a pair of stops Friday in Atlanta, drawing lots of attaboys for an initiative that has gone nowhere in Congress.
Joined by Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Duncan toured William M. Boyd Elementary School in northwest Atlanta, where he and the governor’s wife read a story to students who were enjoying their own rendition of ‘Itsy-Bitsy Spider’ when he walked in.
Duncan then participated in a town hall meeting at the school that featured as many politicos as parents and included no audience questions. The education secretary was joined on the dais by Deal; Reed; Bobby Cagle, the commissioner of the state’s early care and learning program; Stephanie Blank, the board chairwoman of the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students; and Steven Smith Sr., associate superintendent for Atlanta Public Schools.
Atlanta is hosting the annual convention of the National Conference of Black Mayors, and Duncan closed out his Georgia trip with remarks to mayors who applauded Obama’s early childhood effort. The mayors, however, seemed most interested in particular projects and concerns in their municipalities.
The only time Duncan discussed at length two education issues percolating in Georgia — the APS test-cheating scandal and the nascent opposition to the state’s embrace of a Common Core of national education standards — was when he was asked about them by a pair of reporters for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I’ve seen a huge amount of work to restore integrity, to restore trust and to build public confidence,” Duncan said in response to a question about the cheating scandal. “Atlanta Public Schools is in a very difficult time. But they’re handling everything incredibly well. They’re making all the right decisions, and the community is being well served. We’re doing everything we can to support those efforts, and if you stumble and fall, you do what you can to pick yourself back up.”
He said he supports the Common Core standards, which have come to be seen by some as an Obama effort to nationalize k-12 education.
“The goal for me is never common,” Duncan told the mayors. “The goal for me is high (standards).”
The cheating scandal and Common Core were rare departures from the script Duncan stuck to for much of his visit. And that script began and ended with support for the president’s early childhood education plan, which would double to 2.2 million the number of children in the U.S. with access to early childhood education.
Even in Deal, a conservative Republican who wouldn’t count himself as a pal of the Obama administration, Duncan found no opposition to that goal. But the path to that goal is where Deal departs from the administration, which has pushed a tobacco tax to raise money for the initiative.
That’s a nonstarter for Deal and other conservatives, many of whom vehemently oppose new taxes.
Deal, however, suggested that the state could do more to improve its program if the federal government gave it more flexibility over how to use the money for early childhood education.
“I feel sure that at some point, a good middle ground will be reached,” Deal said.
Sequestration — the term for the Republican-Democratic stalemate that is mandating budget cuts in a variety of programs — is forcing Washington to make hard choices, Deal said.
“There may be some good things coming out of sequestration, and we could decide there are some things we can’t live without,” the governor said. “Let’s put the money back into areas such as early childhood education.”
Obama’s plan would fund pre-kindergarten or some other type of preschool for 4-year-olds in families with incomes as high as 200 percent of the federal poverty level, $46,100 for a family of four. The current Head Start program generally serves kids from families at or below 130 percent of the poverty line, or $29,965 for a family of four.
All states and the federal government would share in the expense, and there would be a sliding scale of payments for others to bring in more middle-class children.
Duncan said he would explore Deal’s suggestion and keep his options open.
“A lot of people tell us why we can’t do this,” he said. “But we can build a very unusual coalition to find creative ways to get this done.”
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