Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Education Secretary Arne Duncan was asked his "position on a potential national education voucher program." CQ Politics has the transcript:
DUNCAN: I’ve been very, very clear that I don’t think vouchers work. They’re not the answer. Let me explain why.
Vouchers usually serve 1 to 2 percent of the children in a community. And I think we as the federal government, we as local governments, or we as school districts, we have to be more ambitious than that. That’s an absolutely worthy or noble goal. If a nonprofit or philanthropy wants to provide scholarship money to children, that’s a great, great use of the resources.
But I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98, 99 percent drown. We have to be much more ambitious than that. We have to expect more.
And this is why I would argue rather than taking one of these struggling schools, these thousands (inaudible) — rather than taking three kids out of there and putting them in a better school and feeling good and sleeping well at night, I want to turn that school around now and do that for those 400, 500, 800, 1,200 kids in that school and give every child in that school and that community something better, and do it with a real sense of urgency.
