Arne Duncan Says All Kids Deserve a Chance — and Criminals Deserve a Second One (Update)

0:04Today's episode is an encore presentation of a conversation I had almost four years ago with Arnie Duncan. I think you'll agree after listening to this episode that Arnie is a very special person, an almost impossible mix of passion, selflessness, intelligence, and common sense.

0:28My guest today, Arnie Duncan, has played professional basketball, ran the Chicago Public Schools for over seven years, and was a U.S. Secretary of Education under Barack Obama. I suspect you'll be surprised to hear, though, where you'll find him these days. He's on the streets of Chicago running an organization called CRED that's giving young men who everyone else has given up on the chance to build meaningful lives.

0:54Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt. I've known Arnie and admired him for 20 years now. We first met under difficult circumstances when I discovered there was widespread teacher cheating in the Chicago public schools where Arnie was in charge. More recently, the last three years, totally by chance, Arnie's been my next-door neighbor. So compared to my typical interview, I have a much better sense where things might head. But I do think Arnie is in for some surprises because I have a couple stories about him that I've never told before, and I can't wait to hear his reaction.

1:39So you were Secretary of Education under Barack Obama, and after you left that job, you wrote a memoir entitled How Schools Work. And the first line of that book is, education runs on lies. And I cannot imagine a Secretary of Education other than you ever saying something like that publicly. What did you mean by that? Well, I always try and listen to what people say, Steve, but I always watch what they do. And when there's a disconnect between what I hear and what I see, what I witness, that's disconcerting. We all say we value education, but if you look at where we are in the United States relative to other nations, I always break it down.

2:21Early childhood, K to 12, higher education, we're top 10 and nothing. So as much as we would say we value education and care about it, we don't invest, we don't innovate, we don't hold ourselves accountable. A second example related, obviously, is that we all would say we care about teachers. If you surveyed the American public, 99 % of us would say teachers are really important. But we don't value them as professionals. We don't train them as professionals. We don't compensate them as professionals. And it's not fair either to our teachers or to our students. And then the third one, which is a tougher one, is that everybody, everybody would say that we value our children, but we tolerate a level of gun deaths in our country that simply doesn't happen in other nations.

3:01And I hate to say this, it breaks my heart, but I truly believe we value our guns here in the United States more than we value our children. and there's just a loss of life and a level of living with fear and trauma that our children here in Chicago and the South and West sides, but unfortunately around the country, live with that simply doesn't happen to children in other nations. So I know you had a really unique upbringing because your mom, Sue, ran an after-school program here in Chicago called the Sue Duncan Children's Center. Could you just talk a little bit about how you spent your afternoons as a consequence of her job when you were growing up as a kid?

3:35Yeah, so we grew up about two blocks from where you and I live now, so I haven't escaped too far and very intentionally stayed in the neighborhood. My dad was a professor at the University of Chicago for about 40 years in psychology. And my mother ran an after-school program. And she started in 1961, literally like 12 blocks from our house at 46 in Greenwood. And in those days, 47th Street was the invisible barrier between middle-class integrated and all black, all poor. So her program was like just a block on the other side of that. I had my friends during the school day at lab school, then I had my after-school friends.

4:11And just seeing the inequities in opportunity that my friends in the afternoon were as smart, as talented, as hardworking, as resilient as my friends during the school day, but just wildly fewer set of opportunities, whether it's educationally, whether in terms of safety, whatever it might be. And just the fundamental unfairness. People talk about different zip codes. It's basically the same zip code. It's a mile and a half, but just a different world. And that's been the driving force in my life is trying to create opportunities, whether it's here or in Appalachia or Native American reservations, wherever it might be, just trying to take opportunity to where the talent is.

4:49And I would say talent is evenly distributed, opportunities not. And that's what she devoted her life to. And my sister, brother, and I have all tried to follow in her footsteps in various ways. You can't unsee or can't unfeel something that's such a critical part of you for all your years until you went away to college. So I know your mom's program, that neighborhood's all African-American, and you and your brother and your sister were the three white kids there. I'm just curious, what did the kids in our program think of you? You're this real thin, six foot five white kid who's better than them at basketball.

5:22What do they make of you? Well, I was a late bloomer. So I was 5 '3 as a freshman in high school. She had everyone work in age group cohorts. And I was part of a group where I was the youngest and the smallest and by far the worst basketball player. But growing up, having to learn how to compete, trying to learn to be a good teammate, real competitive games. If you lost, you had to sit out for a long time. So you had to find ways to win. When I finally grew and got a little bigger, that was helpful. but I think my identity was very much formed when I was small and slow and scrawny and trying to just have to be as scrappy as you could to compete and to win and to stay on the court.

6:02Now, you were an academic All-American basketball player at Harvard and you graduated magna cum laude, which is not easy to do. You played professional basketball in Australia for a handful of years. And then you came back to Chicago in 1992 in your late 20s and you began and working with the Ariel Foundation on the I Have a Dream program. I think people know that program pretty well that takes a seventh grade class and tries to do whatever it can to have that class succeed and then pay for their college. So tell me about your time in that program. I'll just give you a little background on it.

6:38I had played for four years there in Australia, and I loved it. You make good money. It's a great living. It's a very seductive lifestyle. I met my wife, Karen, there. But all those opportunities I've had, I just felt I owed the city so much. And so I was looking for an opportunity to come home. And John Rogers, who runs Aerial Capital and been my best friend and mentor since I was about 10 years old, he was starting to be successful in his money management business. And rather than buying a second house or a fancy car or a boat or whatever, he wanted to set up a foundation and get back to the community.

7:13And he just knew of our family's involvement in the neighborhoods. And so he hired my sister and I, Sarah, to come back and set up the I Have a Dream program. Had he not given me that opportunity, I think it's extraordinarily likely that I would still be living in Australia. And all this stuff is very personal. My mother had done an amazing job of getting her young people through high school, but we really struggled on the college front. And she had many students going to college, but there were many others who just didn't work financially. And she had a shoestring budget. She was a volunteer.

7:43The budget for many years and years was like under$5 ,000 a year was all volunteer run and led. And just seeing my friends struggle financially and have to drop out of school and not even go, that was extraordinarily painful to watch. And so there are a couple parts of the I Dream program that were appealing to me. One of John committing to help fund the college tuition of students who could make it that far. That was just something that would have been amazing for my mother's work all those years where we just didn't have that opportunity. And the second thing was just the quality of opportunity, that we took all 40 children in that class of sixth graders.

8:19And there are many programs that take the top 5%, the top 10%. I love those programs. Those are really important. That just wasn't what my focus was. What we really wanted to do was prove the children, regardless of where they were. Many of our students started going into seventh grade or reading at the third or fourth grade level. We just wanted to prove what was possible with opportunity and hard work and the class ahead of ours. So the class that was in seventh grade when we started in sixth grade, they ended up having a 66 % dropout rate from high school. In our class, when you're younger, had a 91 % graduation rate from high school.

8:53So same neighborhood, same school, same building, same socioeconomic challenges, same poverty, same violence, just a very different opportunity. So those were six extraordinary years just trying to demonstrate, again, what's possible when opportunity meets talent. So it's an interesting program because it takes kids who are relatively old. So it's not starting with super young kids. And it's small scale and really intensive. I know the extent to which you and your sister and others would essentially put your life on hold for these 40 kids for six years. Do you think it's a good use of resources?

9:28It's an unusual model. And we learn a lot from unusual models. And do you think of it as an answer to a question or more like a demonstration project to show you what's possible in another world? Yeah, obviously, it's always much better to start earlier and to start at kindergarten, start at pre-K, start at birth. The earlier the intervention, the better it is. There's never one model that's perfect or not. And as you said, that one, by definition, is smaller. You know, it's hard to scale for a city. We really tried to extend it as we got working, not just with those students, but with their younger brothers and sisters and family members and neighbors.

10:02We had a situation where one of our girls who actually started in a really good spot, she was a high performer. But unfortunately, both her parents got caught in the crack epidemic. And halfway through our first year, she basically lost her parents and she was taken in by a neighbor. So, of course, we took the neighbor's children and worked with them. And we would pick up all the kids after school. that'd be with us till 6, 7, 8 o 'clock at night, but obviously going home every night. So we spent lots of times doing home visits and trying to stabilize home situations. And we had some fantastic families.

10:34And we had families where there was, unfortunately, a tremendous amount of domestic violence and abuse and some very tough things going on. One of our children lived in Robert Taylor homes, and her brother saw a murder and had to go to a witness protection program. So the work evolved over time. We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Arne Duncan, the former U.S. Secretary of Education.

11:10so then you join the chicago public schools as the deputy chief of staff to paul ballas who ran the chicago public schools so let me tell you a story that i'm pretty sure i've never told you before. So it's April or May of 2001, and you've been working at CPS for a couple years by now. And I got a call from the mayor of Chicago, Mayor Daley, and his people said he'd like to speak with me. And I said, okay, this is years before Freakonomics. I was just some unknown professor, like the mayor never called me. So I show up at the assigned time at his office, and it's he and I alone in the office, no other aides, no hint what's going on.

11:56He just chats with me about education for at least an hour. And I'm just answering questions completely confused. The only guess I even have is that he's interviewing me to put me on the Chicago school board because I just couldn't make any sense of what was going on otherwise. And then finally, it's coming to the end of the conversation. And he says to me, what do you think of Paul Vallis, who was your boss at Chicago Public Schools? And I said, I don't know him personally, but he seems pretty good. And he shakes his head and he says, no. And he points to the fish tank and he says, he's in the tank.

12:31And I had no idea what he was talking about. Like, didn't know what he meant. I said, he's in the tank? And he said, yeah, Paul Vallis is in the tank. He's in the tank. I don't know what to say. I'm just nodding knowingly as if I know something about what he's talking about. And finally, he says, so what do you think of Arnie Duncan? And I said, I don't really know Arnie Duncan, but I've literally never heard anyone say a bad word about him. And the mayor says, I like Arnie Duncan. I like Arnie Duncan. And then he shows me to the door. So I leave the office and I go back to campus and I meet up with my co-author, Brian Jacob, who was an expert on the Chicago Public Schools.

13:11And I said to him, I'm going to make two really crazy predictions. The first one is that I'm going to be named to the Chicago school board shortly. And the second one is that Paul Valls is going to get fired and Arnie Duncan is going to take over as the head of the Chicago public schools. And he laughs out loud and he says, the first one is crazy, but at least within the realm of plausibility, but there's no way in the world that Arnie Duncan could ever be named the next head of the Chicago Public Schools. And two months later, Paul Vallis got fired and you were named the head of the Chicago Public Schools.

13:45Does that fit with your account of what happened? That's a crazy story. You've never told me that. You've been holding out all these years. That's more than 20 years ago at this point. I learned a tremendous amount from Paul. And to be clear, Paul wasn't fired. Paul actually ran for governor. So he ended up resigning to run for governor. You said that meeting was in April. I think it was in July. So it was just a couple months after that that the mayor appointed me, and he took a lot of risk. I was 36 at that point. A lot of people probably questioned his sanity, and he probably questioned his own sanity more than once.

14:16Those meetings in his office could be intimidating, as you knew. And there were a few times I went home and told my wife, I might get fired tomorrow. And she's like, okay, we'll figure it out. But I came into Chicago Public Schools in 1998. So we worked with those dreamers, and I have a dream program from 92 to 98, sixth grade through 12th grade. And during that time, we actually started our own small public school, Aerial Community Academy in the neighborhood. That was going to serve 400, but the Chicago Public Schools had 400 ,000. And there's something about the math of that and the scale that made me challenge myself and think it's easy to do smaller scale projects on the outside.

14:51It's easy to throw stones and critique. It's a very different thing to go into the system. So when our kids graduated and went to college, we thought about starting another I Have a Dream program. We thought about starting another public school. But I said, let me try and go in and see whether I can have impact. So how scared were you going from one school, 400 kids to 400 ,000 kids? I mean, were you petrified? I wasn't petrified. I had two and a half years of an apprenticeship, traveling across the city with Paul, visiting lots and lots of schools, meeting with staff. And I had a real good sense of who was really committed within CPS to making a difference in kids' lives and challenging the status quo and who was maybe a little bit more comfortable or complacent or whatever.

15:34So you're never fully prepared for anything like that. But I definitely felt that I had seen enough and knew enough folks and had a good enough sense for our schools to do it. And there are definitely some strategies and tactics that are applicable everywhere. But for me, just growing up in Chicago, growing up playing basketball all over the South and West sides, knowing so many of the communities and families, I'm a big relationship guy. Relationships are just critical to me. And I just felt that was a huge advantage. I never could have done what I did in another city. I just felt I totally had home court advantage working here in Chicago.

16:09Honestly, just being so passionate about the city and the families and the communities that gave me a lot of comfort walking into a job like that. So that's when I got to know you. I reached out to you more or less out of the blue, putting you into a terrible situation because I had been working on an academic project looking at cheating in the Chicago public schools. And I had found some pretty compelling statistical evidence that maybe 5 % of all the teachers in the Chicago public schools were cheating on standardized tests, on the high-stakes standardized test, by changing student answers. And I felt really bad for you because I was creating this public relations nightmare because here you are taking over the schools.

16:54And one of the first headlines that's going to come out is that it's rampant with cheating. So I just went to you not expecting anything, but trying to give you the heads up so you wouldn't be totally caught off guard. And I showed you the data, the evidence. And I would say your reaction to that conversation surprised me about as much as any reaction I've ever gotten in any meeting I've ever held. Do you remember what you said when I showed you all that data? I don't remember exactly what I said, but it's just interesting or different perspectives. Like you can say you put me in a terrible situation.

17:27I actually thought you were a godsend. I knew that there was some cheating. And again, 5 % is too much and is a lot, but that meant 90, 95 % of people were doing things the right way. And the big thing, Steve, that I wanted to do was I had to create credibility. I had to create trust. I wanted to hold myself accountable for results, but I wanted people to believe them. And I honestly had a lot of confidence that we could get better as a system. But because of Chicago Public Schools' history of cheating and scandal, I think there wasn't a lot of faith from the public. And you came to me very early on, I think it was in that first year.

18:02And what it did for me is that you had this extraordinary capability and insight that we did not have within CPS. So if we could set a baseline that we would not tolerate cheating, that we were going to do things the right way and hold ourselves accountable for results, then that would create a much higher level of credibility and integrity in the community. So yeah, we had to deal with some tough issues for a short amount of time, but I wanted people to understand that we were going to do things the right way for the right reasons. And you actually gave me just an extraordinary opportunity, again, not to talk about that, but to actually try and live that and demonstrate those values.

18:39I think that you don't realize that your reaction was not the typical reaction of people in the situation, people who would be defensive and try and cover up. But what really struck me about what you said. The first one was, this hurts the kids, and I won't let anybody hurt my kids. I think that might be an exact quote. And the second thing you said was, you just tell me what you need me to do, and I'll do it. And I said, how would you feel if I took a bunch of resources and we retested classrooms? And you said, sure, how many do you need? I named some number, and I said, and I'd also like not just to retest the classrooms I think are cheating, but I'd like to be able to retest a whole bunch of other classrooms that weren't.

19:16You're like, okay, good, that sounds great. And in the end, we managed to bring down a bunch of cheaters and get them out of the classroom, especially cheaters who were not good teachers at all on top of that, and get the cheating way down. So really, from my perspective, it was an amazing success. The other thing you did that I thought was so simple and brilliant, which is you just held a press conference. And you said something like, so there's this egghead professor at the University of Chicago, and he's got some algorithm I don't really understand, and he thinks he's cheating. and I'm not going to let there be cheating in the Chicago public schools.

19:50And so I put my foot down today and I'm going to cooperate with him fully and we're going to get rid of the cheaters. And then the reporters called up parents and said, what do you think of cheating in Chicago public schools? And they say, we don't want cheating in the schools. And then they called up the teachers union. And the teachers union even said, we don't want cheating in the schools. So instead of the headline being Chicago schools overrun with cheating, the headline is Arnie Duncan puts his foot down against cheating. And it was a huge win. I don't think of you as being very political, but somehow I think your own authenticity actually backs its way into being better than even the most strategic politician could ever be.

20:27I guess I don't think politically. Sometimes it serves me well. Sometimes that really hurts me. But I just think in life, the truth will set you free. And your point, when folks cheated, what they basically did is take children who were below grade level and said they were above grade level. When that happens and they get denied services, they need like summer school to actually help them catch up. So I think that's one of the most insidious things we can do is to lie to kids and families and say they're on track to be successful and they're not. You're ultimately setting them up for tremendous failure and heartbreak when they graduate from high school and aren't ready to be successful in college and don't have those skills.

21:02And yes, it's maybe a little painful short term. And we had to let some teachers go. It was interesting, Steve, almost nobody contested. We thought they'd have some lawsuits. Basically, teachers just resigned. Your evidence, for better or worse, was overwhelming. I'm sure we didn't fire every teacher that cheated, but it was enough to send a message and to try and bring that down going forward.

21:29So the next thing, you're 44 years old and you become secretary of education. Fun job or not a fun job? I loved it. But honestly, Steve, I probably wouldn't have gone for anybody else but President Obama. I had led the Chicago Public Schools for seven and a half years. There's tremendous turnover in those jobs. They average 10 years, about two, two and a half years. And it was sort of crazy. When I started running CPS, I was by definition, the rookie. And by the time I left, I was the longest serving big city public school superintendent in the country. And so I wanted to do at least 10 years, but it's clearly a once in a lifetime situation when someone who's a good friend and more importantly, someone who I've done a lot of education work with when President Obama was in the Illinois legislature and then became our senator, I knew his heart for education.

22:17I knew his commitment. I'd grown up playing basketball with Michelle Obama's older brother, Craig. He was a good friend and super amazing family. But neither one of their parents had gone to college. They were both first-generation college goers. And I knew what he was willing to do to fight for kids. So I had no aspiration to be Secretary of Education. Had President Obama said, come to the White House and help take out the garbage for me, I would have done that quite happily. So obviously, Arnie, both in the Chicago Public Schools and as Secretary of Education, you operated under enormous constraints, whether it's teacher unions or politics, or the fact that schools have more or less been run the same way for 100 years.

22:57But I wonder if you've thought at all, if we really just threw everything out and we started completely from scratch, you and me were given free reign to redesign everything in the American schools from the bottom up, what would be your most radical changes? What would you just like completely overhaul? There's so many things you'd like to do, but just a couple that aren't impossible. And frankly, I always say this stuff is really much more a matter of political will and courage. This is not putting a man on Mars. This is not finding a cure for cancer. It's just, do we really value the lives and the academic and social potential of all of our kids?

23:33So a couple of things. One, I would have universal access to pre-K. I'd make sure our babies have a chance to end their kindergarten ready to be successful academically, socially, emotionally. Obviously, access to technology and the pandemic brought this home. Devices, broadband, Wi-Fi, children should be able to learn anything they want anytime, anywhere, 24-7. Learning should not be confined to a physical school building. And we got to make that as ubiquitous in our country as access to water or electricity. Thinking very differently about teacher talent, and we all know great teachers, great principals make an extraordinary difference in kids' lives.