Silberman Calls NCLB an Overexertion of Power

In an interview with NewsHour, Fayette County Superintendent Stu Silberman discussed No Child Left Behind and new Education Secretary Arne Duncan with reporter John Merrow.

Merrow asked Silberman if NCLB represented federal interference into a local issue. Silberman said,

I think there was an overexertion of power with the No Child Left Behind, because there were things in there that I know that superintendents across this country and teachers believed that were the wrong things to do. We had to deal with those issues or lose our funding...

Asked about Duncan, Silberman said,

He's just been in the trenches with us, and he knows exactly what it is that we've been dealing with.

Duncan, interviewed along with Silberman and three other Superintendent of the Year finalists underscored his intention to move ahead on national standards.

JOHN MERROW: Do we need national standards?

ARNE DUNCAN: I think we need to look at it. I think the idea of 50 states doing things, you know, their own way doesn't quite make sense.

JOHN MERROW: Do you anticipate using some of this stimulus money, this incentive money to help these national standards emerge?

ARNE DUNCAN: Absolutely.

JOHN MERROW: So states will get money if they do this thing that Duncan wants?

ARNE DUNCAN: If you play by these rules, absolutely right.

JOHN MERROW: You're OK with having a secretary of education say, "You can get some money, Stu, if you do what I want"?

STU SILBERMAN: You know what? I think that it's a whole lot better than not getting any money.

This from NewsHour:

Duncan Poised to Assert New Power as Education Chief

President Barack Obama called for big changes in education earlier this week. John Merrow profiles Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will be heading up the president's calls for reform and who may bring new strategies to the education policy arena.

Video here.

...Generally, the secretary of education has almost no discretionary money. If the secretary would have $100 million or $200 million -- not billion, but million -- that's a lot of money. All of a sudden now, he's got in excess of $5 billion, and that's more discretionary money. That's bigger than the budget for the old U.S. Office of Education was in the early 1970s...