“If the goal is to dramatically improve college completion rates, not college-going rates by itself but college completion, it's not just a college problem. We need a big focus on early childhood education. Our early childhood education system is pretty good in this country. Not enough students have opportunity. And, very discouragingly, they lose their advantage because they go to poor schools after that. So, let's focus on our babies.” CountryEnoughProblemSchoolOpportunityGoalPoorFocusChildhoodStudentsCollegeBabyRateEducation SystemCompletionEarly Childhood Author:Arne Duncan
“What you see around the world is that poverty is not destiny. In other countries, much more systemically, student after student, school after school, year after year, educate poor and disadvantaged young people. And, so, anyone who says that you can't overcome these battles is a huge part of the problem.” PeopleWorldCountryProblemSchoolPoorPovertyDestinyStudentsBattleOvercomingEducateAfter School Author:Arne Duncan
“This is a devastating problem, is, the longer our children are in school, the worse they do. Year after year after year, our children in America are falling further behind. Our 3- and 4-year-olds enter kindergarten OK, and they fall further and further behind. Each year, children in other countries are learning more than children in this country. And so the gap between American student performance in Singapore and Finland and South Korea and Canada and these other countries, the gap widens year after year after year.” ChildrenCountryProblemSchoolFallStudentsOur ChildrenKindergarten Author:Arne Duncan
“If you look at figures, we have a good supply of doctors in Switzerland. They always say that in the future we shall have a lack of home doctors, family doctors. I'm not sure of that, but we have a problem of formation. Every year there [are] about 1,000 students beginning medical studies, and at the end of the formation there are only 600 young people getting the diploma. It means that about 40 percent of the students fail during the studies, although there is a selection at the beginning. Forty percent is too much as failure, so probably there is a problem in the formation, education.” PeopleMeanProblemHomeStudyFailingStudentsMedicalNot SureForty Author:Pascal Couchepin