Duncan on "Face the Nation"

Secretary of State Arne Duncan spoke to Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation on Sunday.



He gets a lot of it dead right, I think, and says a lot of the things that a Secretary of Education ought to say.  I like particularly that he made a point of praising the national union heads for their efforts in education reform.  As always, the charter school thing is niggling at me.  He likes them, I don't understand them.  He explains them thus: "I'm not a fan of charter schools, I'm a fan of good charter schools."  What does that mean?  Schieffer says that charter schools don't have some of the restrictions of other public schools.  Really?

But from the premise that charter schools drive innovation, a premise that I think is at best unfounded, he says a lot of things that sound really familiar to me.  And I like the idea of a government official helping other people to do what everybody knows works.