US education secretary to push ‘well-rounded’ education in Las Vegas
U.S. Education Secretary John King Jr., enacting what is viewed as a huge federal retrenchment from local schools, will come to Las Vegas today on Thursday to promote a “well-rounded” education that goes beyond an intense focus on math and science to embrace areas such as social studies, art, health and languages.
King is scheduled to visit Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, a magnet high school in downtown Las Vegas, and deliver a speech on the topic and hold a listening session on the new Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law.
“Strong literacy and math skills are surely necessary for success in college, careers, and life, but they just as surely are not sufficient,” King said.
“It’s about being skilled and knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects, expert and passionate about a few, and confident in the quest for more knowledge.”
Echoing what President Obama and former Education Secretary Arne Duncan have said, King again conceded that in many schools around the country, testing had become “excessive, redundant and overemphasized” under the No Child Left Behind law that dates back to the early days of the George W. Bush presidency.
In addition to briefing reporters about his visit to Las Vegas and communities in Oklahoma and Arkansas later this week, King also pointed to his agency’s new guidance on leveraging federal funds to expand science, technology, engineering and math offerings in schools.
He referred to the president’s last budget proposal, which requests $500 million for Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants and other funds to support a well-rounded education.
King is expected to draw even more attention to his agency’s work on helping local schools step away from the No Child Left Behind legacy during a visit to Tulsa, Okla.
“The good news here is that, with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the welcome replacement for the No Child Left Behind law, the opportunity to widen how we understand educational excellence is suddenly ripe,” he said.
Confirmed last month by the Senate, King expressed optimism his agency will be able to implement the new law before the Obama administration leaves office in January.
With the demise of No Child Left Behind, which for many came to symbolize federal overreach into local school policy, the new education chief had hoped his confirmation would usher in a new era of more light than heat on the subject.
His initial efforts, however, drew sharp words during a hearing from Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on Tuesday. Alexander accused King of not only ignoring part of the new law but again trying to tell schools what to do.
One of the issues that drove Alexander’s criticism involved Title I funds, which are provided to help low-income children.
When asked whether he was concerned that exchange would set the stage for his agency’s effort to implement the new law, King conceded that different perspectives exist between Republicans and Democrats on certain issues but again expressed confidence a bipartisan consensus could be reached.