WASHINGTON, D.C. – The country won’t regain its position as the most college-educated nation in the world unless it eliminates disparities in public education at the pre-school through high school levels, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a gathering of civil rights activists on Thursday.
“For everything we said we cared about, the fact of the matter remains that there’s tremendous inequality in opportunity for children where it matters the most,” Duncan said to attendees of the 14th annual convention of the National Action Network founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
The convention drew roughly 2,000 people, about 100 of whom attended the “National Education Breakfast” segment of the convention where Duncan spoke.
Citing dropout statistics that are as high as 50 percent in Black and Latino communities, Duncan stressed the need for post-secondary education in order to land a decent-paying job in today’s economy.
“How many good jobs are out there if you’ve dropped out of high school? None,” Duncan said. “One generation ago we led the world in college graduates. Now we’re 16th and we wonder why we’re struggling economically,” he said, lamenting an often cited statistic that roughly 2 million high wage, high skill jobs have gone unfilled because of the lack of skilled workers in the American workforce.
“If you take the high dropout rate, the lack of college success, the high unemployment rate, this is no time to sit idly by and hope for things to get better,” Duncan said, urging those in the audience to get involved in education by doing things such as mentoring and tutoring.
Duncan said socioeconomic inequality stems less today from race and class and more from lack of equality in academic opportunity. No matter how tough of a neighborhood a child is from, he said, if the child receives a quality early childhood education and attends high school where college prep courses are offered, “I’m very optimistic about that young child’s chances in life.”
