Education Secretary Arne Duncan is pitching a bold proposal this afternoon at the National Press Club. The gist of it is, we can save $15 billion by finding ways other than incarceration to deal with people convicted of nonviolent crimes, and we can use the money to increase teacher salaries in the twenty percent of schools with students from the lowest income families. He’s not talking about a token increase. Duncan is talking about increasing salaries in those schools by an average of 50 percent nationwide. The size of the increase varies from state to state. In the case of Arizona, it would amount to a 70 percent boost.

Though Duncan hasn’t given his speech as I write this, he’s published a state-by-state table indicating how much money can be saved on incarceration and how it would be allocated. Here are the numbers for Arizona.

• $1,545,345,000: Current state and local spending on correctional facilities
• $320,804,508: Approximately 21 percent of the total spend on correctional facilities
• $457,841,161: Total teacher salaries in the 20% of Arizona schools with the highest percentage of students on free/reduced lunch (387 schools)
• 70 percent: Increase in teacher salaries in those schools.

Duncan’s pitch is that this is a way to slow down what’s called the school-to-prison pipeline. Since low income areas produce a disproportionate number of prison inmates, improving their educations might be the best way to reduce those numbers.

Is this a good idea? I’m not sure. The idea is to attract the best and the brightest teachers to those schools by giving them a financial incentive. Increasing teacher salaries in low income schools has had some success in the past, but it’s been minor. And if you keep the same class sizes in Arizona, you haven’t addressed a serious problem with reaching hard-to-reach students. But the idea is bold, and it’s right-headed. We need bold ideas like this to get the discussion going and to address the dual problems of improving education and lowering incarceration. I’ve been a critic of Duncan over the years—and of Obama for sticking with the guy and his agenda—but I compliment him for this proposal.

This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2015.

11 replies on “Arne Duncan to Propose Using Prison Funding for Teacher Salaries”

  1. While this is a step in the right direction, the data strongly suggests that poverty (or lack thereof) is the metric that drives educational success.

  2. Given the number and amount of campaign contributions that this would affect in Arizona, I don’t see this gaining any traction here. Plus, it’s a suggestion from a Democrat, so it’s going to be a non-starter in any case, no matter how sensible it is.

  3. It starts at home. You can’t find enough money to alter genetics. Not without inner desire. It’s up to the student.

  4. I’m not sure money solves all problems, especially educational. My cousin in NY made twice as much as Tucson teachers and said their system wasn’t much better. I might go along if tenure was taken out of the picture and there was a sure way of dismissing bad teachers. Parenting also plays an important role in a child’s education. There are many factors outside of money.

  5. Jim, don’t tell that to the more money crowd. Once the money is spent they cheat and lie about test scores, and quite frankly, results are impossible to track. Eliminate the USDE and use that money for three years. If nothing changes, No more money.

  6. Jim, don’t tell that to the more money crowd. Once the money is spent they cheat and lie about test scores, and quite frankly, results are impossible to track. Eliminate the USDE and use that money for three years. If nothing changes, No more money.

  7. Interesting suggestion, David but a non-starter. Why? Cause Arne Duncan is a Dem and part of the Obama administration. Anything Dem is DOA. More important, CCA, et al are major contributors to the Republicans, (read John Cavanaugh) and they want to build more private prisons. After all, David, if you educate kids, do some reasonable prison reform, how are these guys going to make money?

  9. At his announcement speech he said he was going back to Chicago.

    Don’t look to the Prez for advice Arnie, but he left that place a disaster WITH stricter gun laws. You are going to need one.

    I guess this is why he forgot to mention how safe Chicago is:

    Deadliest ‘hoods
    Neighborhood Homicides Wounded Total
    Englewood 24 245 269
    Austin 36 167 203
    Garfield Park 23 140 163
    Humboldt Park 16 87 103
    North Lawndale 22 73 95
    Roseland 18 77 95
    New City 13 81 94
    Auburn Gresham 9 75 84
    Chicago Lawn 7 75 82
    South Shore 16 63 79
    Grand Crossing 14 59 73
    Chatham 15 55 70
    South Chicago 14 46 60
    West Pullman 10 47 57
    Woodlawn 5 49 54
    All Others 154 631 776

  10. G.W. Bush, Obama and Duncan have intervened in public education and created havoc; they have given credence to the position that the DOE should be abolished. While I’m glad Duncan is out before he can do any more damage, his replacement is worse, despised in his home state of New York for his reign of terror there. Expect doubling down on mandated high stakes testing and support for charter school proliferation. That’s where the big money is.

    The feds need to rein in their intrusion into state and local education issues before they leave behind the same legacies here that they have in Iraq, Afghanistan or your choice of military misadventure. We are now into the 15th year of the War On Public Education with the same level of success as our foreign excursions in the War on Terror. I admire the president and would vote for him again, if possible. But on public education, he gets an F for causing more harm than good.

  11. Thank God, as the rules stand now, that he can’t run again. He created the vacuum that caused the loss of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Syria is about to fall to Russia, Hassad and Iran. Putin is killing the people we had supported.

    The President has been played for a fool. I wonder if the public schools will be allowed to teach it?

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