the disparity of poverty and wealth in our counsel tree. the school syste country. the school system has not been jenna: one of the things we have to consider here is money. you mentioned in certain district maybe this would be a good idea depending on what the community looks like. we know a lot of the district are suffering for funds. how do you choose or go about figuring out which schools and which communities would benefit from this. and which would not? sure. i mean honestly for me i think in many cases it s a matter of choice. some of, for instance the charter schools that we talk about most enthusiastically, the kip academies, achievement first, uncommon schools, use an extended school day, they have kids going to school on saturdays, and they have an extended school year. in many cases they are able to do that for about the same amount as local school district spends but that s because they operate leaner, it s because they pay teachers they don t y teachers a full mark
good idea, bad idea? well, think the real issue is you don t want to make teaching an unattractive profession. okay? if one of the reasons you need tenure is you don t want principals making decisions on favoritism. the chinese are having longer school day, they even go to school on weekends. is this a model we want to replicate? it is. we simply we re short-changing our kids. if you look at some of the better schools. i was at a school in san antonio last week. a kip school. kip is a national model of schools. knowledge is power program. an excellent school. those kids are in school every other saturday. they have a longer day. they re there till 5:00. they re outperforming kids throughout the state of texas. these are low-income, mostly hispanic, recent immigrant kids. they re thriving. the kip academies are outperforming. do we finally have a model that
they re thriving. the kip academies are outperforming. do we finally have a model that can be replicated? can you bring it to scale? seems the kip academy s made the answer yes. they re showing they can replicate that model. this is where i think government should play a role. how to shine the light on these schools and bring educators from other schools in so they can see, this is what good teaching looks like. this is how they ve organized themselves. this is how it works. is arne duncan with the race to the top beginning to use his 4-plus billion dollars in a way that will bring it and expand it to the school systems across the nation? i think what we need to do is shine the light there are lots of models out there. a great school in san diego called high tech high which has got kids learning how to engage technology and it s doing extremely well. schools like this around the country need to become centers for excellence that educators can learn from. thank you so much.