Teaching Quote by Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan distills a familiar frustration with test-driven accountability: governments set proficiency thresholds, brand schools as failing, and then impose penalties that drain resources instead of building capacity. The line reads as a simple standard of fairness. If the state defines failure and levies consequences, the money attached to those consequences should strengthen the very institutions being asked to improve, not be siphoned off to external vendors or administrative costs.

Over the past two decades, education policy has leaned on mandates, standardized testing, and sanctions. Under frameworks like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, schools that missed benchmarks faced restructuring, corrective action, and a redirection of funds toward private tutoring services or charter operators. That logic assumes punishment catalyzes improvement. Duncan challenges the premise, noting the perverse effect on under-resourced schools already contending with poverty, staffing shortages, and outdated materials. When dollars leave the system at the moment of greatest need, the gap widens. A more coherent approach ties accountability to investment: when benchmarks are not met, associated funds should flow into targeted supports inside the public system, such as coaching for teachers, smaller class sizes, enriched curricula, counseling, community partnerships, and extended learning time.

There is also a governance principle at stake. Mandates without fiscal partnership violate the rule that those who impose requirements should help finance compliance. Duncan is not rejecting standards or transparency; he is insisting that the public obligation does not end at measurement. Performance disparities track social and economic inequities, and penalties that ignore those conditions turn accountability into a blame game. Sending the money to the school system reaffirms a commitment to public education and the idea that improvement comes from capacity-building, not extraction. Real reform is less about naming failure and more about equipping students and educators to succeed.