Secretary of State, Hillay Clinton, appeared on Meet the Press, along with Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton. Complete transcript. Excerpt below:
GREGORY: Newt Gingrich -- conservative Republican, former House speaker -- why is this a vision that you support?
GINGRICH: Well, first of all, education is the number one factor in our future prosperity, it's the number one factor in national security and it's the number one factor in these young people having a decent future. I agree with Al Sharpton, this is the number one civil right of the 21st century.
So if you -- if the president has shown real leadership -- which he has. This is, a lot of places we fight. On this one he has said every parent should know whether the school's good. Every student should have transparency about a results. Every parent should have the right to choose a charter school. Now, I -- I would go further. I'd like to have a Pell Grant for K through 12. But this is a huge step for this president to take.
GREGORY: Can we just take a minute to explain how a charter school works?
GINGRICH: Well, Arne knows more than I do about this. But basically, a charter school operates within a framework of direct public funding but is allowed to be more innovative, have its own work rules, have its own model of activity, very often has a specialized focus. But do you want to expand on that for a second? Because you're the authority.
DUNCAN: I just want to say, as a country, we need more good schools. And good charter schools are a piece of the answer. Bad charter schools are a piece of the problem. But we've seen, in many historically underserved communities, charter schools being part of the answer, where students are getting great educations.
But as a country, our best schools are world class. We have a lot of schools in the middle. They're improving. What we have, though, is we have schools at the bottom where we're perpetuating poverty, we're perpetuating social failure. We have to stop doing that and we have to create options and opportunities for children and communities that have been underserved for far too long.
GREGORY: You want to pick up, though, on your opening thought.
GINGRICH: Yes. I -- I just want to give you one example that we all visited, because I think every American should understand there is no excuse for accepting failure. We visited the Mastery School in Philadelphia. The second most violent school in the city, 25th percentile in outcome. Three years ago the state became desperate, took over the school, turned it over to Mastery, which is a charter school system. Same building, same students.
Three years later, they're in the 86th percentile. And as one young man said to us, an 11th grader -- everyone in the 11th grade plans to go to college in this inner city, poor neighborhood. And one man said -- young man said to us, in the old school he fought because he was expected to. Now he doesn't fight, because it's not tolerated.
So there's no violence and real achievement. Every parent in the country should demand that their child be in a school of that caliber and that the change be now, not in five or 10 years.
GREGORY: Al Sharpton, why is this a vision you support?
SHARPTON: You know, I -- I was challenged by James Mtume, who's a music icon and talk show host, on why I and National Action Network, our group, was not dealing with education. It was a civil rights issue. When he showed me the data -- 55 percent of blacks get a diploma, 58 percent of Latinos, 78 percent of whites -- I looked at this achievement gap, which was almost identical to a 1954 when I was born, the year of Brown vs. Board of Education, and I said, "How are we ignoring this?"
Then, when I looked at the broader data, that we were -- in 1970, we were like 30 as a country, now we're 15 percent of the people in the world that is dealing with graduates. We are going backwards in a technological age as a country, and in my community we're getting inexperienced teachers, unequal education.
So if this means that we have to come together and make alliances to deal with the fact that almost half of the young people in my community are not even getting a high school diploma, I think the president is right.
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