I guess today Arnie Duncan has played professional basketball, ran the Chicago public schools for

over seven years, and was the U.S. Secretary of Education under Barack Obama. I suspect to be

surprised to hear, though, where you'll find him these days. He's on the streets of Chicago running

an organization called Kred that's giving young men who everyone else has given up on, the chance to

build meaningful lives. Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt.

I've known Arnie and admired him for 20 years now. We first met under difficult circumstances

when I discovered there was widespread teacher cheating in the Chicago public schools where

Arnie was in charge. More recently, the last three years, totally by chance, Arnie has been my

next door neighbor. So, compared to my typical interview, I have a much better sense for things

my head. But I do think Arnie is in for some surprises because I have a couple stories about him

that I've never told before, and I can't wait to hear his reactions.

So, you were Secretary of Education under Barack Obama, and after you left that job, you wrote a

memoir entitled How Schools Work, and the first line of that book is Education Runs On Lies.

And I cannot imagine a Secretary of Education other than you ever saying something like that

publicly. What do you mean by that? Well, I always try and listen to what people say, Steve,

but I always watch what they do. And when there's a disconnect between what I hear and what I see,

what I witness, that's disconcerting. We all say we value education, but if you look at where we

are, it's United States, relative to other nations, I always break it down. Early childhood,

K-12, higher education, we're top 10 and nothing. So, as much as we would say, we value education,

care about it, we don't invest, we don't innovate, we don't hold ourselves accountable.

A second example related, obviously, is that we all would say we care about teachers. If you

survey an American public, 99% of us would say teachers are really important, but we don't value

...