U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan minces no words when she talks about the need to reform K-12 education in America.

For her that means closing the achievement gap for low-income and minority students but also addressing the education gap between U.S. students and those in other industrialized nations.

Hagan, a first-term Senate Democrat who served 10 years in the N.C. Senate, is working with some of her moderate colleagues to revamp No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era legislation that sets rigid goals and punishes schools for failure. The Greensboro native said she wants to give individual schools greater flexibility to address achievement inequities.

Hagan said she also wants to see U.S. schools put more emphasis on science, technology, education and math. She noted that among 34 top industrialized nations, the United States ranks 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.

On a recent visit to Charlotte she sat with Qcitymetro.com to discuss her thoughts on education. Below is an edited transcript from that interview.

Q. Education, for the most part, is a state and local issue. What role do you see the federal government playing?
“We know that a strong economy is going to depend on an educated workforce, so we’ve got to be focused on this. If we were 25th in the world in basketball, we’d be serious about what we’re going to do about it. We’ve got to be looking at STEM – science technology, education and math. Those are the jobs of the future and we need to have an educated workforce. The president was in a middle school recently and one of the things he talked about was when kids graduate from high school they need to be ready for college or a career. I think that’s where the federal government can help, with setting some overall policy goals with some incentive money to match that.

Q. What do you make of the schools situation in Charlotte, especially as it relates to achievement and diversity?
We need to have diversity in our school systems. I’m a strong believer in that. I want to focus on turning around any low-performing schools. We should not have a school, no matter where it’s located, being a dropout school. That’s unacceptable. That’s why when I say equity in resources, we need to have the best and the brightest teachers there. First of all you need a strong principal. I’ve walked into a lot of schools, and you can almost tell immediately what kind of principal is in that school.

Q. Teaching is not the safe profession it once was. Between layoffs and other threats, some might say teachers are under assault.
First of all, I think we need to respect our teachers. They have an extremely hard job, and it’s one of the most important jobs in the nation, along with parents. But I think there is a need for an accountability structure. There needs to be a system in place where teachers know what’s expected. If they are going to be held accountable, then they need to understand what the formulas are. And it should be based on student progress. So we need to look at the accountability models that are out there.

Q. Are you in favor of programs such as Teach for America?
I’m very supportive of Teach for America. I think it’s a great program. I think some of the best principals we have right now were Teach for America students. We need to have innovation, and we need to have lateral entries so that someone who’s getting ready to retire at Duke Energy or wants to move to become a teacher, there ought to be a much easier way to get someone like that into the science field.

Q. That probably won’t make some current teachers too happy.
Well, I’m sorry. I respect the teachers. I have great respect for the teachers. But a couple of years ago when I was a state senator, that year we graduated in the schools of education in North Carolina two people who had a specialty in physics. About a year or two later, only one of those teachers was still teaching. You look at physics in North Carolina today, we need teaches who are well versed, and if they are not coming through the education system, it must be a supply-and-demand issue. Where are you going to get them? If we want to not be 25th in math and 14th in science, we have to have a quality of teachers.

Q. Why is the achievement gap so hard to close?
First of all, it starts in early education. If you study the brain, so much of what happens prenatally, so much of what happens in those first three years of life, makes a huge difference. So we have kids coming into kindergarten who are already two years behind. They can catch up but it’s a long process. I think you have to look at early education. You have to look at kindergarten. And the school system can’t do it all. That’s why you’ve got to have the strong parenting programs. You’ve got to have the social services. When I first ran for office 12 or 14 years ago, I thought it was all about the teachers. I didn’t realize the importance that the psychologists and the school counselor played.

Q. All of these things cost money at a time of rising deficits, and your GOP colleagues now control the House.
We know that we have serious debt and serious deficit issues, but I believe we’ve got to keep investing in education and innovation and infrastructure and research and development. That’s the seed corn. We cannot neglect our future by not investing in those three areas. But at the same time we’ve got to take serious measure to look at the debt load we’re carrying on our country right now -- half of it being owned by China.
 

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