I sat down last week in Washington with Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, and Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor and current Purdue University president, after they had met with several dozen chief executives of big companies to talk about education. Their meeting was at the office of the Business Roundtable, the corporate lobbying group, and joining us for the conversation was John Engler, the former Michigan governor who runs the Business Roundtable.

Mr. Duncan is a Democrat, of course, and Mr. Daniels and Mr. Engler are Republicans. But they all sympathize with many of the efforts of the so-called education reform movement. I asked them whether the country’s education system was really in crisis and what mistakes school reformers had made. A lightly edited version of the first part of our conversation follows; the second part is being published on Economix on Thursday.

Leonhardt: You always hear we’re in crisis. But what is the bad news, and what is the good news, and are we making any progress?

Duncan: I do think we have a crisis.  I do feel tremendous urgency.  

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For more on these topics, there is a video of my interview with Mr. Duncan at The Times Center in New York last week.