U.S. Secretary of Education Arne S. Duncan ’86 did not mince words as he discussed the shortcomings of the No Child Left Behind Act.

“Under No Child Left Behind, nothing changed,” Duncan said. “Everyone was labeled a failure and there were schools labeled failures that were actually improving.”

Speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on Friday, Duncan fleshed out the Race to the Top program—a $4.35 billion initiative to close gaps in national educational achievement by taking a data-driven approach to education policy and reform.

“I absolutely see education as the civil rights issue of our generation,” he said to a packed audience that included University President Drew G. Faust, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, newly elected Cambridge Mayor David P. Maher, and 300 others watching via telecast. “Children without those options are basically condemned to poverty.”

Duncan, who grew up in the diverse Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park where his mother ran an after-school tutoring program for under-privileged children, said he had witnessed gross inequities between his education at the University of Chicago Lab School and the education of his neighbors in other schools.

This experience, Duncan said, spurred his interest in education reform—which has emphasized “rejecting the status quo” and which, he acknowledged, has sometimes led to criticism.

“Let’s have an honest national conversation,” said Duncan, who has been lauded for his previous work as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. “Let’s all move outside our comfort zones—management, unions, everybody—and say, ‘We need to better serve children.’”

Duncan pointed to a national dropout rate of 27 percent as an indication that sweeping reforms are needed in K-12 education. He also emphasized early childhood education, college prepatory coursework, and the use of transparent data collection to track student progress.

“We want to level the playing field for children entering kindergarten,” he said. “We need to have college-ready, career-ready standards.”

Faust said she personally got to know Duncan during his time on the Harvard Board of Overseers, the University’s second-highest governing body.

“We are really proud that one of our own is in the leadership at this time,” Faust said while introducing Duncan. “We are seeing a move towards the very important incorporation of experimental and data-driven approaches that recognize and reward success.”

But GSE student Todd H. Elkin said that Duncan provided a vague answer to his question about the prioritization of the arts in Race to the Top.

“He placed arts in the context of a lot of different things,” Elkin said after the speech. “It was really hard to tell from his answer what specifically was their plan for the arts.”

GSE student Kendra L. Krause said she was not concerned that Duncan’s agenda could short-change non-academic disciplines.

“His talk at the end about wanting to develop the whole child was evident throughout the speech,” Krause said. “He was addressing every type of child, at every grade level.”

—Staff writer Laura G. Mirviss can be reached at lmirviss@fas.harvard.edu.