Education Secretary Announced

After more than a month of speculation and debate, President-elect Barack Obama finally announced that Arne Duncan will be secretary of education in his administration. 

Duncan, CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) since 2001, has never been a teacher but has been deeply involved with education for many years, beginning when he was playing professional basketball in Australia and working with children who were wards of the state. Once returning from Australia, the Harvard graduate became director of the Ariel Education Initiative before joining CPS in 1998.

Duncan has earned a reputation as a reformer who backed charter schools and paying students for grades, and he supported a failed proposal for a gay-and lesbian-centered high school. Despite angering some people with his reforms, Duncan has managed to get nothing but praise from teachers' unions for working with them instead of engaging in constant battles.

Obama faced a tough choice in appeasing the more traditional unions and the reform-minded generation of educators, and Duncan seems to be a good fit to placate both sides. He's a progressive who pushes for reform, but he also works closely with the unions and their allies.

Do you think Arne Duncan is a good choice for education secretary? 

Comments

[Janet from Huntington Beach]

Finally an educator to be in charge of education. He has strong credentials and with his record of success in Chicago, I am hopeful he will take the same strategies to the national arena.

My one concern is his announced support of NCLB. Yes, we need accountability, but testing has become the central focus of education in America. We need to remember that if we do not educate the WHOLE child, all the great test results in the world will be worth little in the day-to-day lives of individuals.

[georgia squires]

My concerned is that evaluation of teacher competance be conducted by highly skilled administrators. How is that to be assured?

[Sheron]

In response to the comment, "Finally an educator to be in charge of education." I'm not clear. What supports that claim? Is it because he is the CEO of Chicago PS? He has never been a teacher. I don't think he can relate to the intricacies of a day in the classroom. Anyone can pick up a book from ASCD, push the contents and claim reform.

I'm not too thrilled about this choice. This is the first Obama choice I'm not too thrilled with. I'm wondering if this is really change or more of the same. I'm an Obama supporter, but I've got to wait and see about this one. The bright side: at least he didn't choose Joel Klien!

[Arnold Lindaman]

I was pleased with Mr. Duncan's appointment although Ms. Rhee from Wash. D.C. would have been a better choice. Second, I do not like the impression that the announcement was made so late in the game. It appears like it is not as important as the earlier appointments in the Obama the administration. I wanted to hear support for a more centralized thrust in developing a core curriculum (including the arts) that would be common to all districts. With the patchwork curriculum that we have it is difficult to identify where and when educational delays began. Local control needs to critically reviewed in the curriculum area. Will Mr. Duncan do that? Many countries that achieve better than we have a national sequence in their curricular skill areas like math and science.

[Albert R. Wight]

My concern is his support of NCLB. I believe in accountability, but not the focus on tests and teaching to the test that NCLB promotes, and a curriculum similar to back to the basics we experienced years ago. Instead, we need a focus not only on the whole child but on preparation for the kind of world our children will face when they leave school. NCLB does not do this. It is not clear to me that Duncan has this understanding.

[Susan Wuori]

He sounds like an innovator which is what we need. In addition I am glad we finally have someone in Washington who has actually worked in Education.

[Gregory MacDougall]

At first I thought that this choice was a bit provincial. After having read about the man and his work I can see why he was choosen. I am very excited!

[a joyful educator]

I have the same doubts about Mr. Duncan which I have just read in the above comments. I have been en educator for over 43 years and also have a dream of building a school to correct all the things I've seen in my era of service. Would Mr. Obama consider someone like me a prospect?

[Mr. B.]

Arne Duncan is an excellent choice. He brings a perspective that someone who came up through the teaching ranks cannot, they would be too tied to the nuts and bolts conundrums that teachers face daily, to make decisions objectively. His background style seems to be exactly what the education community and the nation needs. His support of NCLB is appropriate, it has done a lot of good for non-traditionally served students. It MUST be reworked to eliminate the ineffective assessment/AYP system which is handicapping our students through handicapping our teachers.

Let's just hope he has had no contact with Blagoyevich.

[Robyn L. Class]

No, I'm not optimistic about this selection. I wish Obama had picked a qualified educator like Dr. Darling-Hammond.

[Tom in Harrisburg]

Mr. Duncan sounds like a good choice- if he has been able to stay clean in the cesspool of politics that Chicago is turning out to be. The Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Daley, is under investigation, and the governor has been implicated in corruption. What is the relationship between these offices and the leader of Chicago's schools? I guess we'll see.

[Patricia Kokinos]

Duncan is probably a brilliant choice for Obama, allowing him not to take "sides" in the trumped-up "reformers" vs. "unions" culture war. He appears to be able to ask questions, listen, and collaborate and, most importantly, to take action--something we have needed for decades in public ed.

I am encouraged that Darling-Hammond is heading the new administration's policy review team, another cool move that is going to bring the REAL education agenda to the forefront of Obama's reforms, i.e., "authentic assessment," scaling up the small schools movement, and other concepts that Darling-Hammond has always supported. We DO need fundamental change in the system, and perhaps Obama has serendipitously put together a strong team to do that: Duncan the politician and changemaker plus Darling-Hammond the expert!

Well, I can dream, can't I? Patricia Kokinos, www.ChangeTheSchools.com

[Nick Ardinger]

I think he's fine to advance a neoliberal agenda that views education as the instrumental gains of job skills for those deemed economically valuable to the global city. I don't think he does anything to advance Obama's (supposed) emphasis on restoring the people to American democracy--but all that web-based hype of grassroots community organizing isn't reflected anywhere else in his cabinet picks, so I can't say I'm particularly surprised.

And I can't say that anyone who has to hire a "chief academic officer" can be considered "an educator in charge of education". He's a businessman whose job is to make other businessmen happy about the state of education. His, at best, apathy, if not downright antipathy to democratic involvement (through local school councils or other community organizations who aren't in line with Daley's view of gentrification and neoliberal modernization of Chicago) doesn't bode well for an educational system that will prepare democratic citizens. But if you care only about if the next generation will be able to earn enough to pay the crushing tax burden that they'll be forced to pay to support us in our dotage, then by all means, he's a fine choice (presuming the myth of everyone having "good jobs" doesn't ring hollow to you).

But really that's just saying more about Daley than Duncan. Anyone who really watches Chicago politics knows that all Duncan has had to do was be the smiling face on the Daley agenda. I have no idea what he would do if he could actually do what he wanted, or had to actually do the on-the-ground fighting necessary to make change among significant divergent actors.

But to call him a non-ideological choice (as if those who define "reform" by the number of teachers fired and schools closed--e.g., Time Magazine's fawning over Rhee--are free of ideology) is a misnomer and just evidence of the sloppiness of the corporate media who can't bother themselves to actually pay attention to education issues.

[Bruce Ardinger]

There does seem to be too much of the corporate about Mr. Duncan, of the love of a system that has fixed and obedient boundaries that are predictable and controllable, but we'll have to see how he does on his own. The "business" of education is really ignorance, recognizing it and finding a means of dealing with it. Unlike the corporate world and all those systems of education that attempt to model themselves on predictability of outcomes, education cannot select its material inputs. Teachers take the students that fit in the doors and seats. Nor do most teachers have any control over the resources they must use to convert those raw materials into finished "products." Finally, unlike the corporate world there is no fixed definition in our society of what those final, finished products are to look like. The aims of American education are incredibly diverse. If Mr. Duncan is to have any success with "making schools and teachers accountable," he will have to address the issues that all teachers deal with daily, and he has no direct knowledge or experience with what those issues are. This may be a fine learning opportunity for him before he becomes a teacher of the rest of us. Let's wish him the best.

[Bob Keeley]

I was a sub in the Chicago public schools for two years before landing my current position in one school. As such, I had the opportunity to see a lot of schools across the South Side and was able to compare them to two that I saw in the gentrifying areas of the North Side. Arne Duncan is not doing the same work in nor spreading the same resources to the inner-city schools that he is to those that he and the Mayor are show-casing.
The two men are developing strategies to draw the middle class back to the city and to hold those who would move to the suburbs. That is needed without a doubt in the city, but it is only half the problems that have to be addressed. Clearly too it is the half that a politician and city builder has on his plate.
It is not the half that the educator has to do and that the poor children in our society need.
Further, by not addressing the needs of the poorer schools, the Daley-Duncan (Note I believe that Duncan is in this duo the silent partner) strategy is not the best for the future of America's schools or for our children.
Arne Duncan grew up in a University atmosphere and went to the top schools. He may have done some volunteer work with poor kids, but he has no real experience either working with the poorer kid over a sustained time period or in any depth; also, no experience with the inner-city school nor with the faculties who serve these populations.
The agenda of Arne since he became the CPS head has been Daley's agenda and it is only secondarily about helping poor kids learn.
In my view, turning schools around does not start by throowing everyone out into the street in the "reconstitution" mode; it starts rather from within just like turning lives around must ultimately find and generate strength from within.
The Daley-Duncan program of starting new schools (Renaissance 2010) by cherry-picking the best educators and the best kids away from the neighborhood schools destroys the neighborhood school next door by pulling away top faculty and top kids. This leaves both schools hurt. The one gets the hype and extra resources and the PR brought to bear by the press and appearances of Daley-Duncan at the school; the other gets left to starve with decreasing resources.
Meanwhile, the records of the charter schools have not proven yet that they are answering the call. Some have gone broke; some have ripped off the public till; some have performed well. Few have reached the hype promised or hoped for.
As to the budgeting formula within the inner-city schools, the formula for staff assignment is based almost exclusively on children's attendance figures. Under the Duncan rule, when figures fall, there are death-like consequences that follow, namely that the school adult faculty and staff get cut.
This short-sighted formula needs to be re-thought. The formula should include providing extra help in those schools with student need rather than just cutting back faculty and staff when enrollment dips or falls.
My observation and impression across the school system that Arne directed the last several years is that his top schools got more resources to showcase themselves. These resources were pulled away from the lower performing scools and those with the most academic need.
This formula will not be a good one for the next four years of educational policy for the US.
In my view, Arne is a clue-less figurehead, a victim of his own Harvard education's deficiencies including its lack of consideration of the common person and lack of experience or understanding of the underserved student population. He and his hype which look great on camera has no depth to it.
He has a great smile and is probably a "good guy" but he has managed to fool everyone but the teachers, staff, parents and local administrators of the schools he has overlooked.
Thank you for this opportunity to comment.