Arne Duncan: Right for Education, or Just Obama’s Basketball Buddy?
Posted by: Baller-in-Chief in ArticlesHaving Barack Obama as your basketball buddy means you also have his ear.
If confirmed as secretary of education, Chicago’s Arne Duncan will likely toe-the-line on Obama initiatives as he did with all-powerful Chicago Mayor Daley. But we don’t know what Obama’s education strategy is yet.
Duncan’s been running a 600-school district where he’s brought down drop out rates and increased graduation rates, if marginally. He straddles the two ed factions: reformers who love accountability and those who want less teaching to the test and more focus on social development in the classroom.Since he’s never been an educator, there’s a collective moan here from teachers about Duncan as head honcho of schools nationwide. And some here in the windy city are glad to see him go. Callers to our show this morning hate him for ramming reform into neighborhood schools without enough community input.
Plenty of folks here believe Duncan didn’t go heavy-handed enough on the teachers’ union, one reason why Chicago still has one of the shortest school days in the country. What few would deny is that he did privatization well. He grabbed social entrepreneurs, what he calls a new generation of talent, and began picking off and overhauling one failing school after another in the famed Renaissance 2010 plan . Chicago’s supposed to create a 100 new schools by that date, and thanks to Duncan, the plan is well on target. Like NYC he’s rallied the business and foundation communities to step in and plunk down the bucks to fix schools when state funding has been stingy. (Illinois ranks 49th in state spending on schools)
Duncan sees education as a social justice issue. At an Obama fundraiser here right before the election he spoke side by side with two other strong contenders for the sec of ed job: Jon Schnur and Linda Darling-Hammond and he stole the show.
No Child Left Behind law up for renewal now and Duncan’s a big believer that data is important to find out which kids are not getting quality education and holding schools accountable for their performance. When we interviewed Duncan recently on where he stood on NCLB, he waffled. A lot of educators hate the law.
Charter school lovers are going to be happy with this choice. Just like Obama, Duncan wants to double the number of charter schools in the country. And charters are a work-around for unions. Chicago’s own local teachers union is meeting today to weigh-in on the Duncan decision.
If Obama got that 30 billion he wants to invest in the country’s school system Duncan would not plunk that down in the status quo, he’ll turn to the new generation of social entrepreneurs like he’s done here.
Has he got the smarts to do this job? As he put it “There are lots of exceptional people out there who are smarter than me who could do the job. We’ll need to bring in top managers to drive change. There are great ideas coming from outside Washington we need to listen to.”
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