Obama's Secretary of Education: Arne Duncan

[Lunar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_Duncan



Tomorrow, at a school in the Chicago area, President-Elect Barack Obama will announce his choice to lead the Department of Education, and education insiders, citing the Obama transition team, say it's Arne Duncan, the CEO of schools there.

A senior transition official confirms that Obama plans to nominate Duncan.

Duncan has run Chicago schools for seven years and has become friendly with Obama. A 6 foot 5 inch tall Harvard grad and former Australian professional basketball player, he's managed the political hat trick of winning praise from the education reform community, the unions, and is well-liked by parents, too.

He's worked in the trenches as No Child Left Behind became law, and has had some success in closing failed schools and improving student performance. Last week, outgoing Education Secretary Margaret Spellings met with Duncan and gave him her blessing.
Critics say he's a "corporate" type who favors metrics over actual knowledge about how children learn, but the American Federation of Teachers praises his management style. He's beloved by charter schools advocates.

Like Obama, Duncan favors merit pay for teachers and administrators, but he's been cautious about pushing the concept too far without input from teachers' unions.

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/obamas_ed_pick_set_to_drop_tom.php

[Lunar]

That makes HOW MANY of Obama's top officials that are former Basketball stars/players?  A half-dozen?!

The pickup games after cabinet meetings will be RIDIC

[Lunar]

What non-basketball-related qualifications does he have?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/nobody-better-than-arne-duncan/

Freakonomics readers will remember Arne as the hero of our chapter on teacher cheating. He was head of the Chicago Public Schools when Brian Jacob and I were investigating how teachers and administrators were doctoring standardized test sheets.

With seemingly nothing to gain and much to lose, Arne embraced our results, even allowing us to do audit testing to confirm our hypotheses. Eventually, a handful of teachers were fired.

Since then, I’ve interacted with Arne a few times, and in a variety of settings. I always walk away dazzled. He is smart as hell and his commitment to the kids is remarkable. If you wanted to start from scratch and build a public servant, Arne would be the end product.

About five years ago, I joked with him that he was not even 40 years old and he had the second-best job in education. He had nowhere to go but down, since the only better job would be secretary of education.

For all his accomplishments improving schools, perhaps even more remarkable are his accomplishments on the basketball court: he and his buddies have won the national Hoop It Up Three-On-Three basketball championship on multiple occasions.

[Lunar]

"If charter schools work let’s try that," Obama said. "Let’s not be clouded by ideology when it comes to figuring out what helps our kids."

[Lunar]

"If charter schools work let’s try that," Obama said. "Let’s not be clouded by ideology when it comes to figuring out what helps our kids."

God bless him.

Indeed.

I bolded that because I got in some heated arguments about whether Obama supported vouchers, and it seems post-election he is very much open to it.  I mean, with the financial crisis, I don't expect Obama to be spending any political capital at all on education, but maybe in his second term...

Duncan seems nifty since he isn't adverse to closing failing schools and firing bad teachers if he can openly catch them, while at the same time he seems to enjoy the good graces of the teachers unions.  I would actually prefer someone, on principle, that the teachers unions hated, but that might not be pragmatic.  Teacher's unions seem obsessed with the status quo, which makes them effectively anti-children since the status quo is unacceptable.  I'd be fine with paying teachers a lot more, but they'd have to actually deliver and not just be slackers on tenure like most of the people I've encountered.

[Lunar]

but they'd have to actually deliver and not just be slackers on tenure like most of the people I've encountered.

What bist your job, Lunar?

bist?

And, I may have been exaggerating.

[Lunar]

then I bist a student at a unibirstity

[Lunar]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/16/gay-high-school-could-be_n_151458.html

David Brody of CBNNews has a post up describing on possible point of contention between religious conservatives and President-elect Barack Obama's pick for the Department of Education, Arne Duncan: his support for Pride Campus, a proposal for a Chicago public school that would be "deliberately welcoming of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens." Pride Campus, which was a concept designed by the faculty of Chicago's Social Justice High School, was intended to address the shortfall in performance among LGBT teens by offering an environment that would not be...you know, hostile to their existence.