President-elect Obama today tapped Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan as his secretary of education, selecting an urban schools chief who has little background in public higher education but who emerged as a consensus pick to help bridge gaps among K-12 factions.
In selecting Duncan, the president-elect is choosing an inner-city chief who has closed low-performing schools and championed merit pay, winning kudos from reform-minded researchers. But teacher unions also praised the choice, noting his support for major increases in federal investments.
“This could be the beginning of a promising new period for public education in this country,” said Dennis Van Roekel, National Education Association president. The union leader praised Duncan for telling Congress that the No Child Left Behind Act needs a doubling of federal funds within five years. NCLB is underfunded by $71 billion, the union says.
His nomination also drew praise from the American Federation of Teachers and the chief Illinois’ state teachers union. But the secretary-designate is not a popular choice in all quarters; the Network of Teacher Activist Groups, a coalition of grassroots groups, drew 4,000 signatures on an online petition opposing him for promoting “privatized, corporatized and anti-democratic schools.”
The network instead had favored Linda Darling-Hammond, a researcher recognized for her work to promote education improvement through teacher support and professional development. Darling-Hammond, who is African American, has directed the president-elect’s education policy work group, and many expect her to continue playing a role in Obama’s education policy.
For the past seven years, Duncan, 44, has led the Chicago system, the third largest in the nation as well as significantly diverse: 46.5% of its students are Black while 39 percent are Latino. Duncan, who is White, was himself educated in private schools: the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where Obama’s daughters attended, and as a magna cum laude graduate in sociology from Harvard University in 1987.
