Arne Duncan Chosen as Education Secretary

Barack Obama has picked Arne Duncan, currently the superintendent of schools in Chicago, to be his Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan is seen by many as a school reformer, albeit one with mixed results according to Catalyst Chicago.

“Overall high school graduation rates improved under Duncan (up to 55 percent from 47 percent), as did college-going rates (up to 50 percent from 44 percent).

“Also improved is the district’s accountability around making sure students go to college. Duncan created the Office of Post-secondary Education and charged it with tracking students after they graduate. CPS is one of the few urban districts that partners with the National Student Clearinghouse, a data warehouse, so it can keep tabs on its graduates. And this past year, Duncan personally pushed principals to get more students to fill out financial aid eligibility forms.

“But even with these modest improvements, fewer than a third of the students who were freshmen in 2003 and graduated four years later enrolled in college.

“Individual schools, particularly neighborhood high schools like Marshall in the impoverished West Garfield Park community, have not done much better under Duncan’s leadership. Marshall’s graduation rate, for instance, is 40 percent, up only four points; and its college-going rate actually declined 4 points to 31 percent.

“Meanwhile, district-wide high school test scores remain stagnant-only 31 percent of juniors meet state standards-leading many to question whether CPS graduates can succeed in college or in the job market. All but two of the 10 lowest performing high schools in 2001 lost ground by 2008. “

During his seven years as Chicago school superintendent, Arne Duncan has worked to reform Chicago’s notoriously poor performing high schools. He has closed down a number of failing schools and has created in their place a number of smaller, easier to manage charter schools, often with no unions and fewer regulations. He has fired teaching and administrative staffs wholesale and replaced them with new management. He has tried to infuse classrooms with new curriculum and materials.

These reforms sound good, but as one can see from the results, implementation has been somewhat spotty. Few students who are displaced from closed, failing schools actually wind up in the newer, charter schools. They tend, instead, to wind up in other, failed schools.

While Arne Duncan is a school reformer, occasionally willing to buck the teachers unions, there is likely one reason he was picked by Barack Obama as Education Secretary, besides the fact that Arne Duncan is an old friend of Barack Obama from Chicago. Arne Duncan, unlike other school reformers, such as < ahref="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1862444,00.html">Michelle Rhee who runs the Washington DC school district, is not in favor of school vouchers.

School vouchers are often seen as the sword across the Gordian Knot of all that ails public schools. Under a school voucher system, every student would get a voucher that can be used to pay for any school his or her parents choose, private, religious, or public. The idea is that this voucher system would cause competition among schools, which depend upon student attendance for funding, and force them to reform and change. The idea is very popular, even among traditional Democratic constituencies such as African Americans. Michelle Rhee, for example, has run a pilot voucher program in the DC district with some success. Despite that fact, the Congress is threatening to withdraw funding from that program.

The teachers unions bitterly oppose school vouchers and, since they contribute money to the Democratic Party, so does the Democratic Party establishment. School vouchers tend to transfer power away from education bureaucracies and to students and their parents. Therefore education bureaucracies oppose school voucher systems in the spirit of self preservation.

Politicians such as Barack Obama do not entirely oppose school choice. His daughters will attend an elite private school in Washington, catering to the political elite, in the Spring. It is a rational choice which is denied to most Americans, due to economic circumstance and the resistance of education bureaucracies to change. The appointment of Arne Duncan to Secretary of Education is not likely to alter that in any way.

Sources: Duncan’s Track Record, Sarah Karp and John Myers, Catalyst Chicago, November, 2008

Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenge, Amanda Ripley, Time, November 26th, 2008