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Obama Praises His Education-Secretary Choice for Relying on Data to Improve Schools

Ohanian Comment:
This writer claims The choice met with
virtually unanimous acclaim. . . .
Acclaim from whom (besides Margaret Spelling)?



• not Chicago teachers


• not Chicago parents


• not from anybody who knows anything about
  education at the grassroots level


Nobody asked a Chicago teacher/parent who is
busy scraping the "Another teacher for Obama"
sticker off her bumper.

Obama's choice is another in the line of
corporate crony appointees in his cabinet. As
George Schmidt has been documenting in
Substance, ever since Duncan's
appointment by Mayor Daley in 2001, "Duncan has
presided over more 'no bid' contracts from
contractors (for everything from buildings and
computer hardward and software to charter
schools) in the history of the City of Chicago
and its public schools."

"Since Duncan became CEO, he has eliminated
2,000 black teachers from Chicago's teaching
force, undoing decades of desegregation and
affirmative action in the name of 'school
reform."

And more. Subscribe to Substance. Send $16 to
Substance
5132 W. Berteau Avenue
Chicago, IL 60641-1440

Arm yourself with information. Join the
resistance.

Data is useless when it is, like DIBELS,
garbage in/garbage out.

We need to be vocal about the fact that the
Data Emperor has no clothes.

By Paul Basken

Washington

President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he
values his choice for education secretary, Arne
Duncan, for his dogged determination to use
data to drive his decisions about how he sought
to improve the Chicago Public Schools.

“When faced with tough decisions, Arne doesn’t
blink,” Mr. Obama said as he presented Mr.
Duncan, the chief executive of Chicago's
public-school system, as his choice to run the
Education Department. “He’s not beholden to any
one ideology, and he doesn’t hesitate for one
minute to do what needs to be done.”

The choice met with virtually unanimous
acclaim, even among Republicans and teachers'-
union leaders who chafed at some of Mr.
Duncan’s plans to overhaul Chicago's schools
but have said they appreciated the respect he
showed them in the process of finding
compromise.

National higher-education leaders joined in the
praise, saying they hoped Mr. Duncan’s record
in Chicago of emphasizing cooperation over
confrontation will also characterize his
relations with colleges when he gets to
Washington.

“He demonstrated effective leadership at the K-
through-12 level and has a clear appreciation
for, and connection to, higher education,” said
William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University
System of Maryland. “So it just seems to me
that it’s a great choice.”

If he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Mr.
Duncan, 44, would be the ninth U.S. secretary
of education. Like most of his predecessors in
that job, Mr. Duncan has gained the bulk of his
experience in elementary and secondary
education. He has led the Chicago public-school
system, the third largest in the nation, for
seven years.

Focus on Children's Education

Mr. Duncan made no specific reference to higher
education when he appeared with Mr. Obama in
Chicago on Tuesday. The two delivered brief
remarks at the Dodge Renaissance Academy, a
public school that was considered failing but
that Mr. Duncan helped transform into an
academy where children are taught by candidates
seeking advanced degrees in education.

Mr. Obama made only a passing reference to
higher education in his introduction of Mr.
Duncan at the event. The president-elect
mentioned his belief that “college degrees must
be within the reach of all.”

The focus on elementary- and secondary-school
issues mostly reflects political reality, said
Michael J. Petrilli, who served as an associate
assistant deputy secretary in the Education
Department during President Bush’s first term.

The federal government may have a greater
policy responsibility in the higher-education
arena than in the elementary- and secondary-
education realm, but voters are mostly
concerned about education as it involves
elementary and secondary schools, Mr. Petrilli
said. And politicians respond to that.

“Maybe the higher-education community should
look at this as a compliment,” said Mr.
Petrilli, who is now vice president for
national programs and policy at the Thomas B.
Fordham Foundation, a Washington policy-study
group. “Most Americans think that the higher-
education system works pretty well.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama emphasized his pride in
Mr. Duncan, a personal friend and partner in
pickup basketball, for improvements in test
scores seen in Chicago schools since he took
over in 2001. The proportion of elementary-
school students meeting federally mandated
testing standards rose to 67 percent from 38
percent in that period, the city’s dropout rate
declined every year Mr. Duncan was at the helm,
and students in Chicago's public schools
increased their scores on the ACT during Mr.
Duncan's tenure at a rate that is double the
rate of improvements across the state, the
president-elect said.

Mr. Duncan will be part of a system “where we
hold our schools, teachers, and government
accountable for results,” Mr. Obama said.

Hope for a Conciliatory Approach

Admirers of the data-driven approach in Chicago
include the current education secretary,
Margaret Spellings. She backed such strategies
at all levels of education, including calling
for nationwide standards to judge the
performance of colleges.

“Arne has advanced policies to hold schools
accountable for providing all our nation’s
students—regardless of race, income level, or
background—with a high-quality education,” Ms.
Spellings said in a written statement. “His
credibility and expertise will be invaluable as
we continue working to equip students with the
knowledge and skills they need to succeed and
to make higher education affordable and
accessible to all.”

Anne D. Neal, who promoted Ms. Spellings’s push
for standards-based assessments of colleges as
a member of the National Advisory Committee on
Institutional Quality and Integrity, the
federal advisory body that reviews the
performance of accrediting agencies, also
endorsed the nomination.

“He’s shown a willingness to innovate and to
try new things such as pay for performance for
teachers and administrators,” said Ms. Neal,
president of the American Council of Trustees
and Alumni.

Mr. Duncan is a “safe” choice for Mr. Obama in
that he is neither a defender of the
educational establishment nor “a radical,” said
Charles Miller, chairman of the Commission on
the Future of Higher Education, which Ms.
Spellings formed as a way of prodding colleges
to prove the value they provide to students.

Mr. Duncan’s Harvard background, however,
“gives me pause,” Mr. Miller said, “mostly
because people with personal experience at the
elite universities seldom come to Washington
with an understanding of the plight of the rest
of higher education. They almost always are
defenders of the system as it is and not very
well versed in the shortcomings and dangers.”

College leaders said the support of Ms.
Spellings doesn’t necessarily mean Mr. Duncan
will try to pick up where she left off in her
largely unsuccessful bid to establish a method
of comparing student performance across higher
education.

“You can be data-driven without necessarily
thinking you have to do standardized tests,”
Mr. Kirwan said.

Even if Mr. Duncan is inclined to seek a system
that would allow college performance to be
compared nationally, he will most likely take
seriously the concerns of opponents to the
approach if his record in Chicago is any guide,
Mr. Petrilli said. Some of the other school
leaders who had been reported to be under
consideration for the nomination as education
secretary have confronted their teachers'
unions directly, but Mr. Duncan has emphasized
the need for finding common ground, Mr.
Petrilli said.

“Arne Duncan is like his new boss, in that they
both look to bring people together rather than
to create division and to point out
differences,” Mr. Petrilli said. ”He’s not
going to go out of his way to antagonize the
higher-education community. I think he’ll work
very hard listening to their concerns, and
where he might disagree with them, I suspect
he’ll do so in a way that will be quite
conciliatory.”

Student-loan company officials hold out similar
hopes as they face a year in which Congress and
the Obama administration might seek to overhaul
lenders' role in the system of federally
subsidized loans.

Brett E. Lief, president of the National
Council of Higher Education Loan Programs,
which represents companies involved in student
lending, said Mr. Duncan "seems precise."

"He seems to evaluate every policy on a data
basis,” Mr. Lief said.

Mr. Obama advocated eliminating the bank-based
system for distributing student-loan money
during his campaign. Under Mr. Duncan, the
Education Department may “be inclined to listen
to a reasoned approach,” Mr. Lief said.

That's “all that’s necessary,” he said. “A fair
chance.”



— Paul Basken
Chronicle of Higher Education
2008-12-16


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