An interesting set of mixed but mostly positive reviews for Arne Duncan, Obama's choice for education secretary, from Chicago (from Chicago?? Well, obviously the man is corrupt and had to pay Blago to get named to this post!). Duncan is apparently neither in the pocket of the teachers' unions nor their sworn enemy, which is a comparative rarity in the American education world.
Here's a nuanced take by Rick Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, who knows a lot about these things:
Moreover, as a big advocate of pre-K programs in Chicago, he recognizes that poverty is the biggest source of the achievement gap, not teacher unions. As Ezra Klein notes, Duncan doesn't represent "Switzerland" in the Democrats' education wars; instead, he seems to be someone who will be able to synthesize the best elements of competing factions. As Duncan moves from Chicago to the national stage, it will be interesting to see whether he will take on a big issue that urban superintendents have limited control over: economic segregation...
...Duncan and Obama are both strong supporters of public school choice, including charter schools, which suggests that they understand the need to give students stuck in bad schools the chance to transfer out. But what will be the role of magnet schools – public schools with special themes that are meant to attract economically and racially diverse student bodies?...
...[A new study] notes that twice as many students (2 million) attend magnet schools as charter schools (1 million) and yet the federal government currently provides $200 million to charter schools and just $100 million to magnet schools. Obama wants to double charter school funding to $400 million. Will he also substantially increase magnet school funding, as Sen. John Edwards suggested during the primaries?
Important questions. There is of course a limit to how much education policy can do to counter the effects of economic segregation; both the education system and the police department are left to try to cope with the effects of poverty, and the wanting acculturation of children raised in dire poverty, as best they can.
That said, charter schools and magnet schools do help, so Kahlenberg raises a challenging point. Another point I'd make, which Kahlenberg hints at: One of the shameful, undertold stories of American over the past 20 years is the re-segregation of our nation's schools.
This has happened for a number of reasons, but ranking high among them is a series of right-wing Supreme Court (and other court) decisions that have nullified integration efforts over the years. Last year's SCOTUS (that's the high court's acronym, get it?) decision outlawing the Louisville and Seattle integration plans was truly radical and awful: those two cities were pursuing voluntary integration plans. The communities in question had agreed to pursue integration not as a matter of binding law or quotas or anything like that, just in pursuit of their conception of the common good. And this Supreme Court said that even that was out of bounds.
So there's a lot of work to do here, starting with the schools themselves and leading to the courts. Many Americans literally risked life and limb to integrate schools 30 to 50 years years ago. But we did make progress. Now we're going backwards.
