Mr. Duncan is currently the superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools. With roughly 410,000 students, it is the third-largest district in the country. By comparison, you’d have to combine the enrollment in the 30-largest districts in Minnesota to approach that number.
What does the new secretary think about some of the key issues in education?
The biggest issue facing federal lawmakers is No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Duncan has taken all sides of the issue. He supports the concept of the law, which appeals to the law’s backers. But he also favors giving states more flexibility in how they comply with it, which appeals to school district managers as some political conservatives. He also favors doubling the money (currently $28 billion) that the federal government spends on the law. That appeals to teacher unions.
NCLB requires schools to make progress towards universal proficiency by 2014, but states have the power to create their own proficiency standards. Some have dumbed-down the standards, which has helped more schools comply with the law. Duncan advocates a national standard, but that would take the federal government further into the education business, which is not a wise idea.
To his credit, Duncan has been a reformer in teacher pay and recruitment. Some Chicago schools participate in a pilot program to give teachers bonuses tied to student performance. That’s the good news. He also has, however, pushed Chicago teachers to get certificated by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Teachers who go through that program get a pay increase, but whether it actually increases their effectiveness is an open question.
Duncan has also been a fan of Teach for America, a national program that places liberal arts graduates in urban schools. Over 300 of its graduates, whose training is a refreshing alternative to the often stultifying schools of education, have taught in Chicago Public Schools.
Duncan has also managed to close some failing schools, sometimes reopening them as magnet or charter schools. He is also a fan of charter schools generally, which is another bright spot in his resume.
Duncan favors two other reforms that could pay dividends down the road. The first is to create smaller schools, which have been shown to boost student achievement.
The second reform is “weighted student funding,” a method of budgeting that cuts out some school district overhead by giving more responsibility to school principals.
Duncan seems to be a person who tries to appeal to each party by giving them something they want. That’s an expensive approach to making headway in education reform, but if we’re lucky, he may, in a Democratic administration, be able to pull of something along the lines of a “Nixon to China” experience.
Still, his influence, for good or ill, will be limited by the permanent bureaucracy in the department, the Congress, his boss, and the various other players in education.
