Obama picks education secretary

UPDATED:

President-elect Barack Obama Tuesday nominated Arne Duncan, the head of the Chicago public schools for more than seven years, to be education secretary.

“When it comes to school reform, Arne is the most hands-on of hands-on practitioners,” Mr. Obama told a news conference at the Dodge Renaissance Academy in Chicago, a school that Mr. Duncan helped to overhaul.

Mr. Duncan, a onetime professional basketball player in Australia who occasionally shoots hoops with Mr. Obama, heads the third largest school district in the nation and, like the president-elect, is a graduate of Harvard University. He graduated magna cum laude in 1987.

“I did not select Arne because he’s one of the best basketball players I know,” Mr. Obama said.

The president-elect has put education at the top of his list of reform priorities, often arguing that ensuring better educational opportunities for the nation’s children goes hand in hand with turning around the recession-weighted economy. One of his aims in a jobs creation program is to modernize the nation’s schools.

“The public schools arent as good as they need to be,” he said, adding “it’s our job” to raise expectations about the schools for educators, parents and children.

“For Arne, school reform isnt just a theory in a book; it’s the cause of his life,” Mr. Obama said. “When faced with tough decisions, Arne doesn’t blink. He’s not beholden to any one ideology, and he doesn’t hesitate for one minute to do what needs to be done.”

Before he became superintendent of the Chicago public schools, Mr. Duncan worked for six years with the Ariel Education Initiative, which sought to create educational opportunities for inner-city students on Chicago’s South Side, where Mr. Obama has lived.

The president-elect said the country is “stuck in the same tired debates that have stymied our progress and left schools and parents to fend for themselves: Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform - all along failing to acknowledge that both sides have good ideas and good intentions.”

“We can’t continue like this. We need a new vision for the 21st century.”

This is a chance, Mr. Obama said, “to do something extraordinary for our nation’s schools.”

Mr. Obama, whose two young daughters will attend the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., said Mr. Duncan “worked tirelessly” to improve teacher performance, champion charter schools and shut poorly performing schools in Chicago.

He said he boosted the performance of children in the schools from 38 percent to 67 percent.

“The gains in Chicago have been twice as big as in the rest of the state,” he said.

Reforming schools and “holding teachers accountable” for their classroom achievements are “precisely the goals to which Arne Duncan has devoted his life,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Duncan, he said, “is not a creature of Washington. That’s not where he cut his teeth.”

In brief remarks, Mr. Duncan said that when you focus on basics like reading and math, when you embrace innovative new approaches to learning and when you create a professional climate that attracts great teachers, you can make a difference for children.