EDITORIAL: Schooling Obama

OPINION:

“For years, we’ve talked our education problems to death in Washington, but we’ve failed to act. We can’t continue like this. It’s morally unacceptable for our children, and economically untenable for America.” He’s right. “We can’t continue like this.”

Uneducated Americans hurt America. But the president-elect is wrong about Washington’s failure to act. Washington acts, alright; it just takes the wrong actions.

In fact, when Washington acts on education problems the problems - the lack of bright young adults groomed to meet America’s labor needs - grow worse. And some Republican policies are as bad as some Democratic ones. That’s why it’s interesting reviewing the commentary regarding Mr. Obama’s pick. Is this more change we can believe in? Opinions vary.

President Bush’s education secretary, Margaret Spellings, called Mr. Duncan “a visionary leader and fellow reformer who cares deeply about students.”

Fordham Institute President Chester E. Finn Jr., whose insights have run on this newspaper’s opinion pages, said: “He’s a proven and committed and inventive education reformer, not tethered to the public-school establishment and its infinite interest groups, nor bedazzled by blandishments and commands from Washington. He’s earned his spurs in a huge and challenging school district, is a force for positive change nationally, has navigated Chicago politics, has stood up to Margaret Spellings, and manages, with all that, to be a thoughtful, affable and likeable guy.”

Michael J. Petrilli, Fordham’s vice president of national programs and policy, said Mr. Duncan, a supporter of the Bush No Child Left Behind Act, is unlikely to bring a “one size fits all” approach to Washington. We think that will certainly be a breath of fresh air amid Washington’s stifling education policy.

Here’s another: “I don’t know much about Arne Duncan, President-elect Obama’s choice to be Secretary of Education,” the Cato Institute’s executive vice president, David Boaz, said on his blog yesterday. “But I do note this: In seven years running the Chicago public schools, this longtime friend of Obama was apparently not able to produce a single public school that Obama considered good enough for his own children.” Kind of makes you go “Hmm,” doesn’t it?

Mr. Duncan is seemingly among the new breed of schools chiefs - a group of educators that includes Michelle Rhee of D.C. and Joel Klein of New York - who are popular with the national media because they do not kow-tow to unions, they do take issue with onery federal rules and regulations and they do close schoolhouses. In other words, they carry out part of what is expected of them. Yet there is an amazing irony here in that these so-called school reformers work in Democratic strongholds but are characterized with the rhetoric of Republicans. Al this begs and answers the question.

“Does Mr. Duncan’s appointment represent ’change we can believe in?’ ” asks T. Robinson Ahlstrom, in his timely op-ed of today. “Not if his record in Chicago is any indicator. During his seven-year tenure as Mayor Richard Daley’s teacher-in-chief, Mr. Duncan’s efforts brought no statistically significant improvement in aggregate student performance. In fact, under his stewardship, the extraordinary gaps between Chicago’s educational ’haves’ and it’s educational ’have-nots’ continued to grow.”

Mr. Obama’s education-secretary-in-waiting may care deeply about students. How can he not? Washington has been short-circuiting public school students ever since Jimmy Carter and the 96th Congress established the Department of Education. We hope the Obama administration gets Washington out of the way. That would be the change we could believe in.