Duncan has big job ahead
Chicago's loss is the nation's gain. President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan as his choice for U.S. Secretary of Education today.
Word is that Duncan will be tapped at one of his showcase schools, the Dodge Renaissance Academy, one of the first failing schools that he shut down and reopened with great success. As Duncan departs for D.C. -- one of a proud and growing group from Chicago -- he will be remembered most for that effort: a radical program to shut down dozens of failing schools and replace them with 100 new ones.
Duncan stumbled while launching the program, dubbed Renaissance 2010. As he closed failing schools, students were dispersed temporarily to other schools for a year or more, stigmatizing many of those kids and leading to a spike in violence at some receiving high schools. Parents, advocates and kids rightly complained and, ultimately, Duncan took heed.
Now the transformation occurs over the summer. Kids return to the same school building in the fall but the rest is new -- most of the teachers and other adults, the curriculum and support programs.
We respect Duncan for sticking to his guns: he is passionate about fixing chronically failing schools, and he wouldn't retreat. But he also listened and made adjustments. Time will tell whether Renaissance 2010 is a success, though early results look promising.
Those qualities -- vision and compromise -- will serve Duncan well as education secretary.
He is not an ideologue fueled by a belief that there is one single answer to fixing urban schools. Under Renaissance 2010, he has approved a broad range of schools, including an all-boys school, a school based on a Roman Catholic model and a virtual school.
But Duncan is not flighty. His choices are all guided by a single goal: systematically improving what goes in the classroom.
During his seven-year tenure, Duncan has tightly focused on improving teaching and learning -- from recruiting higher-quality teachers to dispatching reading specialists across Chicago to overhauling high school curricula. He has also made a strong push to help kids graduate and get to college.
Duncan always took a pass on the education fad of the day, choosing instead to invest in long-term approaches supported by solid research.
Duncan has a big job ahead of him. Too many of the nation's schools are still woefully subpar, and a fight over President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind law looms.
But Duncan earned his stripes in Chicago.
The nation will be lucky to have him.