Duncan pick shows city's gains
EDUCATION SECRETARY | Chicago schools system once derided as 'worst in the nation' now leading it
Faces here reddened more than 20 years ago when then-U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett called Chicago's public schools "the worst in the nation."
But on Tuesday, Chicago won the ultimate gold star for improvement: President-elect Barack Obama announced he wants Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan to claim Bennett's old job.
Introducing Duncan, 44, as "my friend,'' Obama cited the "continuous, steady improvement'' in Chicago under Duncan's watch: rising elementary test scores, a shrinking high school dropout rate and a growing number of high school students who are taking and passing college-level Advanced Placement courses.
He praised Duncan's shutdown of failing schools, charter school expansions, push for better teachers and pay-for-performance experiment that rewards teachers and principals for student test gains.
"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,'' Obama said in the gym of the Dodge Renaissance School, one of the first schools Duncan closed and later reopened after becoming CEO in 2001.
For his part, Duncan thanked Mayor Daley for "changing my life'' by naming him, "a 36-year-old unknown,'' as schools CEO. And he credited his mother, Susan, as being the inspiration of his life.
Growing up, Duncan attended pricey University of Chicago Laboratory School during the day, but by afternoon, he played and learned alongside poor, African-American inner-city kids at his mother's after-school tutoring center.
There, Duncan said, he was "able to see kids do extraordinary things because of people like my mother and others. . . . It was absolutely a formative experience."
Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart conceded Tuesday that she has not had a "love fest'' with Duncan, who drew union ire by closing failing schools, leaving teachers scrambling to find new jobs. But Stewart said she also has been able to work with him.
Stewart wouldn't say if she considered Duncan a good choice, but she did say he had at least one strong point in his favor: "of the choices [Obama] had, he's a choice I know.'' Plus, she said, "I have Arne's cell number.''