This week President-elect Obama, moved to nominate Chicago Public School’s CEO, Arne Duncan as the Federal Government’s Secretary of Education. While he has been heralded as a bi-lateral type of reformer in Chicago Public Schools, that school system still lags far behind the nation, and is only in the middle of the pack for urban education environments.
Some concerns of those in the field of education, may stem from the fact that Mr. Duncan has neither a degree in education, nor has he ever been a teacher in any sort of capacity. His base degree is a B.A. in sociology from Harvard, and as many educators would readily admit, a sociology degree does not lend itself to an accurate view of the issues facing the world of education. Mr. Duncan’s noteriety was recieved as the Director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a non-profit on the south-side of Chicago. Unfortunately, this post was most likely gained due to his life-long relationship with the foundation’s founder John Roger’s Jr. From their he gained the post of the Deputy Chief of Staff for the CPS in 1998, and then rose to succeed Paul Vallas.
On first glance over Mr. Duncan’s vitae, it is easy to assess his favor of the NCLB, and its continuation, albit its needed reforms. But, testing is only one issue facing the schools. He also has a desire to confront rising tuition prices. This later issue can only make for more disaster, since tuition prices are a matter of economic conditions and not of educational conditions. It will be the prediction here that any further meddling in the market of price conditions for tuition will only make the conditions worse for schools. The only solution for schools is to relieve the tax burden on all parents of students, and on all individuals that live within a school community, PreK through Adult Learning.
In regards to technology, one can only wait to see what regulations and goals Mr. Duncan will place on schools. Especially since now his post will yield great power to impose new mandates for schools, without any economic committment needing to be made by the government. These conditions of greater Federal involvment have been brewing for quite sometime, and with Mr. Duncan will only continue. Thus, parents, students, and teachers now only have to look forward to the local school having to answer even more and depend for its very existence on the Federal Government.
Lastly, Mr. Duncan was also a supporter of the revisit to “seperate but equal” in regards to that special type of high school for gay-lesbian-transgendered students in the Chicago Schools. Yes folks, that is an abolute revisit on the concept of seperate is NOT equal, and it is an attack upon the concept that public schools are meant to engage students systematically with the world–although that has been a lost cause, because the schools are a microcosm of the society and reflect it perfectly rather than introducing society slowly and systematically. In addition, Mr. Duncan has been a moving force being the “Everyday Math” program of the Univ. of Chicago; which has managed to not improve test scores to the extent predicted, but has made every student aware on a daily level of their lack of ability to do math, and the lack of the schools ability to assist them competently.
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