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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > November > 12 > Entry
Who should (and shouldn’t) be education secretary
There’s a lot of rumors and very little concrete information out there about who is being considered for U.S. Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration.
The sexiest name batted about is former Secretary of State and ex-general Colin Powell. The other names getting the most buzz are Arne Duncan, who heads Chicago Public Schools, and Jim Hunt, the education-minded former North Carolina governor.
Personally, I don’t think Powell is the right choice. But Hunt might me.
Since leaving the Bush Administration in 2005, Powell has at times highlighted the need for education reform in the U.S. in speeches and he founded an organization called America’s Promise focused on improving the well being of children with better education as a major pillar.
I think his interest in education is genuine, but he is nowhere near a policy expert. He’d have a lot to learn. The things I have heard Powell say about education strike me as unsophisticated. He supports more pay for teachers and expansion of school choice options. OK, but being for those ideas and having a plan to affect change through them are vastly different.
He backed President Bush on bringing his Texas-style, testing-heavy reforms to Washington through No Child Left Behind. That hasn’t worked out as many hoped. Powell also has talked often of more school-business connections like student work experience, career counseling, etc., for K-12 schools. Again, not a bad idea but hardly a comprehensive way to improve education.
Many of these ideas are popular and certainly useful but not necessarily on the mark when it comes to the sorts of changes an education secretary could pursue that might make large-scale improvements in the national education system.
Add to all this the mixed track record of other ex-generals in education and I wonder if Powell is the right guy for this job.
The plus of Powell is he brings stature to the post and can get people’s attention when he talks about education. I’m not sure that outweighs his drawbacks.
Duncan is an intriguing option. He is well-regarded for his efforts to reform Chicago schools. A lot of people are paying attention to what he is doing in Chicago, even if so far he’s not achieved big improvements in achievement. He has made important small strides, though.
I’m not sure Duncan’s experience in Chicago translates well to running a federal political office, but it might. Education blogger Alexander Russo, who writes a Chicago schools blog, doesn’t think Duncan is a serious candidate. That’s also my gut reaction — that he could emerge as a compromise choice if others don’t work out.
Hunt, in my view, seems to have many of the qualities the next education secretary needs. He’s had a big-scale political job as governor of North Carolina and he is a proven education reformer. Most impressively, he was an early advocate for early childhood education, pushing all-day kindergarten through in NC and expanding pre-school there. Early childhood education is where all the current research is pointing. It’s the place where the biggest impact can be made to improve student achievement.
North Carolina also developed, under his leadership, an impressive standards and testing operation that is less punitive than the Bush approach but still collects a ton of useful data to direct policymaking and identify areas of need.
One other interesting possibility is Linda Darling-Hammond, an education researcher who studies teacher quality issues at Stanford University and an Obama education adviser. Darling-Hammond is a former teacher and highly-regarded for her research. Teacher quality is really THE issue when it comes to improving learning through better instruction. Making teachers better is far more effective than, say, changing curriculum or school design when it comes to impacting achievement.
Having a true expert in that area leading the federal education effort strikes me as a good idea. School choice advocates, however, view her as an enemy.
I’d like to see Hunt or Darling-Hammond. An education secretary who really knows policy and is focused on issues that matter would be a good move for Obama.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Schools and Politics
Comments
By Dayton Teacher
November 20, 2008 12:41 PM | Link to this
Mary, I’m ot suprised that you are against changing school choice. Take a close look has it helped Dayton. We gave the parents school choice and they still don’t attend meetings with the teachers.By Scott Elliott
November 13, 2008 9:38 AM | Link to this
I don’t know if it is fair to say Darling-Hammond is anti-choice. She is very much a traditionalist in her approach to education reform, focused on improved teaching within the current system. I think she has just not had much to say about choice as a solution, which makes the choice folks nervous. It is probably likely that Darling-Hammond isn’t someone who believes school design changes are the key to improving achievement. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she opposes experimentation with alternative school models. It’s true, though, that I can’t see her being a cheerleader for it.By Mary
November 13, 2008 7:43 AM | Link to this
According to a recent entry on the blog at www.stateofohioeducation.com, North Carolina still has its problems. As far as selecting one who is anti-school choice, I have a problem with that.