No easy job for education czar

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for education secretary, Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan, doesn’t look like a placeholder – especially not with Obama calling failing schools “morally unacceptable for our children” and Duncan calling education the “civil rights issue of this generation.” Duncan’s tricky mission will be to satisfy three passionate camps – reformers, teacher unions and No Child Left Behind critics. Good luck with that.

7 Comments

  1. brian_nuevo
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 12:49 pm | Permalink

    That is definitely not going to be an easy job.

    On the topic of education, everyone thinks they know how to fix the problems, and there are a lot of ‘armchair quarterbacks’.

    Unfortunately, to really ‘fix’ the eduation system in America, it will take really getting to the root problems and identifying those, then identifying some kind of tangible end-state goal before any real progress can begin.

    These are not glamourous, easy tasks, and they are not quick things that can be done. To that regard, the Secretary will have to undergo a few years of work with not visible progress and lots of armchair quarterbacks complaining that he is not ‘doing’ anything.

  2. Regular
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 12:54 pm | Permalink

    Yeah, great choice…

    Here’s a list of Illinois 191 failing schools.

    http://ncbg.org/schools/fact_191fail.htm

  3. Mr_Kia
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 12:57 pm | Permalink

    What’s the standard fix in most industries?

  4. brian_nuevo
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 12:59 pm | Permalink

    “Mr_Kia
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 12:57 pm | Permalink
    What’s the standard fix in most industries?”

    No such thing

  5. parkay
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 4:45 pm | Permalink

    The NEA, by the way, wants in-school abortions and abortion mill referrals, and homosexual indoctrination and recruiting in all classes, all without parental notification or consent.

  6. brian_nuevo
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 5:01 pm | Permalink

    “parkay
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 4:45 pm | Permalink
    The NEA, by the way, wants in-school abortions and abortion mill referrals, and homosexual indoctrination and recruiting in all classes, all without parental notification or consent.”

    That is the most ignorant, blatently false, load of bull crap posted on here yet today

  7. Chrisfrommactown
    Posted December 16, 2008 at 7:49 pm | Permalink

    The NEA, by the way, wants in-school abortions and abortion mill referrals, and homosexual indoctrination and recruiting in all classes, all without parental notification or consent.”

    That is the most ignorant, blatently false, load of bull crap posted on here yet today

    - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – — – - – - – - – - – — – -

    The leadership of NEA absolutely wants all the things listed above.

    Here’s a novel idea. First of all, stop referring to people in charge of various Government organizations as Czars. A Czar is by definition a King, a ruler, a leader accountable to no one. Is that what you want in Washington? Secondly, if you want to fix education, disband the Dept. of Education and get the Feds completely out of public education. Let it go back to the States and even better, local control and funding.

    “Government isn’t part of the solution, Government is the problem”. Ronald Wilson Reagan