Posted by Jim Lindgren:
What the Duncan Appointment Suggests About Obama.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_12_14-2008_12_20.shtml#1229485269
Tom Maguire has a [1]great roundup of reactions to the Arne Duncan
appointment. Included are these:
This pick wins raves from the Freakonomist:
Freakonomics readers will remember Arne as the hero of our chapter
on teacher cheating. He was head of the Chicago Public Schools when
Brian Jacob and I were investigating how teachers and
administrators were doctoring standardized test sheets.
With seemingly nothing to gain and much to lose, Arne embraced our
results, even allowing us to do audit testing to confirm our
hypotheses. Eventually, a handful of teachers were fired.
Since then, I�ve interacted with Arne a few times, and in a variety
of settings. I always walk away dazzled. He is smart as hell and
his commitment to the kids is remarkable. If you wanted to start
from scratch and build a public servant, Arne would be the end
product.
Steve Diamond calls this a defeat for the Bill Ayers faction:
Bill Ayers and co. lost a big battle today with the announcement
that Arne Duncan will be Obama's Education Secretary. Duncan is one
of the "Big 4," as Ayers calls the four reform oriented school
superintendents Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein and Paul
Vallas. And Ayers has been part of a nationwide effort among
certain self-styled "progressive" and "social justice" oriented
education activists and educators to lobby against the Big 4. Ayers
was, of course, plugging for race theorist, anti-union small
schools advocate and education school figure Linda Darling-Hammond.
Excellent - if Bill Ayers is frowning I am smiling, since my worst
fears are not being realized.
. . . From the left, if Mike Klonsky is sad, can't righties smile a
bit?
Maguire points out that Vallas and Duncan were on one side of the
education wars and Obama and Ayers were on the other (along with, I
would add, the three foundations on which Obama and Ayers were working
together).
Obama�s opposing Vallas in the education wars may be one reason why
Obama lent his support (and regular advice) to Blagojevich in 2002
when Blagojevich defeated Paul Vallas, the architect of the Chicago
school turnaround, in the primaries.
I remember that 2002 Democratic primary as perhaps my saddest. Not
only did an honest and staggering talented reformer (Vallas) get
beaten by a political hack on the make (Blagojevich), but [2]John
Schmidt, a truly brilliant former Associate Attorney General from the
Clinton Justice Department, lost in the primaries to the relatively
lightweight Lisa Madigan. (Schmidt was the only candidate to which my
wife and I have ever donated more than a trivial amount.)
By appointing Duncan, Obama has now switched sides and backed what
works, rather than what he was pushing in the 1990s.
Obama�s ability to learn from his mistakes is one of his best
qualities, one I discussed [3]at some length last summer. I started by
pointing out that Obama had not swallowed Alinsky-style organizing
whole, but rather had reversed, rejected, or reworked many of
Alinsky�s central tenets.
I then turned to education reforms:
Left to his own devices, Barack Obama is an extremely thoughtful
guy, who often reworks and synthesizes the influences he absorbs.
If one looks at Obama's current education proposals, he has
jettisoned most of the left-wing Bill Ayers-style ideas that the
Annenberg Challenge pushed in the mid-1990s when Obama was its
chair � probably because they didn't work.
i argued that the major exception to this pattern of learning from
experience is Obama's continued support for public-private
partnerships in housing:
One area where Obama has had lots of experience but where his
trademark thoughtfulness has failed him is private-public housing
projects. His best friends and supporters built and managed
public-private projects that [4]failed miserably.
I concluded:
Yet Obama's support for public-private housing projects is an
exception. Usually, Obama learns from the failures of his reform
proposals. Generally, he is a pragmatic idealist.
People should not confuse Obama's personality with his political
orientation: by personality, Obama is the most reasonable,
thoughtful, moderate person on either national ticket. He is
definitely NOT an ideologue.
(I went on to say that by political orientation, Obama is extremely
liberal or progressive for a mainstream politician, but that aspect of
him is not reflected in the choice of Duncan.)
Not only is Arne Duncan a great choice for Secretary of Education, but
it reflects that Obama possesses a quality that his predecessor has
too little of: Obama�s genuine thoughtfulness and willingness to
rethink his views.
References
1. http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/12/secretary-of-ed.html
2. http://www.mayerbrown.com/lawyers/profile.asp?hubbardid=S947697282
3. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_08_31-2008_09_06.shtml#1220664290
4.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/
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