Senate Hearing Tuesday Spotlights School Reform
WASHINGTON – Barack Obama's choice for education secretary, Arne Duncan, faces questions about his commitment to school reform at a Senate confirmation hearing. Duncan, the Chicago public schools chief, was to appear Tuesday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Obama has pledged to overhaul President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, although he has been vague about how far he would go. School reform advocates who support the law view Duncan and other big-city school chiefs as kindred spirits.
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The law prods schools to improve test scores each year, so that every student can read and do math on grade level by the year 2014. It was due for a rewrite in 2007, but the effort stalled. Lawmakers hope to try again within the next couple of years.
No Child Left Behind passed with bipartisan support in 2001 but is deeply unpopular today. Critics say the law's annual reading and math tests have forced subjects like music and art from the classroom and say schools were promised billions of dollars that never arrived.
And they say the law is too punitive toward struggling schools; nearly 36 percent of schools failed to meet yearly progress goals in 2008, according to the Education Week newspaper. That means millions of children are still a long way from reaching the law's ambitious goals.
Duncan, 44, has been CEO of Chicago public schools since 2001. He worked in the school system under former schools chief Paul Vallas after heading an education nonprofit. Before that, he played professional basketball in Australia, where he worked with underprivileged kids as a social worker. He grew up working in his mother's tutoring program on Chicago's South Side.
In Chicago, Duncan managed to raise test scores and graduation rates, and he improved the quality of teaching.
His critics, however, say he shouldn't get credit for better test scores because they improved before he took over and state tests became easier during his tenure. Parents who opposed his aggressive school closings say they were disruptive to kids.
Duncan is a longtime Obama friend who has played pickup basketball with the president-elect since the 1990s.
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