Reporters and pundits haven't figured out yet that everything is a priority. That's because Obama has a holistic view of government. Everything is interrelated and you can't pay attention to national security without paying attention to the economy. You can't pay attention to education without minding healthcare.
Obama joked that he didn't just pick Arne Duncan to be education secretary because he's a good basketball player, though he said his cabinet is set to be the "best basketball playing cabinet in American history."
He also said Duncan had a better jump shot than Obama's. Duncan was a pro player in Australia for a time.
A reporter tried to squeeze more out of Obama about Rahm Emanuel's contact with Gov. What's His Face but Obama said he can't comment until next week.
Obama said Duncan is open to anything that works as far as education goes -- charter schools, cash for As and Bs, pay for performance, whatever. He said they share a pragmatism. Ideas won't be crowded out by ideology.
Duncan's job will be to raise expectations, he said. "We're not going to transform every school over night," he said. But Duncan will be working on how to make schools better every day.
I'll post video when it's up. Also today, Obama moves on to meet with his economic team.
CNN's story.
MSNBC
Obama spoke of Duncan in glowing terms.Early praise for Duncan coming in from Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics.
"In just seven years, he's boosted elementary test scores here in Chicago from 38 percent of students meeting the standards to 67 percent. The dropout rate has gone down every year he's been in charge."
On a key standardized test, Obama said, "the gains of Chicago students have been twice as big as those for students in the rest of the state."
WSJ: He has straddled two competing factions of the education community: the teachers unions, who push for more funding and smaller classes, and a movement that favors accountability and free-market-style incentives and looks to hold schools and teachers more accountable for student performance.Obama's cabinet so far.
Those within the Democratic party who supported him say he has improved student achievement, graduation rates and college-going rates in the nation's third-largest school system, which was called the worst in the nation by former Education Secretary William Bennett in the late 1980s.
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Duncan, 44 years old, is Harvard educated and loves basketball. The two are personally close, with the pair sometimes playing pickup basketball together. In fact, Mr. Duncan, as an undergraduate, was co-captain of the Harvard basketball team and briefly played professional basketball in Australia.
The choice of Mr. Duncan comes as the Education Department faces a debate next year over the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, President Bush's controversial education law. NCLB, which took effect in 2002, mandates that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014 and requires that school systems show steady progress toward meeting that goal or face sanctions.
Mr. Obama has called for increased funding for NCLB programs such as teacher training and better testing. He has said he wants to increase spending on early-childhood education by about $10 billion annually and provide a $4,000 annual tax credit to college students who perform 100 hours of community service.
