See Arne in action here.
Duncan's profile at the Chicago Public School site.
President-elect Barack Obama will name Arne Duncan, the superintendent of schools in Chicago, to be his Secretary of Education, a senior Democratic official and a second person close to the decision said.
Mr. Duncan is a Harvard graduate whose friendship with Mr. Obama began on the basketball court and flowered into frequent discussions of education policy.
He has seven years’ experience as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school district, where he has earned a solid reputation for confronting pressing issues in public education, like how to raise teacher quality, how to transform weak schools and when to shutter those that are irredeemably failing.
Duncan a reformer, but not as controversial:
My source tells me that many reformers are supporting Arne Duncan, head of Chicago's public schools and an old friend of Obama's. Democrats for Education Reform circulated a memo three days after the election pushing for Duncan, who isn't as controversial as someone like Rhee. "Duncan has credibility with various factions in the education policy debate and would allow President Obama to avoid publicly choosing sides in that debate in his most high-profile education nomination," the memo says. (Indeed, Duncan signed both of two dueling education manifestos earlier this year--one backed by Linda Darling-Hammond and other, more old-school experts and another endorsed by reformers.)
