Obama picks Salazar for Interior and Chicagoan Duncan for Education

President-elect Barack Obama will raid the Senate again for yet another Cabinet member (Interior) and name a Chicago basketball buddy to head the Education Dept.

According to the Swamp, Obama will continue the presidential tradition of naming a Westerner to head the Interior Department by picking Colorado Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, a Western Latino who campaigned for the Illinoisan this past fall. He's a former attorney specializing in water law.

The blog also reports that Tuesday morning Obama will name Arne Duncan as the new Education Secretary. Duncan, a frequent player in Obama's favored pickup basketball games, currently heads the Chicago Public Schools system and has drawn bipartisan praise for his urban education reforms.

(See video below on Duncan and on Obama's environmental appointments Monday.)

As recently as last week the current Republican Education Secretary, Margaret Spellings, said, "I don't want to hurt his chances, but I think he's a terrific school leader."

Salazar's pick will open up a Senate seat and new contest in what had previously been a Republican stronghold of Colorado.

More over here in the Swamp.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Office of Sen. Ken Salazar (left); Chicago magazine (Duncan, right).

Comments

[Alan Shusterman]

I eagerly await hearing from our new Secretary of Education. But I am not optimistic that he will be any more insightful or effective than those who have preceded him. I fear that he, like other establishment education leaders, will fail to acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room: the model of secondary school education that continues to persist in this country (and which increasingly is permeating down to the elementary level) is, as Bill Gates has correctly stated, "obsolete."

Before the change we really need in public education can emerge, we must acknowledge the huge, increasing disconnect that exists between this outdated secondary school model, to which even the best public and private schools cling, and the realities of today’s world. In short, the future of our children – and our nation – depends on the introduction of a genuinely new model of secondary education, designed in and fit for the 21st century.

By many measures much of the rest of the industrialized world has caught or passed by us in secondary education. The good news, however, is that those who are beating us in the education race are doing so with the same old model we use; they too haven’t moved into the 21st century. So, if we act now to take the initiative to create a new, 21st century secondary school model, then our high school graduates can once again become the best educated in the world. Thus, the leadership we need from President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan must include moving us beyond our myopic focus on attempts (noble and otherwise) to fix that which clearly needs replacing.

Alan Shusterman, Founder
School for Tomorrow
www.schoolfortomorrow.net

[Nate Peele]

Chicago, is a one party town, but the idea of taking as much of the public schools as possible and turning them over to the free market to run seems Republican to me. So does the idea of two different public school systems--one for the politically connected and one for the working class. Those were Arne Duncan's biggest accomplishments in Chicago.

Being a Conservative Republican, I haven't agreed with much that Barrack Obama has done, but his choice of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education is a great move. Arne Duncan is not only an Illinois politician, he's a Chicago politician. In this day and age that should certainly count for something. He has presided over the Chicago education miracle over the past 7 years which in many ways was the continuation of the Paul Vallas miracle in the years before Duncan took over and like much of the Bush administration Duncan has plenty of experience with no bid government contracts.

Arne Duncan has a very impressive resume. After graduating college with a degree in sociology in 1987, Duncan went to Australia to play basketball professionally. Returning to Chicago in 1992 he went to work as director of a childhood friend's educational program on the South Side of Chicago. In 1998 he became Chicago School Chief Paul Vallas' Deputy Chief of Staff. In 2001 he became head of the Chicago Public Schools. I don't think you'll find many people with that kind of depth of experience interested in a cabinet job.

In Chicago Duncan made a name for himself by closing down poorly performing schools for a year to turn them around by replacing the faculty and many of the students. In the case of Orr High School he did this twice. As most poor schools are African-American, Arne Duncan has personally fired over 2,000 African-American teachers this way. This is a very impressive quality-the ability to see that the poor performing schools are in African-American neighborhoods and the foresight to take the moves necessary to improve them. This strategy hasn't always worked, but in neighborhoods that have simultaneously undergone gentrification, the results are quite impressive.

Duncan is part of a new breed of school administrator whose minds have not been poisoned by working in the classroom. Instead they believe that the needs of children can best be met by the free market. In his time in Chicago, Duncan has frequently reached out to business leaders to do for the schools what they have already done for corporate America. The cornerstone of the Chicago Education Miracle is Renaissance 2010-A program designed to replace public schools with charters. The program seems poised to reach its pinnacle next year with the opening of The Transportation Academy of Chicago which will have the mission statement of training the city's future bus drivers.

I believe that the Charter School System is our best hope for the future of education and charter schools couldn't have a better friend than Arne Duncan. Through charter schools parents who are concerned with their child's education and have a little political pull can get a public education at a newer school without the dangerous element that often can be found in the public schools. If anybody can export the Chicago Education Miracle to the rest of the country its Arne Duncan.

Nate Peele
www.thatsrightnate.com

[Why name a Faschist's son ?]

Antonio de oliveira Salazar was the infamous portugueese dictator who ruled uninterrupted for 35 years.ken Salazar is the spitting image of his ancestor
and nothing good will come out of this revolting
nomination. emanuel is at the bottom of this and some say
Obama does not dare to contradict Blago's buddy.

[Pamela Blunt]

As to Why Name a Facist's son? Senator Salazar's family has been in the US territory since the 1500s--before we were the United States. So his relationship to his supposed "ancestor" is really a stretch. My last name is Blunt, but if my family has any relationship to those cigar Blount's--well--it was a very long time ago and I must clearly state that we have nothing to do with the tobacco industry nor are we responsible for the fallout caused by smoking cigars. Your supposed connection is ludicrous.