Obama to pick Duncan at education

It was Paul Vallas who actually reformed the Chicago Public School system.

Arne Duncan is an acolyte of Mayor Daley and apparently so is Obama.

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need in public education can emerge, we must acknowledge the huge, increasing disconnect that exists between this outdated secondary school model, to which even the best public and private schools cling, and the realities of today’s world.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

The same schools Obama wouldn't send his kids but you have no "choice" on this matter.

So, what's Chicago's graduation rate? Guessing 52%...Is that not a true measure of competency? Instead we focus on his appeal to leftist education reformers like Bill Ayers and the teachers unions(..Is that a disctinction?) This is change? No, its more of the same..