Credit: Sarah L. Voisin/TWP
Why He Matters
Education is an issue that divides the Democratic Party: on merit pay, teachers unions, standardized test scores and school closings. As President Barack Obama’s pick for education secretary, Duncan is considered a pragmatist on those controversial issues. "He is seen as this consensus candidate between the two wings of the Democratic Party — the reformers and the establishment, the teachers' union group," said Michael Petrilli, a vice president at the Fordham Institute who served in the Department of Education from 2001 to 2005. "Everyone is seeing in him what they want to believe."
Education has always been a personal crusade for Duncan, who grew up tutoring kids (and being tutored by others) at his mother’s after-school program on the South Side of Chicago. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on America’s underclass and mentored children while playing professional basketball in Australia. At the press conference when Obama announced Duncan as his pick for education secretary, Duncan called schooling “the civil rights issue of our generation.” He has spent most of this decade as the CEO of the Chicago Public School system, the third-largest in the country.
In this role, Duncan will be charged with reshaping No Child Left Behind, the controversial standards program implemented by President George W. Bush that needs to be reauthorized in the 111th Congress. Duncan supports the controversial education bill, but indicated that he will talk with dozens of teachers and administrators before making a decision on how to proceed with the program.
Path to Power
At a Glance
Current Position: Secretary of Education (since January 2009)
Career History: Chief executive of Chicago Public Schools (since 2001); Deputy chief of staff to Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas (1998 to 2001); Ariel Capital Management (1992 to 1998)
Birthday: N/A
Hometown: Chicago, Ill.
Alma Mater: Harvard, B.A. (sociology), 1987
Spouse: Karen
Religion: N/A
DC Office: N/A
Email N/A
Web site
Duncan grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. His father was a psychology professor at the University of Chicago and his mother ran an after-school center in North Kenwood, Chicago. Duncan went to the prestigious Lab School at the University of Chicago, but he grew up at the Sue Duncan Children’s Center on Chicago’s South Side, playing basketball, tutoring and being tutored by the students there.
His experience on the South Side shaped his perspectives on the importance of education. "Having friends from the progam and from the streets die when I was twelve, thirteen - that scarred me," he told The New Yorker. "As much as the success storeis have shaped me and given me hope, those deaths might be an even bigger motivator. The guys who got killed, were the guys who didn't finish high school. It was literally the dividing line between you lie and you die. Nobody who went to college died young."
Duncan went to Harvard, where he majored in sociology and played on the basketball team. While at Harvard, he took a year off to tutor at his mom’s center and write a thesis titled “The Values, Aspirations and Opportunities of the Urban Underclass.” He then returned to Harvard, co-captained the basketball team and became a first-team Academic All-American.
Duncan was cut during a tryout for the Boston Celtics and traveled to Australia to play professional basketball for the Eastside Spectres in Nunawading. He stayed in Australia’s National Basketball League from 1987 to 1991, and he met his wife, Karen, while playing in Tasmania. Brian Goorjian, Duncan’s first coach in Australia, described him as a player low on professional talent but high on motivation. “He extracted every ounce that he could from what God gave him,” Goorjian said. “He was a $40,000/$50,000 guy, and they [the NBL] moved to $200,000 players. We moved on.”
During his time in Australia, Duncan also worked with children who were under the legal protection of the government.
Ariel Education Initiative
When he could no longer cut it in the world of professional basketball, Duncan moved to Chicago and joined the Ariel Education Initiative, a program started by his childhood friend and Obama fundraiser John W. Rogers that provided inner-city students on Chicago’s South Side advanced education opportunities such as accelerated and gifted programs. Duncan organized a plan to adopt a group of sixth-graders and mentor them through college. The program paid for college for all students who graduated from high school.
In 1992, Rogers introduced Duncan to Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s brother. Robinson, who played basketball at Princeton, and Duncan played together on an amateur team that dominated three-on-three tournaments around the country. The two became close friends, and Duncan got to know Michelle and Barack Obama, who lived in his Hyde Park neighborhood.
In 1998, Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas hired Duncan to work as his deputy and to head the system’s magnet programs. Duncan spent three years working at the Chicago Board of Education under Vallas. When Vallas retired, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) appointed Duncan, who was just 36 at the time, to take over as CEO of the city’s struggling public school system.
Many people were initially skeptical of Duncan, who was young and had no experience as a chief executive officer. In Chicago, he inherited a school system with 613 schools, more than 47,000 employees, about 427,000 students and a $4 billion budget. But after seven years on the job, Duncan saw the percentage of elementary students who passed the state’s standards increase from 38 percent to 68 percent. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Duncan advised his friend Obama on education policy, and in November 2008, Obama appointed Duncan to be his secretary of education.
The Issues
Obama has always talked big on education. On the campaign trail, he spoke of $10 billion for early childhood education and more money to recruit “an army of new teachers.” He has publicly supported charter schools and merit pay, both ideas that Duncan implemented in Chicago. “If pay for performance works … then that’s something we should explore. If charter schools work, let’s try that,” Obama said.
Duncan shares this pragmatic approach to education reform. He experimented with incentive pay for students who got good grades and had good attendance. He didn’t hesitate to close failing schools in Chicago, even though he was criticized because they were located in poor, mostly black neighborhoods. And he forced teachers to re-apply for their jobs, even though the decision was deplored by teachers’ unions. Nine months after taking over the reins of Chicago’s schools, Duncan had closed three schools. But he opened more than 75 new ones, most of them charter schools, during his seven years on the job.
Duncan is also willing to be brutally honest. In a speech to the National Education Association in July 2009, Duncan told teachers they must be willing to budge on issues such as merit pay and evaluation methods. "It's not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation and evaluation," he said. "You must become full partners and leadres in education reform.
"I understand that tests are far from perfect and that it is unfair to reduce the complex, nuanced work of teaching to a simple multiple choice exam. Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible."
No Child Left Behind
In 2010, Duncan will take on a major revamp of No Child Left Behind. While Duncan is a proponent of using standardized testing as a yardstick for students, he doesn’t like NCLB’s one-size-fits-all approach and has said that he wants to find a more nuanced way to determine the fate of a school or a teacher. It will also eliminate the 2014 deadline.
In Chicago, he tried different forms of merit pay as an incentive, and he has generally supported the principles behind NCLB, if not the program itself. “The ideas behind [the law] make a lot of sense,” Duncan said. “You want to look hard at the data.”
Duncan spoke to the Washington Post's Lois Romano about No Child Left Behind early in the Obama administration.
Year-Round Schools
In October 2009, Duncan proposed extending the school year, so students do not fall behind during the summer months.
The Network
Duncan is a member of Obama’s tight-knit circle of Chicago friends.
He was introduced to the group by his childhood friend, John W. Rogers Jr., an Obama adviser and the ex-husband to Desiree Rogers, Obama’s choice for White House social secretary. John Rogers and Duncan both went to the University of Chicago Lab School, and Duncan calls Rogers his best friend and the most influential person in his life other than his parents.
Rogers is now on the Lab School’s board along with Valerie Jarrett, Michelle Obama and Martin Nesbitt. Duncan’s wife, Karen, is the school’s athletic director.
Rogers introduced Duncan to Michelle Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson. Duncan and Robinson have been playing in three-on-three basketball tournaments around the country ever since.
