From the south side of Chicago to Harvard, Australia, and back, Arne Duncan’s unconventional path to Secretary of Education has the makings of a screenplay. Or at least a New Yorker article. Windy City native Duncan attended the University of Chicago’s prestigious Lab School by day, then turned up at his mother’s low-income afterschool program north of Hyde Park. There he saw firsthand the achievement gap between his own classmates and his mother’s students, and the opportunity divide between professors’ kids and gang victims. After Harvard, he launched a professional b-ball career down under but returned to Chicago’s south side in 1991 to direct the Ariel Education Initiative, an education-focused investment offshoot of Ariel Investments. In 1999, he joined the Chicago Public Schools, became C.E.O. two years later, and instituted an extensive school-turnaround policy; the rest is history. The Obama administration plucked him from this position in 2008, a move many of us saw as a compromise at the time, but which the article’s author (an old Lab School pal of Arne’s) thinks is inaccurate. He’s a bona fide reformer, the author argues, which is making educators on the left go nuts. Here’s hoping this Hollywood story has a happy ending, with improved schools for America’s kids.
“Class Warrior: Arne Duncan’s bid to shake up schools,” by Carlo Rotella, The New Yorker, February 1, 2009