I've gotten some push-back from some friends about this post from yesterday; they think I went too soft on the newest members of the Obama Administration. (If you click on "view results" under our poll, however, you'll see that Flypaper readers are all over the map on the issue.)
Their main concern was what they considered to be my overly sunny view of John Easton's appointment as IES director. After all, there are at least a dozen brilliant, left-of-center education researchers who could have filled the role; why did Duncan have to go with a Chicago "crony"? The Chicago part might be fair, but I think my friends have a myopic view of what it takes to lead a large research organization such as the Institute of Education Sciences. Yes, being smart and well respected by the field is important. But so too is having management expertise, politically savvy, bureaucratic smarts, and a vision for how to bridge the research community and the world of educators.
To be honest, I have no idea if John Easton has all of these attributes, though his experience indicates that he might. But I bet that most of the "brilliant researchers" my friends have in mind do not. Remember the Peter Principle: we'd hate for any of our best scholars to rise to a position in which they'd be incompetent.
