The Corporate-Military Legacy of Secretary of Education-designate Arne Duncan
I’ve got a new piece published over at TomDispatch.com, one of the most insightful online publications out there (and one of a rapidly shrinking group that still believes in the power of long-form journalism online). The piece examines the educational legacy of Arne Duncan, the Chicago Public Schools chief executive officer and Obama’s Secretary of Education-designate.
Though the mainstream media showered Duncan with praise when Obama nominated him in December, my look at his actual record in Chicago reveals a troubling legacy in the Windy City.
You can read an excerpt of the piece after the jump. Read it in full here: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175022/andy_kroll_will_public_education_be_militarized_
Also, I did an audio interview with TomDispatch’s Robert Eshleman about the piece. You can listen to that here (along with scores of other great interviews with some of the best journalists out there): http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/
The Duncan Doctrine
The Military-Corporate Legacy of the New Secretary of Education
By Andy Kroll
On December 16th, a friendship forged nearly two decades ago on the hardwood of the basketball court culminated in a press conference at the Dodge Renaissance Academy, an elementary school located on the west side of Chicago. In a glowing introduction to the media, President-elect Barack Obama named Arne Duncan, the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools system (CPS), as his nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education. “When it comes to school reform,” the President-elect said, “Arne is the most hands-on of hands-on practitioners. For Arne, school reform isn’t just a theory in a book — it’s the cause of his life. And the results aren’t just about test scores or statistics, but about whether our children are developing the skills they need to compete with any worker in the world for any job.”
Though the announcement came amidst a deluge of other Obama nominations — he had unveiled key members of his energy and environment teams the day before and would add his picks for the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior the next day — Duncan’s selection was eagerly anticipated, and garnered mostly favorable reactions in education circles and in the media. He was described as the compromise candidate between powerful teachers’ unions and the advocates of charter schools and merit pay. He was also regularly hailed as a “reformer,” fearless when it came to challenging the educational status quo and more than willing to shake up hidebound, moribund public school systems.
Yet a closer investigation of Duncan’s record in Chicago casts doubt on that label. As he packs up for Washington, Duncan leaves behind a Windy City legacy that’s hardly cause for optimism, emphasizing as it does a business-minded, market-driven model for education. If he is a “reformer,” his style of management is distinctly top-down, corporate, and privatizing. It views teachers as expendable, unions as unnecessary, and students as customers.
Disturbing as well is the prominence of Duncan’s belief in offering a key role in public education to the military. Chicago’s school system is currently the most militarized in the country, boasting five military academies, nearly three dozen smaller Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs within existing high schools, and numerous middle school Junior ROTC programs. More troubling yet, the military academies he’s started are nearly all located in low-income, minority neighborhoods. This merging of military training and education naturally raises concerns about whether such academies will be not just education centers, but recruitment centers as well.
Rather than handing Duncan a free pass on his way into office, as lawmakers did during Duncan’s breezy confirmation hearings last week, a closer examination of the Chicago native’s record is in order. Only then can we begin to imagine where public education might be heading under Arne Duncan, and whether his vision represents the kind of “change” that will bring our students meaningfully in line with the rest of the world.
Question: Why is the military deploying National Guard troops to the Middle East while permanently assigning regular troops in the U.S. to deal with potential domestic disorder. I find that both scary and immoral (not least to the National Guard members and their families and their communities).
As a long-time education activist, opponent of standardized testing and the corporatization of education, and veteran teacher for 14 years in public high schools I have two comments.
1. This analysis is superb!
2. Change in education will occur under Obama and—much like most other critical departments in his adminstration—it will not be good. Indeed, we may be about to embark on some of the most destructive deforms (not reforms) that public education will ever face.
This article came as an attachment from a member of a Yahoo group, Southsiders for Peace. I live in the Chicago area and am familiar with Arne Duncan. I was not at all impressed upon hearing of his nomination for Secretary of Education.