Duncan...No Slam Dunk as Head Ed Guy

In perhaps the most important cabinet selection so far, PEO has chosen Arne Duncan as his Secretary of Education. I get seriously concerned when Duncan gets a ringing endorsement from the current U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who said she believed the Chicago Public Schools chief had the necessary skills to take her place(Tribune).

In an exam I gave last week, only 1 out of 16 students could do a simple math problem that involved computing x% of y, for a set of (x,y) values. Even that one student could not complete the next question, that involved understanding these percentages.

Putting an Education "CEO" to run Education in the country, in light of the scandals and bailouts in the corporate world, is not the proper signal to send. Obama would have been wiser to choose a person like Andy Grove, the former top dog of Intel, or a person who is an Educator first and an administrator last.

Students need to be culture-shifted to focus more on acquiring solid fundamental skills and less on other stuff, like sports or even working part-time to make minimum wage money. Otherwise they will be toast....or toasted by people in other countries.