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Did Obama's Education Secretary Inflate his Record?

Siobhan O'Connor
By Siobhan O'ConnorJan 01, 2010
Siobhan O'Connor
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Behold the flip side of the standardized testing quagmire, where education secretaries (as opposed to teachers and students) are taken to task for poor student performance. In this case, it's the most powerful and lauded education secretary of them all: Obama's. Arne Duncan got some bad press the other day when the numbers revealed his oft-cited successes in the Chicago public school system are maybe not as great as we thought, especially when it comes to math.Duncan, you remember, has been credited with a stunning reversal of the Chicago system, is known for being experimental and ballsy, and has the results to back up his risktaking. It was only a matter of time before someone called all that into question-round one took place this summer; and now, with the new test score data out, I guess we can consider this round two.Strikes me as a bit of an overblown media story as opposed to a legitimate holy-crap-Duncan-is-a-fraud story (when do politicians not inflate their records, after all?) but worth looking at nonetheless.Image via
educationcitiesarne duncanpublic schools

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