Duncan Donuts

From a brilliant new article on Arne Duncan, the new Secretary of Education:

On one hand -

In 2001 he set out to make one of the worst performing urban school districts into one of the best. And by all accounts he fell short, despite his record as the longest-serving big city school chief in the country. During Duncan’s tenure, high school graduation rates rose about 8 percent. But test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly referred to as the nation’s report card, were mixed. Fourth-graders’ math and reading scores rose slightly, but eighth-graders’ reading scores were stagnant. After almost eight years under Duncan, Chicago’s system remains one of the worst nationwide.

On the other -

He hewed then to the same hands-on approach that guided his mentoring endeavor, visiting a different school almost every day, personally returning calls from teachers, union heads and parents, and shooting hoops with kids across the city. He raised the graduation rate of the nation’s third-largest school system, with more than 400,000 students, every year he was in charge.