Can Arne Duncan (And $5 Billion) Fix America's Schools?

But Diane Ravitch, a pre-eminent education historian at New York University, says Duncan's RTT initiative is in effect an extension of the Bush-era reforms. "This whole fund is being used to lure or bribe or implore or compel states and school districts to do things that we don't actually know are going to make things better," says Ravitch, who is critical of the accountability movement's emphasis on standardized testing. "My biggest problem with Duncan and Obama on education is that they are giving Bush a third term in education." Duncan counters that he is merely breaking down walls--borrowing a little bit from the left, a little bit from the right. "I just want to do what works," says Duncan, who is planning a multicity listening tour with Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton. "There are great ideas everywhere along the political spectrum, and there are terrible ideas. But that's never how I've viewed the world. I view it in terms of, What's good for the kids at 46th and Greenwood?"

Duncan's background has made him intimately aware of what is at stake for America's students. As he puts it, if you made it through school in the gang-ridden South Side, you had a chance of making it out. And if you didn't, you might have ended up dead. "The dividing line between those two was clearly educational opportunity," he says. Sure, all kids are guaranteed seats in a classroom, but too many are taught by middling teachers in awful schools, Duncan says. "It's obvious the system's broken. Let's admit it's broken, let's admit it's dysfunctional, and let's do something dramatically different, and let's do it now. But don't just tinker around the edges. Don't just play with it. Let's fix the thing."