For Education Chief, Stimulus Means Power, Money and Risk

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — The $100 billion in emergency aid for public schools and colleges in the economic stimulus bill could transform Arne Duncan into an exceptional figure in the history of federal education policy: a secretary of education loaded with money and the power to spend large chunks of it as he sees fit.

But the money also poses challenges and risks for Mr. Duncan, the 44-year-old former Chicago schools chief who now heads the Department of Education.

Mr. Duncan must develop procedures on the fly for disbursing a budget that has, overnight, more than doubled, and communicate the rules quickly to all 50 states and the nation’s 14,000 school districts. And he faces thousands of tricky decisions about how much money to give to whom and for what.

“It’ll be wonderful fun for a time for his team — it’ll be like Christmas,” said Chester Finn, a former Department of Education official who has watched education secretaries or commissioners come and go here since the mid-1960s. “But the thing about discretionary spending is that it makes more people angry than it makes happy.”

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign on Tuesday, doubles federal spending on disadvantaged and disabled children, includes hefty increases in the main federal college scholarship program and for Head Start, and, for the first time, makes billions in federal dollars available for school renovation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/education/17educ.html?th&emc=th

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Power, check; money, check. Risk? To whom? nt

[LWolf]

2. Risk to education, if Duncan is holding the power. nt

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Hmmm. A strange article. A "profile" of sorts . Yet, not a prolfile.

As it tells us next to nothing about Duncan. And the *risk* the headline speaks of seems to be a political risk... either to Duncan himself or to Obama. The states that get shut out or short changed $$-wise will be pissed.

That's the "risk"?

Other than that we learn this: he wants to be called "Arne". He's popular among republican senators. He wants "acountability" .

But tell us who he *is*, really, NYT. All I know for sure is that he's 44 y.o. , played basketball , ( professionally and receationally with Obama) went to Harvard, has never taught in a classroom, has two kids ( remains to be seen where they will attend school), his mother ran a tutoring company in Chicago, and he's a product of the Chicago politcial machine. And I learned none of these things from the article.

The last paragraph leaves a little room for hope. He recognizes that state test scores may be ... let's say... unreliable.

OK. Let's see where he goes from there.

My jury's still out.