Thanks for the intel on “ward of the state” in the Aussie context. I think that term is still used in legal proceedings in the U.S., but it has a very archaic feel, doesn’t it?

I still think it’s a flimsy resume. (I suppose “paper thin” isn’t really that much of an insult, when most of us at least at one point printed our resumes on paper.)

Well, you know how influential college professors are! You could very well be right, but I think this is also key:

“He was part of a team that later started a new public elementary school built around a *financial literacy curriculum*, the Ariel Community Academy.”

As in, he helped build a flashy charter school that catered to the interests and preconceptions of the city’s monied elite. And as head of the non-profit, probably had been hobnobbing with them shortly after retiring from New South Wales Wallabies.

I’m with you in thinking he’s a bad Ed Secretary, and that nepotism or cronyism fueled his ride to the top. But I’m not sure it’s still possible to say that after eighteen years in an industry, someone has a “paper thin resume.” The problem with creatures like Duncan is more what you and Tom were saying earlier: they often have a false view of the sources of their success.

And in answer to your and Shaz’s questions, in Australia, “ward of the state” refers generally to any child with a legal guardian not their parent and more specifically to the “stolen generation” of Aboriginal children who were forcibly seized from their parents by the Australian government up to the mid-1970s and were still being raised in foster care or in orphanages up to the mid-1990s. That’s probably what Duncan’s bio referred to: he was likely tutoring “stolen” children.

From the Duncan resume (slightly reorganized to emphasize chronology):

From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia, where he also worked with children who were wards of the state.

Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987, majoring in sociology. He was co-captain of Harvard’s basketball team and was named a first team Academic All-American. He credits basketball with his team-oriented and highly disciplined work ethic.

. . . .

Prior to joining the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan ran the non-profit education foundation Ariel Education Initiative (1992-1998), which helped fund a college education for a class of inner-city children under the I Have A Dream program. He was part of a team that later started a new public elementary school built around a financial literacy curriculum, the Ariel Community Academy, which today ranks among the top elementary schools in Chicago.

. . . .

Prior to his appointment as secretary of education, Duncan served as the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, a position to which he was appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, from June 2001 through December 2008, becoming the longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the country.

. . . .

Could this be the answer?

His late father was a professor at the University of Chicago and his mother has run a South Side tutoring program for inner-city children since 1961. As a student in Chicago, Duncan spent afternoons in his mother’s tutoring program and also worked there during a year off from college. He credits this experience with shaping his understanding of the challenges of urban education.

Call me skeptical, but that’s a paper-thin resume for getting the job of CEO of Chicago Public Schools and then Ed Secretary. I bet a hell of a lot of recent grads with a B.A. would love to walk into a “non profit foundation” job that would then within a decade make them CEO of Chicago Public Schools.

This career trajectory has the strong whiff of the kind of elitism that Tom discusses way upthread. What I see in this bio is that Mumsy and Pater–and their very good friends–took very good care of him.

“The sad thing is that my students, graduates of public high schools and a state-owned university, won’t get their tiny toe in the door of TFA. My education majors are just happy to get interviews right now…and TFA folks are taking their places in the classroom.”

I teach at a regional public, and I have a former student (graduated a year and a half ago) who was accepted to TFA, and from his report, many of his peers in TFA are, in fact, public high school alums who then went on to regional unis. I know that TFA is seen as this “elite” option as a gap year between undergrad and grad school (mostly I understand that’s how it’s seen because of how Tenured Radical has written about it), but this is not at all what I’ve heard from my former student who is actually a Teach for America teacher (in an inner-city school in the midwest, for whatever that’s worth). It’s also worth noting that TFA is a REALLY small program and it tends to provide teachers for those schools to which Ed majors don’t want to apply (because they’re dangerous, because they’re in an awful location, whatever). I’m not sure that TFA is actually the enemy.