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No hint of jealousy in a statement Klein just put out on the news about Duncan:

“Arne has been one of the country’s great school reformers. We’ve worked closely and I consider him tremendously dedicated, smart, and honorable. Our nation’s children will be well served if he’s appointed.”

The very tall man who will be Obama's education secretary. (Via Flickr)

The New York Times’ Sam Dillon reports that Arne Duncan will be the next secretary of education. The president-elect is to announce tomorrow. Obama sources do not disclose to Dillon what Duncan will do about No Child Left Behind, testing, teacher quality, or tenure. And the mystery stays alive!

An easier-to-unwrap question I’d like to look into: Was Joel Klein ever actually in the running?

UPDATE: More context by request. Duncan, the schools chief in Chicago, is a safe choice that signals only what we had already been told, that when faced with all-out policy brawls, Obama would prefer not to pick a side. In the ongoing, raging war over education policy, Duncan had the stamp of both sides, the nameless reformers (idealocrat reformers?) and the teachers unions, or at least of Randi Weingarten, the union leader. By choosing Duncan as his education figurehead, Obama has avoided two wars. (more…)

David Hoff is reporting that the Denver and Chicago schools chiefs are getting background-checked by the Obama administration. How about our own Joel Klein? Through a spokesman, David Cantor, he just gave his answer:

No comment.

Klein also said he expects to be in New York City, which has been his standard answer as his name has been raised as a possible education secretary to Obama.

Background on Arne Duncan is here. Kate Boo wrote a great New Yorker piece on Bennet, which you can read here, but only if you are a subscriber and understand the New Yorker’s new archives, which I don’t. LynNell Hancock also posted a Word document here.

From today’s AP story:

“Arne Duncan actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way,” said Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers.

From Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, in a report on Bill Gates:

Gates does seem to be weighing in on Obama’s pick for secretary of education. He favors choosing from today’s exciting collection of hard-charging, china-breaking school superintendents. One of those he likes a lot is Joel Klein of New York City, which is ironic considering that, as a Justice Department lawyer in the 1990s, Klein almost succeeded in breaking up Microsoft.

I spent all of last week in Hyde Park, Chicago, currently the epicenter of American political activity because of its most prominent resident, President-elect Barack Obama. Technically, I was on vacation, but I couldn’t help asking folks I met what they think about Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, one of Obama’s basketball buddies and a man who is increasingly looking like the president-elect’s choice for education secretary.

Unlike other candidates mentioned for education secretary, who wear their ideologies strongly on their sleeves, Duncan has (like Obama) walked a finer line, signing onto both of the dueling petitions on where Obama should take his policy. So it seems more important, in his case, to figure out what exactly he has done.

The results of my completely non-rigorous reporting were not too encouraging. One parent at the private school attended by Obama’s daughters — which Duncan himself attended and where his wife now teaches — said the scuttlebutt was that Duncan lacks the political savvy to cut it on the national stage. And when I popped into a neighborhood clothing store, I spoke with several public school mothers who were adamant that there hasn’t been widespread improvement under Duncan’s leadership. (Catalyst-Chicago, which provides independent reporting about the city’s schools, says some of Duncan’s major initiatives haven’t had the impact he’d hoped.) (more…)

I’ve been taking my head cold to bed long before Stephen Colbert’s Comedy Central show goes on the air, so I was glad to see that Alexander Russo posted about Tuesday night’s featured guest, Roland Fryer. Fryer is of course the Harvard professor who last year became the city Department of Education’s first-ever chief equality officer. His research tests whether cash payments can make students more motivated. This year, Fryer’s cash-for-kids experiment expanded from New York to schools in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Watch the full segment to see Colbert ask — and answer — hard questions like this one:

If Danny gives Johnny $10 to copy his homework, then the teacher gives Danny $50 for turning in his homework for an A, how much money does Danny have left to give Johnny for tomorrow’s homework?

The answer is: Danny has no idea, because it was his math homework.

Also worth noting: During his interview, Fryer doesn’t claim that paying kids for good grades is a sure bet. When Colbert asks if the program is working, Fryer says, “We don’t know yet.” And he says he’ll scale the experiment up to more cities next year — but only “if it works. … If it doesn’t, we’ll try the next innovation next year.”

In case you were not fully convinced, it appears that, yes, Teach For America is flexing its muscle to influence Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education pick. The organization is concerned about the possibility that Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who has criticized TFA and is chairing Obama’s education policy committee, could get a prominent role in the Obama administration.

In a mass e-mail today, Teach For America urged alumni to “stay on top of about [sic] what is happening and not happening regarding education reform at the national and local levels.” The e-mail (pasted below) also directed them to the Web site of TFA’s new political group, Leadership for Education Equity, where alumni are invited to post comments on several Web sites (including this one), saying, “Decision makers do watch online reactions.” We hope so!

This is the site’s main graphic:

Here’s the e-mail, after the jump: (more…)

The latest name to surface as a possibility for the Secretary of Education post in the Obama administration is Oprah Winfrey, over on the Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog.

Elsewhere, Joe Rothstein, editor at U.S. Politics Today, suggested her, along with Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, for Obama’s “team of type-A’s”:

Why not? It will take star quality to make the changes that must be made in our educational system. Through her Oprah Winfrey Foundation, Oprah’s awarded hundreds of grants to organizations that support education and has donated millions of dollars toward providing a better education for students who have merit but no means. She’s also worked to develop schools to educate thousands of underserved children internationally.

But a year ago, Oprah told Diane Sawyer she’s not looking for a government job. “I don’t think there’s position in government that really anybody could offer to me that would be more interesting or compelling than what I’m doing already,” she said. EdWeek’s Campaign K-12 linked to the interview.

Newsweek reports:

“People don’t want to say anything publicly, because of the ‘No-Drama Obama’ stuff,” says one well-placed reformer with ties to the incoming administration. “But many of us were stunned that Linda Darling-Hammond is still as influential as she is. We see her as very symbolic of the ‘old school’ of reform.” Darling-Hammond responds, “The critiques of being ‘old school’ are particularly ironic since I have been fighting for a lot of reforms before they were recently on the national radar.”

And while Whitney Tilson on his blog yesterday asked people e-mailing him with worries to “CHILL THE [expletive] OUT,” he confessed to “sharing a bit of…nervousness” in his e-mail blast last night.

From the comments section, a response to Democrats for Education Reform’s boosting of Wendy Kopp for Secretary of Education:

I am an alumna of TFA and a current staff person. 60% of our Corps members stay in education after their 2 year committment. The idea is to cultivate more Michelle Rhees, Mike Feinbergs, and David Levins as well as more people like Cami Anderson (Superindendent of District 79 in NYC). While I don’t think Wendy Kopp is a strong candidate for Secretary of Education due to her lack of actual teaching experience I do not feel that TFA is part of the problem.

Quick explainer: Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin are the founders of the KIPP charter school network, Michelle Rhee is the chancellor of the D.C. public schools, and Cami Anderson runs alternative schools in New York City. All are TFA alums.