reformer Duncan?

Here's a more hopeful article from Mark Bergin in World...

As President Barack Obama's newly appointed Secretary of Education, [Arne Duncan] holds sway over federal programs and standards that have long yielded similar dysfunction to that in his home town. What lies ahead for America's education system? The answer lies behind in the city and story that made Arne Duncan.

...the nonprofit Sue Duncan Children's Center, an after-school program for troubled urban youth that [Duncan's mother] founded in 1961. She raised her three children here alongside many others with far less interested or involved parents....

This is the context from which Duncan's education philosophy flows. It was here that he came to believe every child could succeed and here that he learned the unique challenges inner-city educators face....

Duncan and his siblings remained heavily involved at the center. He worked there every day after school growing up and took a year off between his junior and senior years at Harvard to come home and help run the program full-time....

Duncan does not consider vouchers the ultimate answer for the nation's education woes because, he says, they could only ever help a small number of students rather than provide options for entire communities.

Most of the article gives one some reason for modest "hope". But this last statement is accepting an unacceptable current political reality-- or ignorance or a lie.