Duncan dumbed down Chicago, now blames George W. Bush for it

One of the things that Chicago reporters who paid attention came to know within a year or two after Mayor Richard M. Daley made novice Arne Duncan the "Chief Executive Officer" of Chicago's public schools in July 2001 was that Duncan lied, almost all the time. When Duncan wasn't lying directly, we would simply make up facts or say "I'll get back to you on that" when asked a question he wanted to avoid when the TV cameras were on. No matter what the question, Duncan never got back, because he didn't have an answer. During the years Duncan was 'CEO' of Chicago's massive (400,000 students; 600 or more schools), the lies just grew, from budget claims to test score gains. It got to the point where when people would ask me about the latest outrageous claim, I'd just say "The best way to tell when Arne Duncan is lying is when his mouth opens and words come out."

Duncan was a novice at running a school system, but a master at repeating the lies he was fed as part of his programming. He was eventually warned never to go off script, because when he did (as the country recently learned with his remarks about Hurricane Katrina being good for New Orleans) anything was possible. The only prominent Chicagoan who would be more ludicrous off script was the man who created Arne Duncan, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.

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On March 9, 2010, as U.S. Secretary of Education and Bennett's successor (at a distance) Arne Duncan appeared on CNN and told the nation that it was time to "stop lying" about test scores.


Like Bennett before him, Duncan left out most of the facts. And the most important facts left out by Duncan — and ignored by CNN — was that Duncan had been the main liar on behalf of those test scores that had gone "up" all but one of the years when Duncan headed Chicago's school system.