This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 17, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

President-elect Obama has made his pick to head the Department of Education.

So who is Arnie Duncan?

Neil McCluskey Associate Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom.

Comments. comments.

Well, Arnie Duncan is currently the head of the Chicago Public Schools, and he is about to become the next U.S. Secretary of Education. He's also a Harvard guy and a buddy of President-elect Obama. They play basketball together. As the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, what has he done? What is he championed?

I should say that the indicators are that under Duncan the schools in Chicago have improved somewhat.

I don't know what all the The schools in Chicago have improved somewhat.

I don't know what all the details are of that.

I mean, it's very difficult to get information

from many of these big city districts

to know who's being tested, how they're being tested, how the tests have changed.

It's a constant problem under No Child Left Behind.

And Chicago has been one of the great foot draggers on some of the things that could be good no child left behind like providing school

choice and getting tutoring companies involved.

So it looks like at least on the surface things have improved again somewhat

under Duncan and Chicago although his predecessor Paul Valis had a lot to do

with that too. What he stood for is he isn't afraid to try and close down some bad

schools which is a good sign. He's generally in favor of charter schools which

again is a pretty good sign relative to what we get from a lot of people

in education but he's also signed on to a recent manifesto saying we need to spend a whole

lot more money on education and children things like that which is just the

...