Washington — It’s now been two full weeks since Barack Obama was elected president, and almost all the national chatter about cabinet positions has focused on candidates for treasury secretary, defense secretary, attorney general, and even secretary of health and human services.
What’s an education-issues junkie to do?
Over at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education-policy organization, they’ve hit upon a solution taken straight from the campaign season: Conduct a poll.
Since Monday of last week, the institute’s vice president for national programs and policy, Michael J. Petrilli, has been compiling a daily “tracking poll” in which he and nine other education-policy experts — mostly folks involved with elementary and secondary education — have been ranking and updating their predictions of who they believe Mr. Obama will choose as education secretary.
From the start, their consensus favorite has been Arne Duncan, chief executive of the public-school system in Chicago, Mr. Obama’s hometown. Mr. Duncan, who played basketball professionally in Australia, is an adviser and friend of Mr. Obama, as well as a fellow Harvard alumnus.
Besides Mr. Duncan, there’s been a bit of shifting in opinion over the past nine days as to who else stands a good chance of succeeding Margaret Spellings at the department.
Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state, James B. Hunt Jr., a former North Carolina governor, and Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City public schools, rounded out the top four positions in the first poll. Now only Mr. Klein, in ninth place, appears among the top 10 in the poll.
The latest to hold down second place is Arizona’s governor, Janet Napolitano. And even that appears to be a result of Mr. Obama’s focus elsewhere: Ms. Napolitano got a boost today in the poll of experts, Mr. Petrilli says, because she appears to have been bypassed for attorney general.
And the highest among those with a policy background in higher education? It’s Michael L. Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund, who sits today in fourth place. —Paul Basken
