Obama hires schools 'enforcer'

BARACK Obama has vowed to overhaul the failing US education system, saying it was "morally unacceptable" to allow standards to slip even further.

Already faced with rebuilding the crumbling economy, the president-elect has placed education high on his list of priorities when he takes office in the new year.

He has recruited former basketball player Arne Duncan, the uncompromising head of the Chicago schools system, to bring American schools up to scratch.

Mr Obama, who is Harvard-educated, said he plans to spend billions of dollars on schools as well as placing more demands on parents and teachers to help in the education of children.

America consistently ranks in the bottom half of world performance tables on education for under-18s and its high schools have one of the highest drop-out rates among western countries.

Announcing Mr Duncan's appointment as education secretary, Mr Obama said: "We can't continue like this. It's morally unacceptable for our children and economically untenable for America." Mr Duncan, 44, a close friend of Obama and a former professional basketball player in Australia, faces one of the toughest tasks among all the new appointees to Mr Obama's government.

With the teaching profession heavily unionised - many employees are guaranteed a job for life - he has to raise standards without alienating the powerful teachers' unions who supported the presidential campaign. Mr Obama has first promised to overhaul George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" law, an attempt to impose uniform standards across the nation's vast array of local school systems.

Mr Obama said he will hire an "army of teachers" in an attempt to raise standards. Since being appointed as head of the Chicago schools system in 2001, Mr Duncan has shut down failing schools and turned others around, while boosting exam scores and attendance rates. Some of his ideas include support for public boarding schools and teacher performance-based pay initiatives.

But his support for a programme that pays students for earning good grades and his backing of a gay-friendly high school have also been criticised. Mr Obama said: "When faced with tough decisions, Arne doesn't blink. He's not beholden to any one ideology, and he doesn't hesitate for one minute to do what needs to be done.

"He's shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs even when it was unpopular."