Obama’s latest team choice, Arne Duncan

Barack Obama has selected Arne Duncan (pictured), currently the Chicago schools chief, to be his Secretary of Education. The 44-year-old is "not beholden to any one ideology," said Obama as he named his selection in front of a backdrop of the Dodge Renaissance Academy in Chicago – one of the underperforming schools Duncan has turned around – "and he doesn't hesitate for one minute to do what needs to be done."

Though Duncan has an excellent history as a school reformer, many commentators are more interested in his record on the basketball court. At 6ft 5in, Duncan – a former captain of Harvard basketball team who has played the sport professionally in Australia – is the fifth and final recruit needed for a cabinet starting V.

The others are: Barack Obama himself, who played basketball on every election day of his presidential campaign including a game with Duncan on November 4, the day he won the presidency; Eric Holder, who will be Attorney General and who captained his high school team and played at Columbia university; James Jones, the 6ft 4in incoming National Security Advisor and former Georgetown university forward, and Susan Rice, Obama's choice as ambassador to the UN, who was a star player at her Washington high school.

Announcing his nomination of Duncan, Obama was careful to state: "I did not select Arne because he's one of the best basketball players I know, although I will say that I think we are putting together the best basketball-playing cabinet in American history. And I think that is worth noting."

Politico's Carol E Lee and Nia-Malika Henderson report that on the political scene Duncan is "a polarising figure" whose appointment has not been welcomed by everyone. The appointment is "one of the biggest mistakes Obama has made," said Johnny Holmes, of the Chicago group Parents United for Responsible Education. "He is not an educator. He is a person who went to school."

For Time magazine, Kathleen Kingsbury says that picking Duncan clearly demonstrates Obama's willingness to compromise in "the heated world of education politics".

According to Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at Berkeley, "Duncan mirrors the President-elect's style of governing – get all sides around the table, listen carefully and experiment with meaningful reforms," and "while tough-headed, he's rarely antagonistic, nor a kick-butt, take-names kind of reformer."

"Duncan will have to hit the ground running," notes Kingsbury, who points out that he will have to negotiate the reauthorisation of George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, "which has managed to rankle both Republicans (for interfering with state initiatives) and Democrats (for placing so much emphasis on standardised testing)."

As an entrepreneurial and relatively bipartisan choice though, Duncan will hopefully be able to put an end to the Republican vs Democrat wrangling that has hampered American education reform in the past decade.

And Kingsbury reminds readers that Duncan, who has two children, is certainly ambitious. He told Time magazine recently that America's education system "doesn't need a tweak. It needs a fundamental change".

FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 17, 2008