Education Secretary Arne Duncan steps down after 7-year term

Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who frequently clashed with Duncan as chairman of the Senate’s education panel. And now he’s stepping down – well, he will in December. “We can only hope that King has learned a thing or two since his tenure in New York”.

Both of these were policies the Obama administration promoted.

That power came thanks to stimulus funds carved out for Duncan’s education reforms following the 2008 recession. Duncan apologized for the comments, but they became emblematic to many of how education policymakers had become tone deaf to criticism during a period of change. He has helped bring evidence-based, innovative policies to education and continued to challenge the status quo.

During his seven-year tenure at the helm of the Department of Education, Duncan has implemented a host of educational reforms, spurred by the $100 billion of economic stimulus money he distributed at the beginning of his term. “We are incredibly grateful”. High school graduation rates are at an all-time high while dropout rates are down. Duncan cast the federal testing as a civil rights issue, critical to making school ensure that students of all races and backgrounds succeed.

Arne Duncan, who announced on Friday he was stepping down as education secretary, has been one of the leading voices on higher-education policy for nearly a decade.

His department also attracted much attention by launching investigations into how campuses handled student allegations of sexual assaults and harassment, aiming to change attitudes toward social life and drinking among young people. As part of that effort, federal officials shut down Corinthian Colleges, which enrolled thousands of California students. He joined a contingent that moved to Washington from Chicago to serve under Obama after running that city’s public school system.

President Barack Obama has tapped John King Jr., a senior official at the Education Department, to run the department for the remainder of his administration. Early conflicts centered on Duncan’s signature Race to the Top competitive grant program. Gov. Jerry Brown said that Duncan had no authority to impose requirements for teacher evaluations under the NCLB law, and submitted California’s waiver application without the teacher evaluation component. “Are you here to make a difference?…” Just past year, our members delivered a vote of no confidence against him and called for his resignation.

Duncan’s wife, Karen, returned to Chicago last summer and his children were enrolled in the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, which he once attended.

For many, his success was also attributed to his ability to work across the political spectrum. It was there that he developed a passion for education while volunteering at an after-school program in a Boston public housing project. There, on a smaller stage, he fought numerous same, bruising battles that Duncan did. He called his job the dream of a lifetime. “I still pinch myself a few days”, he said.

Duncan is among the group of close Obama confidantes who participated in the president’s Election Day pick-up game in 2012. “Whether it’s students harassing other students because of ethnicity, disability or religion; or an adult, public official harassing the president of the University of Michigan student body because he is gay, it is time we as a country said enough”.