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Education Secretary Arne Duncan steps down after 7-year term

By JOSH LEDERMAN and KATHLEEN HENNESSEY, Associated Press
Published: October 2, 2015, 10:15am

WASHINGTON — Arne Duncan, who followed President Barack Obama to Washington to serve as his education secretary, announced Friday he will step down following a seven-year tenure marked by a willingness to plunge head-on into the heated debate about the government’s role in education.

Sidestepping a confirmation fight in Congress, Obama tapped a senior bureaucrat to run the department while leaving the role of secretary vacant for the remainder of his presidency.

One of the longest-serving Cabinet members, Duncan is among the few who have formed close personal relationships with the president. After his departure in December, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will be the sole member of Obama’s Cabinet still in his original role.

Duncan said he planned to return to Chicago, where his family is living, with his future plans uncertain.

“Being apart from my family has become too much of a strain, and it is time for me to step aside and give a new leader a chance,” Duncan said in an email to staff obtained by The Associated Press.

In an unconventional move, Obama asked John King Jr., a senior Education Department official, to oversee the Education Department, but declined to nominate him to be secretary, which would require confirmation by the Republican-run Senate. Elevating King in an acting capacity spares Obama a potential clash with Senate Republicans over his education policies as his term draws to a close.

“We do not intend to nominate another candidate,” said a White House official who wasn’t authorized to comment by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Republicans pointed out that Obama has previously complained that acting secretaries cannot fulfill all the duties of Senate-confirmed agency heads.

Obama planned to make the announcement with Duncan Friday at the White House.

Duncan’s tenure at the helm of the Education Department coincided with a roiling debate about perceived federal overreach into schools that remains a potent issue as he leaves office. Navigating a delicate divide, Duncan sought to use the federal government’s leverage to entice schools and states to follow the Obama’s administration’s preferred approach to higher standards, prompting resistance from both ends of the political spectrum.

On the right, Republicans and state leaders accused Duncan of a heavy-handed federal approach that sidestepped lawmakers and enforced top-down policies on local schools. Critics blasted the department for linking federal money to state adoption of standards such as the Common Core, a controversial set of curriculum guidelines. His signature initiative was the Race to the Top program, in which states competed for federal grants, with strings attached.

On the left, Duncan clashed over policy with teachers’ unions, including the largest, the 275,000-member National Education Association, which once called on Duncan to resign. Traditionally reliable Democratic allies, labor leaders bristled at his strong support for charter schools and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.

Throughout his tenure, Duncan held firm to his support for federal standardized testing requirements, even as he readily handed out waivers to states exempting them from George W. Bush-era requirements under No Child Left Behind. Duncan cast the federal testing as a civil rights issue, critical to ensuring that schools be held accountable for the success of students of all races and economic backgrounds. The Education Department pointed to statistics showing the high school graduation rate under Duncan hit a new high of 81 percent.

Occasionally flashing impatience with criticism, Duncan raised eyebrows in 2014 when he cast opponents as “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.” He later said he regretted the “clumsy phrasing.”

Part of the Chicago cohort that converged on Washington after Obama’s election, Duncan previously ran the Chicago public school system, although he never worked as a teacher. His work in education, though, began as a child working in his mother’s South Side tutoring program. He went on to run an educational foundation in Chicago, then joined Chicago public schools as director of its magnet school program.

A basketball player at Harvard University who played professionally in Australia, Duncan was once a regular in Obama’s weekend basketball games.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who frequently clashed with Duncan as chairman of the Senate’s education panel, praised Duncan as “one of the president’s best appointments” — but added a reminder of their ideological divergence.

“When we disagree, it is usually because he believes the path to effective teaching, higher standards, and real accountability is through Washington, D.C.,” said Alexander, who served as education secretary under George H.W. Bush.

In his previous role at the Education Department, King oversaw preschool through high school education and managed the department’s operations, holding the peculiar title of delegated deputy secretary. He served earlier as state education commissioner in New York, running the state’s public schools and expansive system of state colleges and universities.

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