Arne Duncan Stepping Down as Education Secretary

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who plans to step down in December as one of President Barack Obama’s longest-serving Cabinet members, has pushed through an unprecedented level of change in K-12 education in his nearly seven years in office—and drawn the ire of critics from across the ideological spectrum in the process.

Duncan’s surprise resignation announcement on Oct. 2 also came with the news that John B. King Jr., who is currently filling the duties of the deputy secretary of education, will head up the department as acting secretary until the end of the Obama administration.

The turnover comes as the administration heads toward its final year in office and at a time when Congress is wrestling with dueling measures to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Both a bipartisan Senate education committee bill and a Republican-backed House bill would take aim at some of the administration’s most-cherished priorities, including teacher evaluation through student outcomes, common-core standards, and aggressive school turnarounds.

In announcing Duncan’s resignation, Obama said he had hoped the education secretary would stick it out. “I’ll be honest. I pushed Arne to stay,” he said at a televised news conference at the White House Oct. 2. “He’s one of the longest-serving education secretaries in history and one of the more consequential.”

For his part, Duncan was teary-eyed as he recalled his mother’s work running a tutoring program in inner-city Chicago, which he’s often said inspired him to go into education. “All my life we saw what kids could do when they were given a chance,” he said. “I love this work. I love this team. I love this president.”

Watershed Tenure

The rapid pace of change that Duncan and his team initiated in the nation’s schools—especially through the Race to the Top grant competition and waivers from provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the ESEA—eventually led to blowback from teachers to state chiefs and the administration’s own Democratic allies in Congress.

King’s appointment, though he won’t go through congressional confirmation, may put a fresh face on the administration’s efforts on K-12 policy at a critical moment, as Congress wrestles with the future of the federal role in education.

Duncan, a former Chicago schools chief, is one of just two Cabinet members left from Obama’s original team. And he started out in the job in an enviable position.

Initially, he had the backing of both national teachers’ unions and the most knowledgeable Republican in Congress on education issues—Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who called him the administration’s best Cabinet pick.

What’s more, Duncan and his department were handed unprecedented federal resources to push through big changes in education through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The legislation included $100 billion for education, more than $4 billion of which the administration was able to use to prod states and districts to adopt its priorities.

The administration bet big on teacher evaluation through student outcomes and rewarded states for adopting college- and career-ready standards and assessments, linking teacher data to student outcomes, and proliferating charter schools. That signature program, Race to the Top, wrought big changes nationally, including in states beyond the dozen states that won grants.

Waiver Season

In 2011, with NCLB reauthorization languishing in Congress, the administration gave states the opportunity to apply for conditional waivers from the law’s mandates.

The waivers called for states to put in place teacher-evaluation systems linked to student outcomes at exactly the same time they were moving forward on new standards to prepare students for college and the workforce—and new assessments linked to those standards.

“He was just at the right place at the right time,” said Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a former official of the George W. Bush administration. “Congress gave him a huge amount of authority with Race to the Top, a blank check for $4 billion. It empowered him to be the most powerful education secretary ever. And he was happy to wield that power. He then doubled down on that with conditional waivers. ... That left a bad taste in the mouths of conservatives and led to a lot of the backlash we’re seeing today.”

But Minnesota Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius, who was appointed by a Democratic governor, dismissed the notion that Duncan had pushed for an overly aggressive federal role in education.

She said Duncan had no choice but to act boldly, because of the urgent need to improve the nation’s schools—and Congress’ failure to act in reauthorizing the ESEA, leaving states to cope with a bad policy.

“If [efforts to fix the ESEA] are stalling out, and children are underperforming, and schools are screaming for help, you’ve got to do something,” said Cassellius. “You need a solution.”

                             （来源：美国《教育周刊》网站）