Arne Duncan
| Arne Duncan | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 9th United States Secretary of Education | |
|
In office January 21, 2009 – December 31, 2015 |
|
| President | Barack Obama |
| Deputy |
Anthony Miller James Shelton John King |
| Preceded by | Margaret Spellings |
| Succeeded by | John King |
| Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools | |
|
In office June 26, 2001 – January 21, 2009 |
|
| Appointed by | Richard M. Daley |
| Preceded by | Paul Vallas |
| Succeeded by | Ron Huberman |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
November 6, 1964 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
Arne Duncan (born November 6, 1964) was the United States Secretary of Education from 2009 through December 2015. His tenure as Secretary was marked by controversy. Conservatives and some parents opposed his push for all U.S. states to adopt the Common Core Standards to determine what students had learned, and teachers unions disliked his emphasis on the use of data from student tests to evaluate teachers and schools. When Duncan announced his resignation the president of the AFT teachers union said, "there’s no question that the Department of Education’s fixation on charter schools and high-stakes testing has not worked." Nevertheless, he enjoyed strong support from U.S. President Barack Obama who praised his work as Secretary of Education by saying, "Arne has done more to bring our educational system -- sometimes kicking and screaming -- into the 21st century than anybody else."
Duncan previously served as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools from 2001 to 2009.
Duncan was raised in Hyde Park, a Chicago neighborhood encompassing the University of Chicago. He is the son of Susan Goodrich (née Morton) and Starkey Davis Duncan, Jr. His father was a psychology professor at the university and his mother runs the Sue Duncan Children's Center, an after-school program primarily serving African-American youth in the nearby Kenwood neighborhood.
Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and later Harvard College, where he played on the basketball team and graduated magna cum laude in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in sociology. His senior thesis, for which he took a year's leave to do research in the Kenwood neighborhood, was entitled "The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass".
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