President Obama plans to nominate John King, Jr. to replace Arne Duncan.
The sudden announcement that the top education official in the country is resigning has been met with a mix of reactions in Connecticut.
Arne Duncan announced on Friday that he was resigning as education secretary after nearly seven years on the job, ending one of the longest runs in that cabinet position’s history.
Governor Dannel Malloy praised Duncan’s work.
“I am proud of our collaborative efforts and the strong relationship that our state has had with Secretary Duncan,” Malloy said in a statement. “His efforts to close the achievement gap and give children of all backgrounds new opportunities will resonate well past his tenure.”
Duncan’s work to increase access to early childhood education was shot down by Congress, but Connecticut has taken that torch and invested in improving preschool options for kids across the state. Duncan's controversial plan to fund charter schools led to much criticism by teachers' unions. The disagreement peaked in 2014 when the National Education Association called for his resignation.
President Barack Obama said he plans to nominate John King, Jr. to replace Duncan.
King was orphaned at age 12, and said he spent much of his formative years caring for himself, as he pointed out in this article for the Huffington Post. He credits his public school education as the life-saver that put him on track to his current role.
But King has also drawn fire from unions. In 2014, as education commissioner for the state of New York, a major union there called for his resignation. New York State United Teachers claimed that a hasty roll-out of the Common Core State Standards hurt public education. It also had concerns about data storage being outsourced to a third party. King left the New York job to work in Duncan’s department.
Watch Obama and Duncan's announcement below:
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wished Duncan well, but expressed concern over King’s potential nomination.
“No one doubts [King's] commitment to children,” Weingarten said in a statement, “but his tenure as New York state’s education commissioner created so much polarization in the state with parents and educators alike that even Gov. Andrew Cuomo is finally doing a mea culpa over the obsession with testing. We can only hope that King has learned a thing or two since his tenure in New York.”
Jennifer Alexander, CEO of ConnCAN, an education reform group with pro-charter school leanings, also wished Duncan well. But she urged the federal government to fix the “broken school funding system.”
“We hope to see some leadership with that at the national level,” Alexander said.
In a White House press conference, President Obama said that he pushed Duncan to stay on board after Duncan’s family had moved back to Chicago during the summer, where Duncan had been spending his weekends. But ultimately Duncan chose to be with his family full-time.
As he discussed his upbringing and his parents, both of whom were educators, Duncan became visibly upset.
“My mother started an inner-city tutoring program before we were born, and raised all of us as part of that program, and that changed our lives,” Duncan said. “And all our life, we saw what kids could do when they were given a chance. And that’s why we do this work today.”
Duncan's resignation is effective in December.
