Arne Duncan, Obama’s Education Secretary Since the Beginning, Is Stepping Down

Edu­ca­tion Sec­ret­ary Arne Duncan in­tends to step down in Decem­ber, a White House of­fi­cial con­firmed to Na­tion­al Journ­al.

Pres­id­ent Obama will an­nounce on Fri­day that Duncan will give up his title and that the pres­id­ent has asked John B. King Jr., the cur­rent act­ing Deputy Sec­ret­ary of Edu­ca­tion, to serve as his re­place­ment.

The pres­id­ent does not plan to form­ally nom­in­ate King to take the top spot at the Edu­ca­tion De­part­ment, a pro­cess that would sub­ject King to a po­ten­tially con­ten­tious con­firm­a­tion by Con­gress. In­stead, King is ex­pec­ted to serve as act­ing Sec­ret­ary of Edu­ca­tion, a title that would al­low him to helm the de­part­ment without go­ing through a form­al con­firm­a­tion. Janet Bass, a spokes­per­son from the Amer­ic­an Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers said the or­gan­iz­a­tion—which had been crit­ic­al of King’s ten­ure as New York State edu­ca­tion com­mis­sion­er—will re­lease a state­ment later in the day.

Very few of Obama’s ori­gin­al cab­in­et mem­bers re­main. With Duncan step­ping down, Ag­ri­cul­ture Sec­ret­ary Tom Vil­sack, the pres­id­ent’s chief of staff Denis Mc­Donough and Shaun Donovan, the former Sec­ret­ary of the De­part­ment of Hous­ing and Urb­an De­vel­op­ment and cur­rent head of the Of­fice of Man­age­ment and Budget, are all that are left as cab­in­et mem­bers who have served since the start of Obama’s pres­id­ency.

Duncan no­ti­fied De­part­ment of Edu­ca­tion staff of his in­ten­ded resig­na­tion in a let­ter, a copy of which was ob­tained by National Journ­al. Duncan re­ferred to the news as “bit­ter­sweet,” say­ing: “Serving the Pres­id­ent in the work of ex­pand­ing oppor­tun­ity for stu­dents throughout this coun­try has been the greatest hon­or of my life.”

Duncan ex­plained that sep­ar­a­tion from his fam­ily ul­ti­mately led to his de­cision. “It’s with real sad­ness that [I] have come to re­cog­nize that 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. I haven’t talked with any­one about what I’ll do next, and prob­ably won’t for a little while – I’m simply re­turn­ing to Chica­go to live with my fam­ily. I ima­gine my next steps will con­tin­ue to in­volve the work of ex­pand­ing op­por­tun­ity for chil­dren, but I have no idea what that will look like yet.” Duncan noted in the let­ter that he has been commuting “for sev­er­al months” to and from his fam­ily in Chica­go and his job in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Duncan’s ten­ure as sec­ret­ary has in­spired vit­ri­ol from both teach­ers’ uni­ons and school choice act­iv­ists, along with an intense sense of loy­alty from his staff and sup­port­ers. In a re­cent in­ter­view with Politico, Un­der­sec­ret­ary for Edu­ca­tion Ted Mitchell choked up while talk­ing about his ex­per­i­ence work­ing for Duncan. “I can’t let you leave without telling you what a priv­ilege it has been to work with Arne,” he said.