Arne Duncan
Arne Duncan
Arne Duncanwas the United States Secretary of Education from 2009 through early 2016. 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...
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth6 November 1964
CityChicago, IL
The cost of college should never discourage anyone from going after a valuable degree.
About two-thirds of bachelor's degree holders borrow to go to school, and on average they're graduating with more than $26,000 in debt.
Almost 24 million children - one in three - are likely growing up without their father involved in their lives.
There was nothing more important I could do than be supportive as a dad.
When I ask teachers why they teach, they almost always say that it is because they want to make a difference in the lives of children.
At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade.
I worry when athletes are simply used by their universities to produce revenue, to make money for them, nothing to show at the back end. I grew up with a lot of players who had very, very tough lives after the ball started bouncing for them. And that's why I'm going to continue to fight.
Historically the Department of Education hasn't been doing enough to drive the sustainability movement, and today, I promise that we will be a committed partner in the national effort to build a more environmentally literate and responsible society.
Hungry children are distracted children. We want to make sure nothing gets in the way of our children performing well academically, including hunger.
City Year is taking on some of the toughest work in education.
Young people know how important it is for dads to be involved in their lives. As I travel the country and talk with students, some of them tell me that their lives would be totally different if their father was around.
We all have a role to play - the President, Congress, parents, students and schools - in making college affordable and keeping the middle class dream alive.
Money is not the reason that people enter teaching.
I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina,