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(CNSNews.com) – U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who oversees a federal agency that spent $134.8 billion in fiscal 2009, tutored kids as a young student but has never professionally taught inside a classroom.
Duncan’s experience in education includes time as the administrator of a nonprofit school and as head of the Chicago public school system, according to Education Department press secretary Justin Hamilton.
“Arne Duncan has experience running a nonprofit school for the Ariel Foundation and then moved into administration at the Chicago public school system and was the longest serving head of the Chicago public school system for seven years before he became secretary of education,” Hamilton told CNSNews.com.
But when asked whether Duncan had professional in-classroom teaching experience, Hamilton only mentioned Duncan’s experience tutoring kids as a young student.
“Well, I would say that -- actually, I would say no,” Hamilton told CNSNews.com. “(H)is classroom teaching experience started at a very young age, where his mother ran an after-school program for underprivileged kids in a church basement and he was both a student there and a tutor.”
The Education Department spokesman then abruptly ended the interview.
According to his biography on the Education Department Web site, Duncan’s experience includes serving on the boards of the Ariel Education Initiative, Chicago Cares, the Children’s Center, the Golden Apple Foundation, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, Jobs for America's Graduates, Junior Achievement, the Dean's Advisory Board of the Kellogg School of Management, the National Association of Basketball Coaches' Foundation, Renaissance Schools Fund, Scholarship Chicago and the South Side YMCA.
In addition, he was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College and on committees for Harvard University's Graduate School of Education and the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.
Duncan, who majored in sociology, graduated magna cum laude in 1987 from Harvard University.
Although he has no professional classroom teaching experience, Duncan is also a recipient of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship “Enterprising Educator Award.”
Interestingly, the Chicago Public Schools, which Duncan headed from 2001 to 2008, trailed behind other big-city school districts -- including schools in Miami, Houston and New York City -- in fourth-grade math achievement, according to the most recent (2007) federal report card issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Though Duncan is frequently credited for improvements in Chicago's test scores in math -- a key indicator of how well schools are doing -- the NAEP results show that improvements made in Chicago also lagged behind improvements made in Boston, San Diego and Atlanta.
The U.S. Department of Education administers programs for all areas and levels of the nation’s education system, and is responsible for implementation of the president’s education policies as well as the execution of education legislation approved by Congress.
According the department’s Web site, the U.S. Department of Education is “the agency of the federal government that establishes policy for, administers, and coordinates most federal assistance to education.”
Elementary and secondary programs under the department’s control assist over 14,000 school districts and an estimated 56 million students enrolled in about 125,000 schools – of which, 28,000 are private schools.
The ED is also charged with making grants, loans, and work study assistance to approximately 11 million postsecondary students.
For fiscal year 2010, which began Oct. 1, 2009, the Education Department was allotted $46.7 billion in discretionary funding by President Obama. That amount is an addition to the $96.8 billion in discretionary funding appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus package. |
