Arne Duncan’s tenure as Secretary of Education has been met with mixed results. On the higher education front in particular, advocacy organizations like the Thurgood Marshall Fund and the United Negro College Fund have been critical of his vision for Black colleges almost from the day he took the helm of the government agency in 2009.
“On K-12, the Secretary has largely gotten it right,” said Dr. Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the UNCF, in a recent interview with Diverse. “He has not been as successful with higher education.”
But despite the criticisms, Duncan has largely enjoyed strong support from the nation’s traditional civil rights establishments like the NAACP, National Urban League and National Action Network, which have partnered with the Secretary over the years to push for robust education reforms, particularly in poor urban areas.
Shortly after President Obama took office, Duncan joined forces with the Rev. Al Sharpton and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich to encourage city leaders to address failing public schools. In a show of bipartisan unity, the three barnstormed the country in 2009, visiting schools in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Baltimore.
For Duncan, who served as superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools before he was tapped to be Secretary of Education by President Obama, the plight of poor, African-American and other minority children has always been an issue high on his agenda, according to several friends and associates who know him well.
They said his interest in the inequities that minority children face was likely introduced to him as a youngster who was raised by progressive parents in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. Duncan’s father was a psychology professor and his mother ran a popular after-school program for Black youth who lived in the Kenwood section of the city. But even as a young aspiring basketball player, he would often run hoops on the basketball court with young Black gang members before he would eventually find his way to Harvard as a college student.
Over the past few years, Duncan has been known to reference data from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), which provides policymakers, educators, parents and community leaders with information designed to close the achievement and opportunity gap among students.
