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Secretary of Education Arne Duncan got a $50,000 payout in unused sick and vacation leave when he left his job as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools system to join the Obama administration. According to a new report by the watchdog group Better Government Association, the secretary was able to take advantage of department policy to covert unused, accrued benefits into a cash payout. Since 2006, Chicago's school system has paid $265 million to employees under this policy, with $227 million for sick days alone. The policy was put into place by the Chicago school board and predates Duncan, a...

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a federal law making it illegal to lie about being a war hero is constitutional and making false statements is not always protected free speech. ... The Colorado case involves Rick Strandlof, who was arrested after claiming he was wounded in Iraq as a Marine and had received military medals. His lawyers have acknowledged the claims were false.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks public-school teachers are “desperately underpaid� and has called for doubling teacher salaries. In a new paper co-authored with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation, I look into whether teachers really are desperately underpaid, or underpaid at all. Jason and I find that the conventional wisdom is far off the truth.At first glance, public-school teachers definitely look underpaid. According to Census data, teachers receive salaries around 20 percent lower than similarly educated private-sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says teachers’ benefits are about the same as benefits in the private sector. But both the salary...

If Education Secretary Arne Duncan has his way, kids would be spending a lot more time at school — and a three-month summer would be a thing of the past. Duncan joked with attendees at a luncheon at the National Press Club Tuesday in Washington that he would like schools to stay open 13 months out of the year. Then he told the audience of over 100 that he seriously supports longer school hours. “In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year,” Duncan said....

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been a presidential candidate for barely two weeks, but already polls indicate he's even with President Barack Obama. So the administration trotted out Education Secretary Arne Duncan to knock him down a peg. Texas schools have "really struggled" under Gov. Perry, Mr. Duncan told Bloomberg's Al Hunt Aug. 18. "Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college ... I feel really badly for the children there." It's cheesy for a Cabinet officer to be so political. But that's not why Mr. Obama shouldn't have used the former...

Time Magazine’s Andrew Rotherham professed to being “confused” over Arne Duncan’s attack on the performance of Texas schools — and his ignorance over the performance of the Chicago school district Duncan actually ran. The Dallas Morning News’ editorial writer Rodger Jones isn’t confused at all. He’s irate. In a column that appeared in yesterday’s newspaper, Jones prints the response to Duncan from Robert Scott, Texas’ education chief, but not before getting in a few shots himself at Duncan’s “lies”: Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s insult to Texas public education was a politically motivated distortion that doesn’t become a federal official in...

More than 150 years ago, Horace Mann fervently hailed education as "the great equalizer in the conditions of men." Horace Mann, generally considered the father of US public education, counted on good schools to fulfill American democracy. Poorer children, via effective education, would rise as far as their talents and hard work could take them. Social mobility would be guaranteed; merit would be the chief determiner of success. Shirley Tilghman, the president of Princeton, recently praised Mann's vision, and lamented that we are not honoring it. She pointed out that our K-12 education system is "leaving vast numbers of students...

Gov. Rick Perry today released the following statement regarding sanctuary city legislation: "As the special session appears to be winding down, I am disappointed the Legislature did not address sanctuary cities. Working with legislative leaders last weekend, we worked to include sanctuary city legislation in Senate Bill 1. Unfortunately, SB1 Conference Committee [Republican] Chairman Robert Duncan ultimately refused to allow language related to the ban of sanctuary cities into the final version of Senate Bill 1. Because of this action, the special session will not provide our peace officers with the discretion they need to adequately keep Texans safe from...

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will give remarks at the Department’s first-ever Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) youth summit at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 7, at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C. The two-day summit, “Creating and Maintaining Safe and Supportive Environments for LGBT Youth,” will take place Monday-Tuesday, June 6-7. Duncan will highlight the administration’s commitment to ensuring equal access to education for LGBT students as it does for all students. He also will discuss the Department’s Office for Civil Rights recently released guidance on the protection against harassment in an education setting based on gender,...

Obama Administration Holds LGBT ‘Youth Summit’ – Gov’t ‘Has Finally Come Out of the Closet,’ Official Says Monday, June 06, 2011 By Penny Starr (CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke at the first “Federal LGBT Youth Summit” on Monday after being introduced by a homosexual on her staff, who said the secretary “gets us” and is “tireless” in her support of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender youth. “Your federal government has finally come out of the closet in support of LGBT youth,” said Pam Hyde, HHS administrator for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services. “It’s great...

A bipartisan group of eight House members has penned a letter to President Obama urging a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in the wake of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) spearheaded the letter, which is also signed by three other Republicans and three other Democrats: Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Rush Holt (D-N.J.), John Campbell (R-Calif.), John Tierney (D-Mass.) and John Duncan (R-Tenn.). ..."we urge you to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan that are not crucial to the immediate national security objective of combating al Qaeda."

An estimated 82 percent of U.S. schools could be labeled as "failing" under the nation's No Child Left Behind Act this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday Department of Education estimates the number of schools not meeting targets will skyrocket from 37 to 82 percent in 2011 because states are toughening their standards to meet the requirements of the law. The schools will face sanctions ranging from offering tutoring to closing their doors "No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," Duncan said in a statement. "This law has created a thousand ways for...

Arne Duncan is renewing his criticism of the No Child Left Behind law passed under George W. Bush as the education secretary visits a high school with the former president's brother. Duncan, who will accompany President Obama to Miami on Friday to visit the school, wrote in an op-ed that the education measure has denied students an “American birthright.” “Under the 2002 No Child Left Behind law ... millions of children continue to be denied their one shot at an American birthright — an education that opens the door to college, careers, and opportunity,” Duncan wrote in the Miami Herald,...

U.S Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told CNSNews.com today in a video interview that “nobody” can be satisfied with the reading and mathematics scores achieved by eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools, noting that “they’re clearly not what they should be.” However, Duncan declined to pin the blame on teachers for the unsatisfactory performance of Wisconsin public schools, arguing that "we can point fingers lots of places" and that “everybody” from parents, to school administrators, to the local community, to the business community also needs to be challenged to make the public schools better. In the latest round of National...

When it comes to school choice, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are for it and against it. They've been proponents of charter schools but have opposed allowing parents to use tax-funded vouchers to enroll their children in private schools. In 2009 Duncan and Obama allowed a voucher program for 1,700 low-income students in Washington, D.C.—the first federal program of its kind—to expire, although a U.S. Department of Education analysis last year found it had improved graduation rates by 12 percentage points. Now House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is pushing a bipartisan effort to resurrect the program....

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and filmmaker Spike Lee teamed up Monday to urge more black men to consider teaching. More than 1 million teachers will retire during the next decade, according to federal estimates, and leaders have embarked on a nationwide drive to build a more diverse teaching force. Duncan on Monday took the campaign to Atlanta's Morehouse College, the nation's only all-male historically black college. Teachers should look more like the people they serve, Duncan said. While more than 35 percent of the nation’s public school students are black or Latino, less than 15 percent of the teachers...

VIDEO HERE OF HOUSE FLOOR SPEECH ________________________________________________________ The text of Rep. Duncan’s speech is copied below: Mr. Speaker: A nationwide revolt is developing over the body scanners at the airports, and it should. Hundreds of thousands of frequent fliers who fly each week are upset about getting these frequent doses of radiation. Parents are upset about being forced to have their children radiated or being touched inappropriately by an unrelated adult. There is already plenty of security at the airport, but now we are going to spend up to $300 million to install 1,000 scanners. This is much more about...

President Barack Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, have spent the past two years beating back the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and their allies to reform the nation's woeful public schools. By November 3, Obama and Duncan may find themselves with a different obstacle in the form of Republican Minnesota Congressman John Kline. With Republicans poised to win back control of the House of Representatives, the former Marine Colonel and think tank executive will be reshaping federal education policy as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. A former Marine helicopter pilot who...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the ralliers gathered at Dunbar High School that education is the civil rights issue of this generation. "Parents: Turn off the television. Educators: We have to stop making excuses," he said. "The dividing line in our country today is less around white and black and more about educational opportunity. We've been too satisfied with second-class schools." He made no mention of the large rally Glenn Beck organized on the Mall. -- Krissah Thompson

“In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year,” Duncan said. “This is not just more of the same. There would be a whole variety of after-school programs. Obviously academics would be at the heart of that. But you top it off with dancing, art, drama, music, yearbook, robotics, activities for older siblings and parents, ESL classes.” He continued by explaining that the American school calendar is antiquated and must be modified so that American students can compete at the highest levels internationally.

When he led the Chicago schools, Arne Duncan kept a list of all the big shots who asked for help in getting certain children into the city's best public schools. The Chicago Tribune has reported that Duncan, now Obama's Secretary of Education, created a back door appeals system that helped the children of the Politically connected get first dibs on the best school slots. The list that Duncan kept included a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan's tenure. It includes 25 Chicago aldermen, House Speaker Michael Madigan's daughter Illinois Attorney General...

I was born and raised a Democrat. My grandfather was a precinct captain for Tweed (the political machine, not the DOE) back in the day. He did the grunt work. Registered voters in cemeteries, voted many times in many places on election day, and left turkeys on the doorsteps of the indigent just before election day. I believe in the principles of the Democratic Party even though I have a strong libertarian bent, and actually conservative on some issues. I am not one of these Originialists when it comes to the Constitution and the role of the federal government in...

Last December, when President Obama launched his second escalation of the Afghan war, he did so with the unflinching support of the Republicans, the right, and neoconservativies. But a small group of conservatives, libertarians and assorted contrarians on the right has opposed the war, and yesterday I journeyed to the Cato Institute to find out whether that nucleus of anti-war opposition is significant or not. The answer: maybe, but probably not. The Cato conference was entitled "Escalate or Withdraw? Conservatives and the War in Afghanistan," and it brought together several ultra conservative members of Congress: Tom McClintock (R-CA); Dana Rohrabacher...

Joshua Dunn notes why Education Secretary Duncan's proposed civil rights "reinforcement" is not only misguided, but will ultimately lose in the courts if it comes to that: This is the same Department of Education that can’t support a voucher program in Washington DC to help minority children escape the grinding incompetence of the DC school system. Now it wants to spend its resources determining whether schools in Fairfax County or Westchester have a disproportionate number of white kids in college prep classes. Someone’s priorities seem misplaced. Even Nixon would blush. Second, it’s hard to see how Duncan can do this...

As mentioned yesterday, the Obama administration is going to begin looking "more intently" at civil rights in our public schools, notably disproportionate discipline rates, [lack] of access to college prep courses, and that 'ol "disparate impact" nonsense. Roger Clegg, who's usually dead-on about the effects of ... stuff like this, notes: ...the easy way out for schools -- and what school bureaucrat won't prefer the easy way out -- is to make sure the numbers pass muster, i.e., to make discipline decisions based not solely on the merits, but also on the basis of race. And since administrators aren't likely...

Maybe it’s because I live in Washington and am thus immersed in the daily political horse-race (who’s up? who’s down?), but it’s hard not to get the sense right now that the Democrats are in free fall. Evan Bayh’s retirement is like a major aftershock to the earthquake that was Scott Brown’s election. Now there’s talk about the GOP taking over both houses of Congress in the fall, and of a primary challenge to President Obama in 2012. To be sure, a month from now, and certainly six months from now, lots could change, and we might be talking about...

Over at the American Thinker, Jay Schalin has another example of the radical leftist agenda that Obama is trying to pull over on the American people. This time we see it in the extremist agenda for education that Obama is trying to implement by revitalizing the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), a panel that Congress shut down in 2008 because it had become "too politicized." The NACIQI is charged with advising the Sec. of Education on "matters related to accreditation and to the eligibility and certification process for institutions of higher education." According to the government...

"One of the most erudite, prolific and acidic critics of national education policy." That's how the Washington Post memorialized Gerald Bracey shortly after his death in late October. One of his regular targets was President Obama's basketball buddy, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In an eerie parting shot from waaaay off-court, Bracey just slam-dunked Duncan. At the time of his death. Bracey was about to publish an article about the Save-A-Life Foundation's (SALF) relationship with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) when Duncan was in charge. "The Skeleton in Arne Duncan's Closet" was supposed to appear on Halloween in Bracey's...

VIDEO: Arne Duncan appears as "animated pitchman" for the Save-A-Life Foundation, ABC7 Chicago, 11/17/06 PHOTO: Ronald McDonald, Save-A-Life founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri, and Arne Duncan The Skeleton in Arne Duncan's Closet by Gerald W. BraceyEducation critic Jerry Bracey had just finished this column when he died on Oct. 20. He had planned to release it at his Huffington Post blog on Halloween. Hence the rattling skeletons theme. Click here to read an October 23, 2009 Washington Post obituary/tribune to Bracey.Halloween season is an appropriate time to talk about rattling skeletons in the closet. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appears...

Imagine what the outcry would be if the House of Representatives somehow passed a bill outlawing charter schools nationwide and, before the Senate had even considered the bill, officials throughout government began writing to school districts telling them to start planning to eliminate charters. The backlash would be enormous. How dare they pressure school districts to kill charter schools before the law actually has changed? Yet that is exactly what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, other department officials and several congressmen have been doing with regard to an attempted federal takeover of the entire student-loan industry. About 75 percent of...

Using stimulus dollars as bait, President Obama is coaxing states to rewrite education laws and cut deals with unions as they compete for $5 billion in school reform grants.

Community leaders and parents outside Fenger are in disbelief that they are not at the breakfast table with Arne Duncan and Eric Holder. Attorney General Holder and Secretary of Education Duncan are in town to speak, ostensibly, with the community about youth violence -- a blight on Chicago neighborhoods so vividly brought to national attention by the videotaped beating of Derrion Albert. "They are meeting about us without us," said Phillip Jackson of the Black Star Project, a Chicago-based educational reform organization. Duncan and Holder's meeting at the Four Seasons also includes Mayor Daley, Pastor Michael Pfleger, CEO of Chicago...

They come from vastly different backgrounds - the U.S. secretary of education, a Democratic civil-rights activist, and the Republican former House speaker - but they all agreed that what they saw yesterday at two Philadelphia schools could be a national model. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and Newt Gingrich toured Mastery Charter School-Shoemaker Campus and McDaniel Elementary on the first stop of a multi-stop tour promoting education improvements.

SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are both traveling to Copenhagen this week to promote Chicago's bid to host to the 2016 Olympic Games--and they will be making the 3,979-mile trip on separate airplanes." SNIPPET: "As reported earlier by CNSNews.com, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report cited two cost estimates for an hour of air travel by the president, vice president and first lady. One estimate comes from the White House Military Office, the other from the U.S. Air Force. Using the CRS cost estimates and the inflation adjuster from the Bureau of Labor Statisitcs,...

Just when you thought he might be done, apparently access to babysitting services on weekends is a civil right in Obama world. At the very least, I'm sure taxpayers might object to having to pay for this right now. And one can only speculate as to who will get to pay and who will get to play. He wants public schools open on weekends so children have a safe place to go. Or maybe it's that he's seen the Ode to Obama videos floating around the Net and just thinks they need more choir practice? Obama and Arne Duncan believe...

President Barack Obama intends to address the nation's schoolchildren Tuesday in a speech that the kids apparently can watch on classroom TVs. I guess he wants to welcome the students back to school and urge them to study hard and set goals and remind them, despite his convenient presence on the screen, that they are in charge of their own education. Don't we already know that? Back in 1991, President George H.W. Bush gave a similar speech, broadcast from an eighth-grade classroom in Washington, D.C. And yes, the Democrats criticized the president for doing such a thing. Other than the...

We have known for many many years that the left has infiltrated our schools, especially at the university level, and have made life difficult for kids...or for that matter teachers...who have a conservative bent. But this is just creepy. It's a letter from the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan letting our K6 and under kids know that Obama will be speaking to them on September 8th: The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and...

At the request of President Obama, we're happy to announce that American Solutions General Chairman Newt Gingrich will be joining Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Reverend Al Sharpton on a multi-city Education Reform Tour.

This morning on the Today show it was announced that President Obama has asked me, on behalf of American Solutions, to travel the country on an Education Reform tour. I'll be joined by two very unlikely allies, to talk about charter schools and real education reform. I'll be travelling with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Reverend Al Sharpton, who are also strongly in favor of charter schools, on a multi-city tour. As a citizen, I believe where you have differences with your elected officials, you should oppose them vigorously. But when you can find common ground, it's important to work...

U.S. swine flu vaccinations could begin in October with children among the first in line — at their local schools — the Obama administration said Thursday as the president and his Cabinet urged states to figure out now how they'll tackle the virus' all-but-certain resurgence. "We may end up averting a crisis. That's our hope," said President Barack Obama, who took time away from the G-8 summit in Italy to telephone another summit back home — the 500 state and local health officials meeting to prepare for swine flu's fall threat. No final decision has been made on whether to...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A handful of states will soon be chosen to take part an intense, $5 billion experiment to improve schools that the federal government is calling "Race to the Top" - but California will be lucky if it gets to participate, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said today during a visit to San Francisco. "Honestly, California has lost its way," Duncan told dozens of the state's mayors and education officials who packed into San Francisco City Hall. "The long-term consequences of that are troubling." Duncan said the few states that win the competition for the new education money...

A Denver-based veterans organization has voted to disband after accusing its founder of fabricating an identity as a former Marine captain who served three tours in Iraq and was at the Pentagon on 9/11. Thirty-two-year-old Richard Glen Strandlof, who used the name Rick Duncan, founded the organization, the Colorado Veterans Alliance, about two years ago. Major Carl Redding, spokesman for the U.S. Marines, said there is no record of Richard Glen Strandlof or Rick Duncan serving in the Marines. Strandolf appeared several times as a campaign spokesperson attacking Republicans in 2008 on national security issues. Colorado Republican State Chairman Dick...

Washington, D.C.'s school voucher program for low-income kids isn't dead yet. But the Obama Administration seems awfully eager to expedite its demise. About 1,700 kids currently receive $7,500 vouchers to attend private schools under the Opportunity Scholarship Program, and 99% of them are black or Hispanic. The program is a huge hit with parents -- there are four applicants for every available scholarship -- and the latest Department of Education evaluation showed significant academic gains. Nevertheless, Congress voted in March to phase out the program after the 2009-10 school year unless it is reauthorized by Congress and the D.C. City...

While President Obama, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and Attorney General Eric Holder share an anti-gun ideology, they might not be the greatest threat to the Second Amendment among the current administration. Their gun control efforts could be vastly outdone by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s habit of equating gun bans with curing a “public health epidemic.” Prior to becoming secretary of education, Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) from 2001 to 2008. During that time, student performance in CPS remained static or fell even further behind the national average. For example, in October 2008 the Chicago Tribune...

The NYT reports that during a press phone call yesterday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan "unleashed a barrage of dismal statistics about the South Carolina schools" whose Governor, Mark Sanford "has told the Obama administration that he would not accept some $577 million in educational stimulus money for South Carolina unless he could use it to pay down state debt." During the putative barrage of dismal statistics Duncan noted that "only 15 percent of the state’s black students are proficient in math and that the state has one of the nation’s worst high school graduation rates." This is a pot kettle...

If only the children in the Washington D.C. school choice program were Wall Street money changers or a "shovel-ready" project in West Virginia Robert Byrd could put his name on. If they were, then perhaps the 1,700 children currently realizing the benefits of school choice in Washington D.C. would have made the recipients list for the $1.2 trillion worth of other people's money President Obama and Congressional Democrats have spent in the last month alone. I suppose $1.2 trillion just doesn't go as far as it once did, particularly when the federal government is buying up unsold PT Cruisers and...

Will Bill Clinton come with Hillary for Day One of her confirmation hearing? The Senate is wondering. Here are some of the dates for the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings: -- Tuesday, Jan. 13, 10:00 am ET: Education: Arne Duncan (HELP Committee) -- Tuesday, Jan. 13: Energy Secretary: Steven Chu (Energy and Natural Resources Committee) -- Tuesday, Jan. 13, 10 am ET: HUD: Shaun Donovan (Banking Committee) -- Tuesday, Jan. 13, 9:30 am ET: State: Sen. Hillary Clinton (Foreign Relations Committee) -- Wednesday, Jan. 14: Veteran Affairs: Gen. Eric Shinseki (Veterans' Affairs Committee) -- Thursday, Jan. 15: Interior: Sen. Ken Salazar...

President-elect Barack Obama continues to reach not across the aisle, or even across the country, but right across town for his cabinet selections. Yet another lackluster liberal Chicago pol — Chicago Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan – this week was named by Obama to his cabinet, as Secretary of Education. Duncan’s biggest career accomplishments include: proposing the novel idea of an all-gay high school in Chicago, and offering to pay high school students to get good grades. Let’s look at each of these astonishing educational policy ideas separately. First, the idea of an all-gay high school has got to be up...

"I want to thank our mutual friend John Rogers, who's been a mentor and friend to me since I was 10-years-old. He gave my sister and I the opportunity to start a great school in the Southside of Chicago, and that has become a model for success in urban education."

Only 17% of 8th Graders Can Read at Grade Level in Chicago Schools Overseen by Obama Education Secretary-Designee Chicago Schools Chief Arne Duncan smiles as President-elect Barack Obama announces his selection to be Education Secretary, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008, at the Dodge Renaissance Academy in Chicago.(CNSNews.com) – In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools – the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001. President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday tapped Duncan to become secretary of education in the upcoming administration. Duncan, hailed by Obama as a reformer,...