EXCLUSIVE -- Arne Duncan Would Stay for 2nd Obama Term
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Updated: September 27, 2012 | 6:49 p.m.
September 27, 2012 | 3:01 p.m.
If President Obama wins a second term, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will stay in his job, he toldNational Journal on Thursday. Duncan is likely to spend much of his time in a second term focusing on ways to rein in spiraling college tuition costs—a significant barrier toward the president’s goal of doubling college graduations by 2020.
“I am staying, unless the president gets sick of me,” Duncan said after speaking at a K-12 Education Forum sponsored by the Hamilton Project. That’s unlikely to happen, considering that Obama and Duncan both cut their teeth on politics in Chicago and have a strong personal relationship.
Among Cabinet members, Duncan has an outsized influence on the domestic-policy development within the administration. White House officials view the Education Department’s Race to the Top competitive grant program as one of the most successful ways the administration can encourage change without ponying up tons of federal money. Well over 30 states have embarked on some sort of school-reform efforts in hopes of winning one of the grants. Nineteen states and several districts have won them. Duncan and Obama also are enormously proud that 46 states have signed on to the