About Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan was nominated to be Secretary of Education by President Barack Obama and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Jan. 20, 2009. Prior to his appointment as Secretary of Education, Duncan served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools, a position to which he was appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, from June 2001 through December 2008, becoming the longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the country. Before joining the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan ran the non-profit education foundation Ariel Education Initiative (1992-1998), which helped fund a college education for a class of inner-city children under the I Have A Dream program. He was part of a team that later started a new public elementary school built around a financial literacy curriculum, the Ariel Community Academy, which today ranks among the top elementary schools in Chicago.