I guess Secretary Duncan felt that he’d done enough damage to educational standards – and tossed around enough race-baiting comments* – to satisfy him, so he’ll be leaving in December. …What’s that? No, actually, my slams at Arne Duncan are likely going to pass unnoticed, in the wake of this: “President Obama has named Education Department official John King Jr. as acting secretary through the end of his term.” There will be no Senate confirmation hearing for a new Secretary of Education, if Barack Obama can possibly help it.

And Barack Obama might pull it off, if only because the election’s in thirteen months and there’s going to be a new President in fifteen.  Although by ‘pull it off’ I mean ‘won’t be personally hassled;’ Warm Body Acting Secretary King won’t enjoy similar consideration.  In fact… while I don’t agree with many of the arguments in this Slate article and I certainly don’t agree with the tone, author Sarah Carr is correct on one thing: the next real Secretary of Education is going to have to try to figure out how to straighten out the stinking, fermenting mess of distrust and arrogance that Arne Duncan (and Barack Obama!) made out of what once was a mildly promising bipartisan educational policy. Secretary Duncan should have stuck around and started the repair work.

But then: since when has any person associated with this administration acted like a functional adult?  Yeah, I’m kind of blanking on a name there, myself.  Guess it’s true what they say about how fish rot from the head down…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Believe it or not, once upon a time Arne Duncan was considered to be the competent guy in the Obama Cabinet.  That was before we realized that Common Core was the political equivalent of a chlorine trifluoride fire. …Well, maybe it’s not that bad, but it’s remarkable how broad the spectrum is of people who hate that particular educational policy.