Arne Duncan

Arne Starkey Duncan is an American education administrator who served as United States Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2015. Born in Chicago in 1964 to academic parents, he attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and graduated from Harvard College in 1987 with a degree in sociology, where he was co-captain of the basketball team.

After college he played professional basketball in Australia for four years before returning to Chicago in 1992 to direct the Ariel Education Initiative, a tutoring program connected to the Ariel Community Academy on the city's South Side. In 1999 Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed him deputy chief of staff to the Chicago Public Schools, and from 2001 to 2008 he served as the district's chief executive officer, overseeing one of the largest urban school systems in the country.

President Obama nominated him as Secretary of Education in December 2008 and the Senate confirmed him in January 2009. As secretary he led the Race to the Top competitive grant program, expanded support for charter schools and teacher-evaluation reforms, and oversaw the rewriting of the No Child Left Behind law into the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. He was also one of Obama's regular basketball partners.

After leaving office he joined the Emerson Collective, the philanthropic organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, and later helped launch Chicago CRED, a program working with young men at high risk of gun violence on the city's South and West Sides. He published How Schools Work in 2018.

The name Arne is a Scandinavian given name of Old Norse origin, derived from a word meaning eagle. He has carried it through Chicago schools leadership and a term as Secretary of Education.