The Senate voted Monday to confirm President Obama’s nominee to run the Department of Education, a position left vacant in January when Arne Duncan resigned.
John King was confirmed as the next secretary of education in a 49-40 vote, despite opposition from conservative Republicans, who criticized his tenure as New York education commissioner. A simple majority of voting senators was all that was needed to approve him, and the 49-40 vote was enough even though it’s not a majority of the entire Senate.
King’s support included Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who was confirmed a quarter century ago Monday as education secretary in the administration of George H.W. Bush. Alexander said he encouraged Obama to send the Senate an education nominee, even though the Senate normally drags out significant confirmation votes during an election year.
Alexander said he wanted to ensure a secretary was in place to help implement the recently signed federal education reform law that passed with overwhelming support in Congress. The law reforms the unpopular “No Child Left Behind” accountability and testing program instituted during the George W. Bush administration.
The new law rids the system of much of the federal oversight of testing and standards and transfers control to local school systems.
“I want to make sure we are working together to implement the law the way Congress wrote it,” Alexander said.
But conservatives argued against confirmation of King, noting his avid support the Common Core learning standards during his tumultuous tenure in New York. Common Core has been criticized by parents and teachers for imposing an overly broad standard and confusing curriculum.
A notable opponent to his confirmation was Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat.
“He forced on an unwilling school system an unpopular Common Core curriculum and standards, inflexible testing regimes and a flawed teacher evaluation system,” Sen. Mike Lee. R-Utah, said of King’s time running New York public schools.
But Alexander noted that the new law prohibits the education secretary from trying to coerce states into adopting the Common Core State standards, or any testing tied to them.
“It doesn’t quite matter what Dr. King thinks of Common Core,” Alexander said. “Under the law, he doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
