In a rare bit of bipartisanship, the U.S. Senate on Monday narrowly approved President Obama’s choice to lead the U.S. Department of Education, confirming John B. King Jr. as education secretary.
The 49-40 vote comes just five days after the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 16 to 6 to approve the nomination.
The quick approval stands in contrast to recent Republican efforts to fight Obama's choice of a replacement for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Feb. 13. Republicans have said they will not advance anyone Obama nominates.
King, 41, is a former social studies teacher and middle- and high-school school principal. By all indications, he is the first school principal ever to serve in the top education job. He also spent several years as New York State’s education commissioner, the first African-American and first Puerto Rican to fill the role.
In public appearances since his appointment, King has often recounted his own childhood experiences with inspiring teachers. In his words, they “saved my life.”
Rising from a tumultuous childhood in Canarsie, a blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhood, King earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University, a master’s degree and education doctorate from Columbia University's Teachers College and a law degree from Yale. In between degrees, he taught high school social studies in Puerto Rico and Boston and co-founded Roxbury Prep, one of a growing number of “no excuses” charter schools that use strict discipline, longer school days and close attention to data to improve the skills of their mostly minority, low-income students.
King also helped found Uncommon Schools, a New York-based charter school chain that now comprises nearly 50 schools, including Roxbury Prep and two other schools in King’s native Canarsie.
Senate Republicans have stalled many of Obama's nominees in recent months, but Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a former education secretary under George H.W. Bush, promised to give King "a prompt and fair" hearing after King's predecessor, Arne Duncan, stepped down last December.
Alexander said he doesn't want to go an entire year without a new education secretary.
Obama, who named King as acting secretary last October, had originally planned to forego confirmation hearings. But he changed his mind after Alexander urged the president to bring the nomination to the Senate. Obama said he'd nominate King just two months after Congress approved the Every Student Succeeds Act, a sweeping reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Actually, Alexander has said it was at the signing ceremony for the new law in December where he urged Obama to send a nominee to Capitol Hill.
“I did that because this is such an important year for our nation’s schools,” said Alexander. "We need an education secretary who is confirmed and accountable to Congress while we're implementing a law that may govern elementary and secondary education for some time."
Alexander on Monday told colleagues, "We need an education secretary confirmed by and accountable to the United States Senate so that the law fixing No Child Left Behind will be implemented the way Congress wrote it."
Alexander has said he'll hold at least six oversight hearings this year on implementation of the new federal education law.
“A law is not worth the paper it is printed on unless it is implemented the way Congress wrote it,” he said.
Obama on Monday said King "will continue to lead our efforts to work toward high-quality preschool for all, prepare our kids for college and a career, make college more affordable, and protect Americans from the burdens of student debt. John knows how education can transform a child’s future. He’s seen it in his own life. And his experience, counsel, and leadership couldn’t be more valuable to me and to our country as we work to open the doors of opportunity to all of America’s children."
Follow Greg Toppo on Twitter: @gtoppo
