Arne Duncan's Back-to-School Bus Tour to Focus on Preschool through Career

Arne Duncan’s Back-to-School Bus Tour to Focus on Preschool through Career

By Alyson Klein — August 31, 2015 1 min read

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U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s annual back-to-school bus tour is back in action and headed for the Midwest. And this year’s focus goes beyond K-12 policy. The theme is “Ready for Success” with a lot of emphasis on the bookends of the edu-spectrum: early and higher education.

The tour kicks off on September 14 and Duncan plant to make stops at a preschool in Kansas City, Missouri; a high school in Iowa to talk about college affordability with students and parents. And, also in Iowa, Duncan will chat with teacher leaders and shadow coaches at a middle school. In addition, he’ll talk family engagement at Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. (The school was named after a black protestor killed in the Boston Massacre, which helped spur the Revolutionary War.)

The secretary will also visit a magnet high school in Louisville, Kentucky, and chat with students at the University of Louisville about college affordability, a topic he’ll address later on the tour at Ohio’s Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. He’ll wrap up the tour in Pittsburgh, Pa., talking STEM at Carnegie Melon University.

Flashback: Last year’s bus tour had a bit more of a K-12 theme—the message was on the Obama administration’s role in partnering with states and districts on tricky-to-implement policies, such as turning around low-performing schools and closing the achievement gap. Our own Lauren Camera was along for the ride and you can read all about it here.

The Obama administration has been incredibly active on K-12, what with Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind waivers, and a host of new or revamped programs, such as Investing in Innovation and the School Improvement Grants. But during the president’s second term those programs have become increasingly controversial, and the administration has talked more about preschool and higher education. And now, Democratic presidents, including Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, are taking a similar approach.

Checkout a tweet and picture from last year’s tour: