Speaker of the House John Boehner will resign from his position and give up his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of October, according to media reports late last week.
Boehner, an Ohio Republican, was elected House speaker in 2010. He was the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, and played a key role in shepherding the NCLB law through the legislative process.
At certain points he had to overcome objections from conservative GOP colleagues that the bill that became NCLB gave too much influence to the federal government on education policy.
More recently, he’s been a supporter of the House bill, known as the Student Success Act, to rewrite NCLB. And he’s been a supporter of the voucher program in the District of Columbia that’s frequently at the center of political fights in Congress.
Boehner served as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee from 2001 to 2006, when he was elected House majority leader.
