U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s sports-related back injury isn’t getting any better, apparently.

The Education Department said today that he’s under doctor’s orders to rest, and stay off airplanes, for several more weeks. (This might help explain why a Race to the Top event today in Tennessee, in which Duncan was scheduled to appear, was cancelled.)

“Secretary Arne Duncan will have a reduced public schedule for the coming weeks in order to recuperate from back problems and related complications. His doctors have ordered limited travel and rest; he expects to resume his full public schedule prior to the start of the school year,” new deputy press secretary Daren Briscoe said today.

A summer-long break from the speaking circuit is bound to cramp Duncan’s style, since he loves to use the bully pulpit to drive home his education agenda. But it might also give him a reason to stay in D.C. and focus his energies on Capitol Hill. After all, he wants Congress to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act by the time kids go back to school in the fall.