Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.

The brightly colored tour bus adorned with furry creatures rolling across the southwest is not a mirage — it’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in his wheels of the week.

Duncan kicked off the department’s “Strong Start, Bright Future,” back-to-school tour today in New Mexico, where he is touring classrooms and holding town hall meetings on everything from improving low-performing schools to the President’s ConnectEd initiative, which seeks to connect 99 percent of the nation’s students to high-speed Internet.

Over the next four days, Duncan makes stops in Texas, Arizona and California.

The tour ends in Chula Vista, a town outside San Diego, which won a Promise Neighborhood grant of nearly $5 million last year as as part of the Promise Initiative.