Ernest L. Boyer, the longtime president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and U.S. commissioner of education in the Carter administration, died Friday of cancer. He was 67.

Boyer was known was a tireless innovator in the effort to improve education.

“Education has lost its best friend,” said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. “They may not know his name, but millions of Americans have better lives today because of Ernie Boyer.”

Boyer was an adviser and confidant to presidents and other political figures for 25 years.

He was the last person to hold the post of U.S. commissioner of education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare before Congress split HEW into the Education Department and the Health and Human Services Department in 1979.

He was also appointed to national education commissions by Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter. Last year, Boyer received the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, a presidential citation.

Boyer served as chancellor of education at the State University of New York for several years in the 1970s.

Boyer had pressed for better language and math skills for incoming college students and was credited with pushing such trends as greater university attention to undergraduate teaching; community service programs for students; and the taking into account of professors’ teaching skills and public service, not just research and publications, in granting tenure.