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UPDATED: Obama’s Ed Policy Working Group

By Michele McNeil — December 01, 2008 2 min read
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Last week, Michele and I promised you a full run-down on President-elect Barack Obama’s education policy working group, which is headed up by Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford. And here it is:

Geri Palast: A former assistant secretary of labor under President Clinton, she now leads the New York City-based Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which successfully fought a long-running legal battle to win more money for the state’s schools. Elizabeth Green over at the Gotham Schools blog explores Palast’s and Robert Gordon’s service on this working group from a “Team of Rivals” point of view.

Ian Bassin: Obama’s Florida policy director, he’s a Yale Law School grad sent from Chicago to run the Obama operation in that important state.

John Jackson: A former NAACP official, he now leads the Schott Foundation for Public Education, which works on graduation and other issues that affect black males. He’s also on an advisory council of the Alliance for Excellent Education, which works on high school reform issues.

David Kirp: A big pre-K advocate, he is a professor at the University of California-Berkeley’s law school and its Goldman School of Public Policy. He is the author of The Sandbox Investment.

Robert Gordon: He is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington founded by Obama’s transition honcho, John Podesta. Gordon worked as a domestic policy adviser on the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign in 2004, and also helped New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on school budgeting and human-capital initiatives. You can check out Gordon’s ideas on how to fix the No Child Left Behind Act here.

Jeanne Century: She is the director of science education at the University of Chicago. She represented the Obama campaign at a forum sponsored by the American Association of Educational Publishers earlier this year.

Bob Shireman: He is the founder and president of the Institute for College Access and Success, a research and advocacy organization. He’s considered a national expert on student lending programs.

Goodwin Liu is a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley, where he works alongside Chris Edley, one of Obama’s campaign advisers. He specializes in civil rights.

Ray Mabus: He is a former governor of Mississippi. Back when he was in the governor’s mansion, he sought to increase teacher pay and proposed an ambitious education reform plan.

Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. have also brought some of their Senate staff members along with them.

Steve Robinson worked as an education adviser in Obama’s Senate office and on the campaign, and Jon Vaupel handled education issues in Biden’s Senate office.

UPDATE: We left Kris Gutierrez off the list! To read about her, check out my colleague Mary Ann Zehr’s post at her Learning the Language blog.

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