Politics K-12

John White, who was hired in May to be the press secretary for the U.S. Department Education, has left that post and is now the deputy assistant secretary for rural outreach.

Peter Cunningham, the chief public relations strategist for Education Secretary Arne Duncan, told me that the press office was "overstaffed." (Really? I can come up with plenty more things for them to do, if needed!)

Rural outreach is an area where the department, which has been criticized for overlooking the rural perspective on issues, certainly needs some help. And, so, White is filling a void, said Cunningham, who is officially the assistant secretary for communications and outreach. He added: "Arne's not a rural guy. I'm not a rural guy." (I'm not sure White, who is a former spokesman for Prince George's County Public Schools, is a "rural guy" either, but lots of folks will stand ready to school him in all things rural.)

Cunningham (who is, like his boss, a Chicago guy) also said this is part of a broader strategy to improve outreach as reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act approaches. "The media is critically important, but outreach is where you build support for the agenda."

He noted that he has department staffers who specialize in outreach to associations, to other government entities, now to the rural schools, and he's hiring someone from Los Angeles to tackle outreach at the community level.

As a result of White's departure from the press office, deputy press secretaries Sandra Abrevaya and Justin Hamilton have been promoted and will be sharing the title of press secretary. That also means they're graduating from cubicle offices to a real office, although they'll have to share it.

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Andy Rotherham, one of the Godfathers of education blogging and a co-founder of Education Sector, is giving up his day job this spring.

He'll be leaving EdSector, which the organization's other co-founder, Tom Toch, announced he did about six months ago.

But never fear, Eduwonk fans. The blog will live on, Rotherham says, although it will likely be re-branded once his future becomes more clear.

Rotherham, who confirmed his departure after I called him to bug him about a rumor I'd heard, said he has several career options and plans to stay in the Washington, D.C., area. Though he wants to work on broader issues, Rotherham—who worked on education issues under President Clinton and served for four years on the Virginia Board of Education—says he's not leaving the education space and is committed to working to "dramatically transform our system of schools."

EdSector plans to officially announce the news tomorrow. (UPDATE: Read the official press release here.)

Rotherham, 38, an avid fly fisherman and the father of two young daughters, told me that he's ready for something different. It will be very interesting to see where Rotherham, an oft-quoted education expert who has an extensive policy portfolio, lands. After all, the Washingtonian magazine in 2007 declared him one of the "40 under 40" people to watch.

At one point, lots of people speculated he was in line for a top job in the Obama administration at the U.S. Department of Education, and there was enough talk to even spark a letter-writing campaign against him by some of his critics. Alas, he didn't join the department.

Rotherham and Toch (who is an EdWeek alum) founded EdSector five years ago as a hybrid group "formed at the intersection of research, public policy, and journalism."

What does this mean for the future of EdSector? “It’s a challenge," he said, "but it's one the organization is well-positioned to meet.”

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Former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has taken on a new gig, as the executive vice-president of the National Chamber Foundation, a non-profit arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber has been really active on education issues for a long time, and its views tend to dovetail pretty well with Spellings'; the group has been very supportive of accountability through testing, for instance.

Apparently, Spellings started serving as a senior adviser to the Chamber back in April, even as she was working as the president and CEO of Margaret Spellings and Company, a public policy consulting firm.

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Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who was hanging out with Michele all day yesterday in Florida, also found time to name five new staff members to key positions at the Education Department:

*Michael Roark, chief administrative officer, office of the deputy secretary: Previously, Roark worked as chief financial officer for AOL Europe. Back in the early 1990s, Roark worked for Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who is considered pretty liberal on education (and just about everything else).

*Jacqueline Jones, senior adviser for early learning: Jones has been working for the New Jersey Department of Education as an assistant commissioner for the Division of Early Childhood Education. Before that, she worked for the Educational Testing Service (ETS) as a senior research scientist and director of early-childhood research and development.

*Katherine Tobin, deputy assistant secretary for performance and improvement: Tobin served for the past three years as a governor of the U.S. Postal Service. She has also worked as college and university administrator.

"Emma Vadehra, deputy assistant secretary, in the Office of Planning Evaluation and Policy Development: Until recently, Vadehra served as a senior education counsel for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Before that, she worked at Uncommon Schools, a charter-management organization.

*Nia Phillips, deputy general counsel for departmental and legislative services: Philips served as then-Sen. Barack Obama's political director and constituency director for Georgia in the 2008 general election.She also taught 1st grade for three years at a public school in Brooklyn in New York City. Before that, she provided legal counsel for Viacom Inc. and worked as an attorney.

Finally, some non-Department of Ed personnel news: Mary Ellen McGuire, who heads up the New America Foundation's education activities and previously served as a top aide to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is going to work on the White House Domestic Policy Council as a senior adviser for education.

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Judy Wurtzel, who was on leave from the Aspen Institute to serve as a consultant to the Education Department, is in line to take a full-time position under Education Secretary Arne Duncan. She would be the deputy assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development.

That's according to an email just sent out by the Aspen Institute. UPDATE: And the education department also confirms.

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Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, the superintendent of the Pomona Unified School District, in California, is being nominated as the new assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, the White House just announced. (UPDATE: Pending Senate confirmation, of course.)

This would make Melendez the top K-12 specialist, in charge of Title I programs and other things No-Child-Left-Behind. She'd be the highest-ranking Hispanic in the department. (UPDATE 2: Reading Alexander Russo's post on Melendez reminded me that Gabrielle Gomez, who is also at the assistant secretary level—for legislative affairs—is also Hispanic.)

Though she's not a big-name superintendent like Washington's Michelle Rhee or New York City's Joel Klein, she's got her own education street creds. She was part of the reform-y Broad Superintendents Academy, in the class of 2006. She worked for 25 years in urban school districts and is known as "Dr. T."

One of her district's high schools, the Village Academy, caught the attention of President Obama after students made a nine-minute, thought-provoking video called "Is Anybody Listening?," which called attention to the economic hardship of local families and students. Obama did listen, and referenced the video and the students in his March 10 education speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. And several days later, he met with the students who made the video.

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The $4-plus-billion Race to the Top fund has a new master: Joanne S. Weiss, a partner and the chief operating officer at the NewSchools Venture Fund.

We’ve heard that Education Secretary Arne Duncan made the announcement today in a speech to the NewSchools Venture Fund via a video link.

Weiss will be in charge of the larger, $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund, which gives grants to states. Jim Shelton will be in charge of the smaller, $635 million Invest in What Works Innovation fund, which will give grants to school districts and nonprofits that make progress in closing the achievement gap.

Alexander Russo of This Week in Education fame is at the NewSchools conference, tweeting away, if you'd like to follow.

And in other education department personnel news, John White, the former spokesman for Prince George's County, Md., school system, is now the department's press secretary.

(Photo credit: Peter Bohler)

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Dianne Piche, the executive director of the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, is headed to the department of education as the deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Civil Rights.

She belongs to the more reform-y wing of the Democratic Party, is a friend of the Democrats for Education Reform, and a supporter of the Education Equality Project. According to her official bio, she's represented students in desegregation case in St. Louis and Fort Wayne, Ind. and has also been an advisor to congressional committees, including the House Committee on Education and Labor and the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.

Piche, an attorney, will be working for Russlynn Ali, who is that office's assistant secretary.

(Photo credit: Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights.)

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Tony Miller, who has been a key player in managing the stimulus money, has been tapped as the deputy education secretary, the White House announced today. Miller has been advising Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seemingly from the beginning. As the new No. 2 at the department, he seems likely to play a heavy management role—the guy who is supposed to make the department run like a well-oiled machine.

According to the White House press release, Miller has spent his career "realizing opportunities for growth, operating efficiencies, and innovation," which sounds pretty much in line with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's agenda.

Miller has an extensive business background. He recently served as director of Silver Lake, a leading private investment firm with over $15 billion in capital. And he spent 10 years with McKinsey & Company, where he was a partner specializing in performance improvement and cost cutting, and company restructuring.

Miller has also worked quite a bit with the Los Angeles Unified School District, developing student-achievement goals and aligning budgets and operating plans, as well as creating processes for monitoring districtwide performance, according to the White House bio. He did similar work for the Santa Monica-Malibu School District.

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EdWeek's intrepid reporter and NCLB blogger David Hoff (known by some simply as "The Hoff") is putting away his reporter's notebook and joining the U.S. Department of Education as deputy assistant secretary for communication services. (UPDATE: Hoff wants to correct the record on this title, which is actually deputy assistant secretary for communications development. And while we're at it, he'd also like to point out that he doesn't like being called The Hoff.) In his new role, Hoff will work for Peter Cunningham and write and edit a variety of different publications and products (and since the department has $100 billion in stimulus money to oversee, there's presumably a lot of writing to get done).

For the time being, NCLB: Act II will be on hiatus. We'll keep you posted on that.

Hoff, whose last byline was a scintillating epic about a governance struggle in North Carolina, has tallied 1,092 stories (according to the EdWeek electronic archives) during his 12-year run here.

Along the way, Hoff trekked to Antarctica, waited in those oh-so-long lines at Invesco Field with me on Obama's historic nomination day, and, at last, found his long-lost inner self in Richard Simmons.

Hoff starts his new adventure on May 4.

(Photo credit: davidhasselhoff.com)

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The Democrats for Education Reform announced this morning that one of their board members, Alan Bersin, will be named to a key post in the Obama administration. Bersin won't have much to do with education as he leads the Obama administration's policy on illegal immigration and drug-related violence along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Bersin, is the former superintendent of the San Diego City Schools from 1998 to 2005 and former California Secretary of Education. He was essentially a "border czar" in the U.S. Justice Department under President Clinton.

DFER guys do seem to be popular with the Obama administration. Last week, DFER-Colorado founder Peter Groff was named to a key faith-based post under Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

(Photo: In this May 2006 file photo, Bersin, left, then California's education secretary, appears at a meeting of the state Board of Education. Rich Pedroncelli/AP-File)

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So...it's official. Jim Shelton, a former program director at the Gates Foundation, is really and truly helping to head up the Office for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. (Big hat tip to Flypaper on this one).

And, even though the department hasn't sent around a release announcing the pick, Shelton is already hard at work in his new gig. He signed a letter, dated April 6, that was sent to the parents of new students slated to be enrolled in the D.C. voucher program. It says that the department "deeply regrets the confusion" over the program's future, and points folks to public school resources.

The letter signals that the department isn't going to allow new students to join the program, which is slated to expire after this year unless the Democratically-controlled Congress decides to renew it. (That's considered a long shot). The money already slated this year will go to students already enrolled in the program.

The Washington Post ran an editorial criticizing the department for playing politics this weekend. Do you agree that's what this is?

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Colorado Senate President Peter Groff is the newest addition to the Education Department, where he will be the director for the faith-based and community initiatives center.

Groff was part of a milestone moment in Mile High City. In a mostly-white state, he and another African American legislator became the first minority duo to hold the state capitol's top two legislative jobs.

This is making the Democrats for Education Reform very happy. Groff, a charter schools supporter, is a founding member of DFER's Colorado branch and won the organization's "education warrior" award in 2008. During his time in the legislature, he helped craft the Innovation Schools Act last year, which gave school districts more control over hiring staff outside of union contracts and more control over how much time teachers spend in class.

Education secretary Arne Duncan, who brings a strong district perspective to his new federal gig, also picked another (former) legislator for a job last week.

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Former Maine House Speaker Glenn Cummings is poised to join the U.S. Department of Education, where he'll work on college-access and career-readiness issues, the Associated Press reported today.

UPDATE: Cummings just told fellow Politics K-12 blogger Michele that he will be the deputy assistant secretary in the department's Office of Vocational and Adult Education. He starts on May 4, and will focus on college-access and career-readiness issues. He told Michele he's particularly interested in getting the adult workforce back into education, and in focusing on the "hinge joint" between high school and college—especially those kids who are on the margins and may or may not decide to pursue postsecondary education.

Cummings is currently dean of institutional advancement for Southern Maine Community College. His appointment would mean there would be not one, but two, top Ed Department officials with expertise in community college issues, an area that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed a lot of interest in during our interview with him last month.

Cummings chaired the House education committee in Maine before serving as speaker during the 2007-08 session. He sponsored legislation that requires all Maine high school students to apply for college.

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From guest blogger Erik Robelen

The White House is turning to Chicago yet again for a key education post. John Q. Easton, the executive director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, has been nominated to oversee the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s main research arm. If approved by the Senate, Easton would serve a six-year term as the director of the IES.

A press release from the consortium, based at the University of Chicago, notes that as director at IES, Easton “will oversee four major national centers, a staff of about 200, and partnerships with institutions nationwide.” The institute funds lots and lots of research, plus large-scale evaluations of federal education programs.

The agency also reports on a dizzying array of statistics on the state of education. To be sure, this is an important job, and no doubt folks will be watching closely to see what the naming of Easton will mean for the future direction of research.

Easton is familiar with a federal test that is highly regarded by researchers, and heavily scrutinized by policymakers: the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He's a former member of the National Assessment Governing Board, the independent panel that oversees the NAEP, often referred to as "the nation's report card."

Easton would succeed Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, who left the institute directorship in November, and is now at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

(Photo credit goes to the National High School Center.)

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Even though you're surely wrapped up in March Madness, make time for these good reads:

Members of California's congressional delegation sent a letter to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other top officials to correct some apparent thinking that's been going on. "It has been suggested that the state has some ability to intercept stabilization funds...It does not." So says the letter signed by the delegation, which includes House education committee Chairman George Miller. This letter showcases the tensions between Congress, states, and local districts over how stabilization money should be doled out to school districts, how quickly, and to whom.

Gabriella Gomez is the latest to join the education department's senior ranks. She's been tapped to direct the department's legislative affairs. Now the senior education policy adviser on the House education committee for U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), she's also a former AFT lobbyist.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is rejecting some stimulus money, including $160 million in Title I and special education dollars. That does not make the Anchorage schools superintendent very happy.

Elizabeth Green over at Gotham Schools has the latest on KIPP schools vs. the unions.

And the Washington Post does a bit of fact-checking and corrects Arne Duncan that no, D.C. Public Schools do not have "more money than God."

UPDATE: For a rundown of Arne Duncan's rah-rah speech to science teachers, check out Curriculum Matters.

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Tom Toch is leaving Education Sector, the organization he co-founded, to lead the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington, which represents 84 nonprofit schools in the Washington, D.C. area.

ED in '08's Roy Romer, former governor of Colorado, can channel all of his energy for national standards into a new gig as a senior advisor to the president of the College Board. He'll be tasked with working with states and federal officials on creating rigorous, common standards. This is especially timely now, with all the talk by President Obama and education secretary Arne Duncan about the need to create common academic standards.

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