President Obama’s administration has chosen Supreet Anand, who now directs ELL programs for the Maryland Department of Education, to be in charge of Title III programs for the U.S. Department of Education. Title III is the main conduit of funding for English-language-acquisition programs under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Update: The Education Department confirmed the appointment and characterized Anand’s new job as being the “group leader” for Title III.
“It’s an exciting opportunity, now that we have reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act right around the corner,” she told me in a phone interview this afternoon.
Anand will be a “supervisory education program specialist” in the office of elementary and secondary education. She just told me she’ll start her job on May 26 and report to Zollie Stevenson, who is the director of student achievement and school accountability programs for that office. He is not a political appointee.
Last fall, the Education Department moved the administration of Title III programs to the office of elementary and secondary education, the same office that administers Title I, which provides funds for disadvantaged students. Previously, staff from the office of English-language acquisition administered Title III.
This is the first person I’ve heard of who has been selected for an ELL post in the department. The Obama administration hasn’t yet named anyone to head up the office of English-language acquisition.
Anand has been in her current post at the Maryland education department since January 2005. Before that, she supervised ELL programs for Prince George’s County schools in Maryland. She’s also been an English-as-a-second-language teacher at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Md.