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Education policy maven Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute think tank offers straight talk on matters of policy, politics, research, and reform. Read more from this blog.

Education Opinion

Introducing Your Special Guest Stars: Hawley Miles, E4E, Lewis & Anderson, and McEachin

By Rick Hess — May 02, 2014 1 min read
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Hidy all! So between trying to keep up with the latest Common Core developments and waiver hijinks, while getting used to this whole fatherhood thing, I’m eager for some time to work on my next book, The Cage-Busting Teacher. (It’s due to Harvard Ed Press in September and will be out next spring.) So, I’m taking a few weeks off from RHSU and handing the reins to a stellar line-up of guest bloggers.

First up, next week, is Karen Hawley Miles, president and executive director of Education Resource Strategies. ERS works with urban school systems to better leverage talent, time, and money. Karen brings 25 years of experience at helping urban school systems understand their funding systems and figure out where the heck their money is going.

The week of May 12 we’ll hear from various members of the Educators For Excellence network, including founders Sydney Morris and Evan Stone. Sydney and Evan both started teaching in the Bronx before founding E4E and were recently named to Forbes’s list of “30 under 30" education rock stars. E4E has attracted more than 13,000 teachers since launching in 2010 and is a terrific example of the bevy of new, hard-charging teacher voice groups.

The following week will feature Tony Lewis and Amy Anderson of the Donnell-Kay Foundation, a Denver-based family foundation that tackles school reform in Colorado. Tony is the executive director of Donnell-Kay and Amy is a senior director. I’m particularly hopeful that they’ll write about their “ReSchool Colorado” initiative, which is seeking to reimagine the educational system root and branch.

Finally, the week of May 26 will feature North Carolina State University’s Andrew McEachin, an assistant professor of educational policy analysis and program evaluation. I got to know Andrew through the AEI-Fordham Emerging Education Policy Scholars program, and was taken with his work on ESEA waivers and accountability.

Enjoy these next four weeks, and I’ll see you soon.

The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.