Education10-Year Anniversary

Marco Rubio

Ron Wyden

John Kline

Michael Bennet

Antonio Villaraigosa

Mike Feinberg

Mitch Daniels

Arne Duncan

Diane Ravitch

Joel Klein

Michelle Rhee

Lamar Alexander

Mitt Romney

Rod Paige

William Bennett

AEI Education aims to inform the

policymaking process and enrich

contemporary education debates

by promoting common sense

principles for reform of America’s

K–12 and higher education systems.

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Rick Hess joins AEI asresident scholar

Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA)speaks on education reform in Massachusetts; EducationalEntrepreneurship released

Common Sense SchoolReform released; Secretary of EducationRod Paige keynotes AEI event on educa-tional equality; Leaving No ChildBehind? published

With the Best ofIntentions released

A Few Selected Highlights

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

New York City ChancellorJoel Klein speaks on schoolreform in the Big Apple

Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN) deliverskeynote on Indiana education reform;Same Thing Over and Over released

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR)and Marco Rubio (R-FL) discuss higher educationaccountability; advisers forpresidential candidates MittRomney and Barack Obamasquare off in education debate

Education Unbound released; Secretary of Education Arne Duncan delivers “new normal” speech; NAACP President Ben Jealous discusses the future of education reform

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is one of the nation’s oldest think tanks and is dedicated to the principles of limited government and free enterprise. A nonpartisan, nonprofit policyorganization, AEI has worked since its founding in 1938 to strengthenthe foundations of freedom and civil society through scholarly research,public debate, and publications.

Today, AEI’s education policy studies program is at the epicenter ofeducation reform discussion and activity, and reaches policymakers, federal education officials, congressional staff members, think tankscholars and other academics, and individuals in the education policycommunity in a concerted effort to help shape an intellectual and policyenvironment for reform.

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Dear Friends,

On behalf of the American Enterprise Institute,I am pleased to present this overview of the work of AEI’s K–12 and Higher Education Policy department. It is intended

to provide you with a short, accessible summary of what we have beenup to and where we are heading.

There are many thoughtful and influential researchers and policy intellectuals in the education space, but none I believe are more wide-ranging in scope and impact than our team. Simply put, if there is anissue pertaining to education policy in America, our team has made oris making a contribution to the debate.

How do we do it? For starters, we have some of the most talented education experts in the country. Program Director Rick Hess is adynamo, writing books, organizing research conferences, hostinginfluential meetings, and reaching thousands of readers daily through his blog Rick Hess Straight Up. Research Fellow Andrew Kelly’s work onhigher education reform has attracted the attention of leading policy-makers in Congress and the administration, and he was recognized last year as one of the 16 next generation leaders in education policy by Education Week’s Policy Notebook blog. And Mike McShane justjoined us from graduate school but has already published his first bookon President Obama’s role as an education reformer.

Some of our recent highlights include:

• Eight invitation-only working groups on the future ofAmerican K–12 and higher education. These events

From the Vice President

bring together leading researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and education leaders for off-the-record,no-holds-barred discussions of leading policy topics.

• Two major research conferences that produced path-breaking original research on the federal role in K–12schooling and cost-containment in higher education.

• Major speeches from Secretary of Education Arne Dun-can, House Education Committee Chairman John Kline(R-MN), Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), and IndianaGovernor Mitch Daniels (R-IN).

Our team is not resting on its laurels. We have a variety of excitingresearch projects in the pipeline, including work on teacher quality, therole of parents in school reform, and providing governors with a how-toguide for urban school reform. And Rick’s 2013 book—Cage-BustingLeadership—offers a practical guide for how education leaders can work around or reshape restrictive rules and regulations to enact trans-formative change.

I hope you are excited about our team’s work after you read thisbooklet. I know I have enjoyed watching our team's ideas move fromthe outside of debate to common wisdom, and I look forward to moreof the same in the months and years ahead.

Sincerely,

Henry OlsenVice President

American Enterprise Institute

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Frederick M. “Rick” Hess is residentscholar and director of education policy studies at AEI. His books include The SameThing Over and Over: How School Reform-ers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas (Harvard

University Press, 2010), Education Unbound: The Promise and Practiceof Greenfield Schooling (ASCD, 2010), Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), Revolution at the Margins: The Impact ofCompetition on Urban School Systems (Brookings Institution Press,2002), and Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform(Brookings Institution Press, 1998). He is also the author of the popularEducation Week blog Rick Hess Straight Up. His work has appeared inscholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, HarvardEducation Review, Phi Delta Kappan, National Affairs, the Wall StreetJournal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, andNational Review. Hess serves as executive editor of Education Next, aslead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program,and on the review boards for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools. He also serves on theboards of directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS, and the American Board for the Certifica-tion of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher,he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania,Georgetown University, Rice University, and Harvard University.

Q: What prompted you to take up office at AEI?A: When I was hired, I was told that AEI doesn’t take institutional posi-tions, that they didn’t much care whether I published in barely read

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Q & A with the Director

scholarly journals, and that they didn’t care if what I said was popular.Universities and schools of education can feel like stifling places. At AEI,I’ve felt a total freedom of expression since day one.

Q: What do you see as AEI Education’s role in current education debates?A: I take the label “think tank” pretty literally. AEI is about advocating forideas. We’re not evaluators and we’re not academics—instead, we’re outthere fighting for and defending a set of ideas and intuitions. In battlingfor these ideas, rather than promoting any partisan agenda or trying tobe part of a team, we try to hold everyone accountable, to provide usefulinsights, and to do this while educating advocates and policymakers viathe kind of thoughtful debate that is too often lacking today.

Q: What are AEI Education’s greatest accomplishmentsover the past 10 years? A: The policy process is remarkably capricious—so we’ve tended notto focus on “this legislation” or “that bill,” but on trying to inform andpush the direction of policy. And, because we’re committed to ideasrather than parties, we’re now also prominent (sometimes dissenting)voices in trying to ensure that these policy victories are not done in byhubris or simple-mindedness.

Q: What do you see in store for the future?A: We will continue to believe there is huge power in putting ideas onthe radar, and in recruiting thought leaders and practitioners to tacklesubjects that they haven’t tackled before (or even those that have beentaboo). We will continue to provide a civil home for honest disagree-ment and to work at bridging the disparate worlds of policy, research,public-system reform, and private-sector entrepreneurship. And we willcontinue to be tough-minded friends who offer constructive criticism tothose on the ground pushing for reforms.

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AEI Education aims to inform the policymaking process and enrich contemporary education debates by promoting common sense principles for reform of America’s K–12 and higher education systems.Through commissioned research, public forums, first-rate publications,and private briefings, we tackle vital policy questions, reexamining common assumptions and proposing new approaches to meeting thechallenges of the 21st century.

Our forums and outlets include:

Public events. AEI Education’s acclaimedpublic event series includes panel discus-sions, book releases, and keynote addresseson an array of timely education issues.

Research conferences. These full-day,public events showcase original researchby scholars and practitioners. Previous conferences have addressed such issues as K–12 cost containment, higher educa-tion innovation, and educational entrepre-neurship, among many others.

Working groups. These private gatherings of leading educationthinkers and doers to discuss the latest research and ventures in K–12 and higher education are designed to address a major deficit: the rarity that the key groups shaping education (researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners) interact with each other to discuss ideas andshape policy.

What We Do

“Under Rick Hess's leader-ship, AEI has challengedorthodoxy from both sidesin the ongoing saga of education. Rick eschewssimple solutions and isunafraid of big ideas.”

—Joel Klein, Executive VicePresident, NewsCorp; Former

Chancellor, New York CityDepartment of Education

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“In a world where commentators often start with unexaminedassumptions and then jump to status quo conclusions, AEI’sintellectual rigor is refreshing and indispensable.”

—Neerav Kingsland, CEO, New Schools for New Orleans

10 YearsBy the Numbers

ndns

utlooks”27Events

stents

s

87

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�

Boards, Advisory Panels, andOther Professional Positions(for AEI scholars, in 2012)

“Education Outlooks”52 117

Public Events

Research Conferences18

BOOKS(edited or writtenby AEI scholars)

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TwitterFollowers

9,817

Email Distribution Listfor Research and Events

9,662

Total Citationsfor EditedVolumes 587

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Outlooks and white papers. AEI Outlooks and white papers allowfor research and commentary to be disseminated widely and in anaccessible fashion. Each is sent to a broad mailing list and they havecovered the full spectrum of education issues, from education politics, tourban school reform, to cost efficiency.

Books and reports. AEI Education scholarsare engaged in their own groundbreaking,long-term research endeavors. Where possible,we collaborate with other think tanks andscholars to help inform our work. Recent studies have included Leaders & Laggards: A State-By-State Report Card on Public Postsecondary Education (with the US

Chamber of Commerce) and Parent Power: Grassroots Activism and K–12 Education Reform (coauthored by Andrew P. Kelly andPatrick J. McGuinn of Drew University).

This Leaders & Laggardsreport addresses issues of postsecondary cost-

effectiveness, accountability,and innovation. Previousreports, also sponsored by the US Chamber of

Commerce, examined K–12performance (2007) and K–12 innovation (2009).

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Andrew P. Kelly is a research fellow in education policy studies at AEI. Hisresearch has appeared in Teachers CollegeRecord, Educational Policy, Policy StudiesJournal, Education Next, and Education

Week, as well as popular outlets such as Inside Higher Education, TheChronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, the Atlantic, National Review,and the Huffington Post. He is coeditor of Getting to Graduation: TheCompletion Agenda in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press,2012), Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from A Half-Centuryof Federal Efforts to Improve America’s Schools (Harvard EducationPress, 2012), and Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innova-tion (Harvard Education Press, 2011). Andrew joined AEI in 2009.

Michael Q. McShane is a research fellow in education policy studies at AEIand concurrently a PhD candidate in theDepartment of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He previously

taught ninth- and tenth-grade English and religion studies at St. JudeEducational Institute in Montgomery, Alabama. His first book, President Obama and Education Reform: The Personal and the Political (coauthored with Robert Maranto), was published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2012. Mike joined AEI in 2012.

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Fellows & Visiting Scholars

Mark Schneider is a visiting scholar atAEI and vice president at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Before joiningAIR, he served as the US commissioner of

education statistics from 2005–08. He is also a distinguished professoremeritus of political science at the State University of New York, StonyBrook. He is the author and editor of numerous articles and books oneducation policy, including Getting to Graduation: The CompletionAgenda in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012),Higher Education Accountability (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), CharterSchools: Hope or Hype? (Princeton University Press, 2007), and Choosing Schools (Princeton University Press, 2000).

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US Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) speak at an AEIevent on higher education accountability with AEI’s Andrew Kelly, 2012.

As a Washington, DC-based public policy think tank, AEI is uniquely situated to inform both national and local policymakers through itsresearch and events. Among the highlights from just the past three years:

2012 brought the release of Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit, edited by Hess and Kelly, which examineswhat the federal government can do well in K–12schooling, and where it may fall short. Senator JohnKline (R-MN) unveiled the GOP vision to fix the NoChild Left Behind Act (NCLB) at a keynote address,while a separate event saw Senator Michael Bennet(D-CO) discussing his plan for enhancing educationresearch and development.

2011 saw a joint event with the Center for AmericanProgress called “Tightening up Title I,” which provided a set of policy recommendations for that important section of NCLB. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa addressed his school reform plans. Hess also testified on Capitol Hill during the debate over the Harkin-Enzi NCLB reauthorization proposal.

2010 featured the panel event “What Do the MidtermElections Mean for Education?,” the first in an event series on education and the election, which was viewed live by over 300 attendees, making it one of the largest AEI events of the year.

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Inform Policymakers

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Previous years have featured panels and discussions from IndianaGovernor Mitch Daniels, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, US Secretary of Education Rod Paige, and New York City ChancellorJoel Klein.

In addition to our events and reports, the Future of American Educationworking group series unites some of the nation’s leading reformers to discuss the latest empirical research and cutting-edge innovation.Among the speakers and attendees are policymakers at the federal and local levels, including Chris Bar-bic, Tennessee Achievement SchoolDistrict superintendent; MitchellChester, Massachusetts commissionerof education; Lillian Lowery, Mary-land state superintendent of schools;and Terry Grier, superintendent ofthe Houston Independent School Dis-trict. The forum provides an intimateand off-the-record venue for policy-makers, innovators, and researchersto interact and share ideas.

“The work of AEI Education anddedicated individuals like RickHess continues to inform andinfluence educational leadersacross the nation.”

—Tony Bennett, Former IndianaState Superintendent of Education

US Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and formerUS secretary of education Rod Paige discuss therole of the Department of Education in 2005.

Representative John Kline(R-MN) unveils the GOPvision to fix No ChildLeft Behind, 2012.

AEI Education strives to enrich contemporaryeducation debates by providing incisiveresearch and commentary, as well as serving as a broker of relationships amonginfluential education reformers. Under theleadership of Hess, the program is commit-ted to including divergent viewpoints in public events and private gatherings. Assuch, AEI Education is ideally situated tobuild relationships among an educationcommunity of thought leaders. In seeking to broaden conversations and strengthensolutions to America’s biggest education

challenges, we aim to create an intellectual center of gravity aroundserious reform issues.

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“AEI Education’s work hasalways been wonderfullyprovocative, challengingme to think and rethink my positions around education reform.”

—Terry Grier, Superintendent, Houston

Independent School District

Enrich the Debates

AEI’s Rick Hess with US Department of Education’s Jim Shelton(center) and US Senator Michael Bennet (right), 2012.

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The AEI Education program seeks to speak powerfully and pithily on thekey issues of the day. A few insights from 2012 alone:

“There is a blindingly slow pace of adoption on the kinds of changes totenure, to teacher compensation, to work rules that I think everybodyacknowledges are appropriate . . . But what we’re seeing in Chicago iswhat happens when rubber meets road, and even somebody as tough-minded as Rahm Emmanuel is getting body blows from teachers who areadamant against making these kinds of changes.”

—Rick Hess on the Chicago Teachers Strike on CNBC’s Squawk Box, September 11, 2012

“Advances in technology—like digital content and online delivery—havemade higher education available to a much wider audience. . . . For themost part, traditional institutions of higher education have not embracedthese innovations, continuing to operate as they did 50 years ago.”

—Andrew Kelly on Higher Education Innovation on NPR’s Marketplace Money, August 31, 2012

“One of the fundamental things we need to do is rethink the way that we recruit, retain, and compensate teachers to be able to deal with [a]changing labor market.”

—Mike McShane on Teacher Recruitment in U.S. News and World Report, October 1, 2012

What the AEI Ed Team Has to Say about Today’s Debates

One influential tool for pushing education debate and policymaking is Hess’s popular blog Rick Hess Straight Up (RHSU), housed on the website of leading education daily Education Week. Started in February 2010, by December 2012, Hess had published over 450 blog posts under more than 60 unique categories ranging fromaccountability to “dollars & sense” to Race to the Top.

RHSU has become one of Education Week’s most well-read com-mentary blogs. Between daily site visits and readers who view the blog over an RSS feed like Google Reader, around 3,000–3,500unique visitors read each post. Said Education Week commentary editor Elizabeth Rich, “Rick's smart and witty, but it's his unpredictabil-ity that makes him so immensely readable. He can't be pigeonholed.”

In addition to his own musings, Hessrecruits teams of guest bloggers to take thereins of RHSU three or four times a year.This allows the blog to address an evenwider array of topics and tap the expertiseof other education thinkers and doers.

One of the most popular RHSU blogseries is the annual Public Presence Rankings. Compiled and published at theend of each year, the metrics are designedto recognize university-based academicswho are contributing the most to publicdebates about education policy. Rankingover 120 scholars, each year the PublicPresence metrics elicit widespread attention

from media and academics alike, and have been featured in pressreleases from major universities such as Stanford University, HarvardUniversity, and the University of Virginia.

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“[AEI Education] has greatlyhelped the public educationreform community advance theball [by] helping us focus onthe levers that are most trans-formative for our children, andensuring that best practicesspread to help more childrenlearn and grow.”

—Mike Feinberg,

Cofounder, KIPP Schools

Common Sense Reform

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AEI Education’s work seeks to flag challenges, illuminate opportuni-ties, and light the path toward education improvement. Key areas ofinterest include:

Educational Entrepreneurship Educational entrepreneurship has been a trademarkarea of AEI Education’s research, in which our scholarshave led the way in shining a bright light on promisingnew ventures and wrestling with challenges of policy

design and implementation. In particular,Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities,Challenges, and Possibilities (2006)introduced readers to entrepreneurship as an unprec-edented and influential force in US K–12 education,while The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship: Possibilities for School Reform (2008) laid out pressingissues such as barriers to entry; the availability of

venture capital; and questions about research, development, and quality control in the entrepreneurial sector. Recognizing the need for innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education as well,Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise ofInnovation (2011) pointed the way towardimprovements in the educational performanceof America’s colleges and universities.

Unbundling Education and “Greenfield” SchoolingAEI Education has long worked to promote a concept of “greenfield”schooling, which aims to scrub away entrenched, bureaucratic barriers;restrictive norms; and outdated routines to use resources, talent, and

technology in smarter ways. In Education Unbound,Hess suggests strategies to create an environmentthat invites new solutions and provides the infrastruc-ture necessary for them to succeed.

Stretching the School Dollar In 2010, AEI and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute hosted a large publicresearch conference called “A Penny Saved: How Schools and Districts

Can Tighten Their Belts While Serving Students Better”to explore K–12 cost-effectiveness in an era of dwin-dling state budgets following the 2008 recession. The resulting book, titled Stretching the School Dollar:How Schools and Districts Can Save Money WhileServing Students Best (2011) was one of the firstattempts to seriously address issues of cost contain-ment in the K–12 space. The book attracted the

attention of numerous leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the latter of whom gave amajor keynote address at AEI in November 2010 on this “new normal”of doing more with less. Piggybacking off of this successful effort, in2012, AEI Education launched a “Stretching the Higher Education Dollar” research initiative exploring how colleges and universities cansimultaneously cut costs and tuition.

Sizing-Up the Federal Role in Schooling AEI Education scholars have also sought a proper understanding of federalism in the American education system, including outlining a suitable role for the federal government.January 2012’s Carrots, Sticks, and the BullyPulpit provided a historical account of what thefederal government did well in K–12 school-ing, and where its ambitions outstripped itscapacities. Guiding our work is the belief thatthe federal government does have a role to

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play in schooling, and understanding the proper confines of that role isa more productive enterprise than seeking to abolish it.

The Role of Private Enterprise in Public EducationIn education, for-profits have long been regarded as an evil, if sometimesnecessary, imposition. Many educators and reformers sneeringly dismissfor-profits as “seeking to profit on the backs of our children.” Such anoutlook limits reform possibilities—aproblem that our Private Enterpriseproject seeks to change.

Beginning in the fall of 2011, AEI Education commissioned 10 papers that encourage a morenuanced conversation about the role of for-profits in education. Withhelp from Michael B. Horn of theInnosight Institute, these papers—which will be released as an edited volume in 2013—articulate oneimportant conclusion: tax status is not indicative of moral superiority.

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“Rick is a brilliant thought partner. . . . His irreverence is not only refreshing, but is a reminder that we doggedschool reformers should find time for light moments and humor.”

—Cynthia G. Brown, Vice President for Education Policy,

Center for American Progress

AEI’s Rick Hess with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (center) and former Nogales Unified School District superintendentShawn McCollough (left) after Duncan’s 2010 keynote at AEI.

Teacher Quality 2.0In the fall of 2011, AEI began a long-term initiative geared toward anticipating the next generation of human capital research and policy-making. “Teacher Quality 2.0” warns that, while we are right toapplaud the heightened energy behind improving the way we recruit, retain, train, evaluate, and compensate America’s teachers, our accomplishments to date are but small steps on a long path.

Teacher Quality 2.0 asks: how do webuild on the progress we have made without unintentionally stifling futureinnovation? In this spirit, AEI Educationhas released multiple working papers onthis idea of the next generation of teacherquality. Additionally, via a series of private meetings, we have convened preeminent researchers, policymakers,funders, union representatives, state and district leaders, and educationentrepreneurs to candidly discuss the short- and long-term practical implica-tions of our current efforts, and theirconsequences for future research,advocacy, and philanthropy. This work will continue into 2013.

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“Rick Hess has been an incredible partner to DCPSover the past decade. Heisn’t afraid to speak out insupport of the bold changeswe've made, and he continu-ally challenges us to think in new and creative ways toimprove schooling. That’sinvaluable to us.”

—Kaya Henderson, Chancellor, District of

Columbia Public Schools

Common Core Throughout 2013, AEI Education will conduct a serious effort surroundingthe Common Core. Most of the discussion about the Common Core hasfocused on its technical merits or the challenges of practical implementa-tion. In contrast, there has been little talk of how the standards fit in withthe larger reform ecosystem—where the Common Core is, of course, justone piece of the school reform agenda that states are currently pursuing—along with plans to promote teacher evaluations, virtual schooling, andcharter networks. AEI Education will look at these challenges through aseries of new research pieces and a major public conference.

Parental Empowerment and School ChoiceThroughout 2013–14, AEI Education will explore the “demand and supply” for greater school options. On the demand side, we will continueour look at education reform advocacy groups who seek to mobilize and empower parents to push for school reform. And on the supply side, we will start a new initiative, to culminate in a major research conference, on the conditions necessary for vibrant school choice markets, examining such issues as barriers to entry, regulations, and theavailability of human capital.

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On the Horizon

“Through Rick Hess’s leadership, AEI draws from research, policy,and practice to create a space in which orthodoxies are questionedand competing ideas are explored. There is no question that AEI has helped to ensure an energetic national dialog on educationreform—in addition to helping me sharpen my policy acumen.”

Mitchell D. Chester, Massachusetts Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education

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On February 12, 2013, Hess will release hisnewest book from Harvard Education Press, Cage-Busting Leadership. The premise of Cage-Busting Leadership is simple: it is true—as would-be reformers often argue—that statutes, policies,rules, regulations, contracts, and case law make ittougher than it should be for school and systemleaders to drive improvement and, well, lead.

However, it is also true that leaders have far more freedom to transform,reimagine, and invigorate teaching, learning, and schooling than iswidely believed. This book draws both from cage-dwelling horror storiesand successes to help current and aspiring leaders, and will serve as acenterpiece for AEI Education’s future work on educational leadership.

“Rick Hess challenges our educational leaders to take on the laws,rules, and regulations that prevent them from implementing true transformational changes to our educational systems. Citing manyexamples of leaders who have busted out of the cage, Hess illustratesthe tough decisions that can be made to provide the quality educationthat we seek for our students. Cage-Busting Leadership is not for thefaint of heart.”

—Dan Domenech, Executive Director, American Association of School Administrators

“This is not just a how-to guide, it is a why-not manifesto.”—John Deasy, Superintendent, Los Angeles Unified School District

“Rick Hess is a modern-day Mark Twain. He distills the truth and ren-ders it understandable, humorous, and palatable in the process.”

—James W. Guthrie, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Nevada; Senior Fellow and Director of Education

Policy Studies, The George W. Bush Institute

Cage-Busting Leadership

Program AlumsAfter stints with AEI Education, our former researchers and staffers havecontinued to excel with careers in education, law, and business:

Emily Kluver: After leaving AEI, Emily was an earlyemployee at Wireless Generation and currently works as aresearch analyst in the Office of the Mayor in New York City.

Morgan Goatley: After spending over six years at AEI, Morgan is now the development director at Exodus City inKansas City, MO.

Rosemary Kendrick: After four years at AEI, Rosemary left to attend Harvard Business School, and is now in SiliconValley working as the operations lead for Fidelis Education.

Juliet Squire: After four years at AEI, Juliet is currently theinterim director for school innovations at the New JerseyDepartment of Education.

Thomas Gift: Thomas left AEI to pursue a PhD in politicalscience at Duke University.

Jenna Talbot: After three years at AEI, Jenna joined White-board Advisors, where she is a senior associate.

Raphael Gang: After AEI, Raphael joined the Louisiana Depart-ment of Education, where he is currently the deputy director of thedepartment’s Office of Parental Options.

Olivia Meeks: After two years at AEI, Olivia went to work forthe District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) as part of theDCPS team designing the IMPACT teacher evaluation system.

Whitney Downs: After two years at AEI, Whitney enteredGeorge Washington University Law School.

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“Rick Hess brings a thoughtful voice and innovative ideas toa conversation vital to our nation’s future: in a globaleconomy, how do we ensure our schools are preparing everystudent to excel in college and career training? I look forwardto our continued work together on education reform.”

—Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO)

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AEI Education Policy StaffFrom an initial staff of two in 2002, AEI Education has grown to eight scholars and researchers in 2012, making it one of the largestdepartments at AEI.

Frederick M. HessResident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies

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Andrew P. KellyResearch Fellow

Michael Q. McShaneResearch Fellow

Daniel Lautzenheiser Program Manager

Taryn HochleitnerResearch Assistant

KC DeaneResearch Associate

Allison KimmelResearch Assistant

Lauren AronsonExternal Relations Assistant

1150 17th Street NWWashington, DC 20036

To contact one of our scholars, please reach out to External Relations Assistant Lauren Aronson,

(202) 862-5904 or lauren.aronson@aei.org, orvisit online at www.aei.org/policy/education.