News Brief
Q&A: Federal K-12 Policy Chief Shares Outlook
Education Week (03/01/13) McNeil, MicheleDeborah Delisle, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, is focusing her attention on altering the way the department interacts with states. "We are designing a very robust technical assistance program to support states," she says. "We are saying what do you need help with? What are the challenges? It's connecting states." Delisle notes that although the department's funding has decreased, it is committed to helping states with work already started under Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIG), among other things. She stresses that some schools without grant money are implementing practices that winning school have undertaken. "If in the next four years this administration can lift up those lessons from all of the various programs that have been funded and see how they can be implemented in other ways I think that would be a great asset," she remarks. Delisle adds that she wants to look beyond the SIG models to the "ingredients that went into successful schools." She wants to build on U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's call for a highly effective teacher in every classroom to having "a highly effective teacher in every classroom in schools designed for success." Additionally, she says the department is stepping up its focus on early education through the Race to the Top early learning challenge and is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the Head Start program.
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