Public Education and the Bully Pulpit
At a recent briefing at the U.S. Department of Education, Peter Cunningham, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach, interviewed Rick Hess and Andrew Kelly from the American Enterprise Institute on the role of the federal government in K-12 public education. The conversation was structured around a recently released book that Hess and Kelly co-edited entitled Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from a Half-Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America’s Schools. While I found some of the verbiage typical and maddening (considering the source), there were some statements that resonate and provide food for thought and areas where we can all work together. Early in the briefing, Hess stated that one challenge with the federal role in public school improvement is that there are so many actors in working in the “space”. Indeed, 14,000 school districts each with
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