May 16, 2008
McCain's Advisers Include Several Advocates of Big Changes in Higher Education
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s education blog, Flypaper, says it has obtained a fairly comprehensive list of John McCain’s education advisers. Many of the names on it are recognizable from major debates over higher-education policy.
Among them is Eugene W. Hickok Jr., who joined George W. Bush’s administration as under secretary of education in 2001 and became the Education Department’s deputy secretary in 2003.
In his previous position as Pennsylvania’s secretary of education, Mr. Hickok called for a major overhaul of teacher training and pushed that state’s legislature to create a grant program to reward institutions that graduated at least 40 percent of their in-state students within four years. Although most of his subsequent work at the U.S. Department of Education focused on elementary and secondary education, he remained a staunch advocate of holding colleges accountable for graduating their students in a timely manner.
Mr. Hickok continued to promote such changes in education after resigning from the department in 2004 to become senior policy director at Dutko Worldwide, a public-policy and government-relations company in Washington, D.C. In an essay titled “Higher Education Needs Reform, Too,” published in The Chronicle in March 2006, he called for an overhaul of teacher education, greater cooperation between schools and colleges, and a rethinking of how and when high school students are deemed ready to go on to college.
Also listed among Mr. McCain’s education advisers is William D. Hansen, an advocate of substantial changes in federal financial-aid policy, who served the current president as deputy secretary of education from 2001 until 2003. Before coming to the department, Mr. Hansen was executive director of the Education Finance Council, which lobbies on behalf of nonprofit lenders in the guaranteed-loan program. In his department post, he angered advocates of direct lending—who raised questions about his ties to the student-loan industry—by considering selling the government’s direct-student-loan assets to lenders such as Sallie Mae or Citibank.
After resigning from the Education Department, Mr. Hansen joined Chartwell Education Group, a consulting firm. In a presentation delivered at a 2006 American Enterprise Institute conference, he recommended that the federal government auction its direct-student-loan portfolio to the private sector, privatize the Perkins Loan program, and encourage charitable organizations to guarantee educational loans for students from low- and middle-income families so they would be eligible for lower interest rates. He also called for a repeal of all personal income-tax deductions and credits for higher-education costs, saying that the resulting savings should be redirected to Pell Grants.
Another person listed as a McCain education adviser, Williamson M. Evers, is serving as the Education Department’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development while on leave from his position as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace and a member of the Institution’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education. An education adviser to George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, Mr. Evers is listed by the Hoover Institution as specializing in research on education policy, especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching, testing, accountability, and school finance from kindergarten through high school. From July to December 2003, he served in Iraq as senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Also on the list is F. Philip Handy, a Florida businessman who played a key role in the reorganization of that state’s education system eight years ago. He led the panel established by state lawmakers in 2000 to come up with a new governance structure for education in the state, and then went on to become chairman of the new governing body that resulted, an appointed “superboard” overseeing every sector of public education from preschool through college. That governance overhaul met resistance from many educators who saw it as giving too much power to the governor and Legislature, and the state board’s powers over public universities were subsequently eroded as the result of the passage of a 2002 ballot measure amending Florida’s constitution to establish a Board of Governors for the public university system.
The Associated Press last month quoted Mr. McCain as saying he also has been turning to Jeb Bush, brother of the current president and a former governor of Florida, for education advice.
The list published by the Fordham Institute also includes Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice; Lisa Graham Keegan, a former state superintendent of education in Arizona; Townsend McNitt, deputy chief of state for the U.S. Education Department; Frank Riggs, a former member of Congress who is president of the Charter Schools Development Corporation; Hannah Skandera, a former state undersecretary of education in California; and Jane M. Swift, who served as acting governor of Massachusetts from 2001 to 2003.
A spokesman for the McCain campaign did not return calls seeking comment.
Peter Schmidt | Posted on Friday May 16, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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Perhaps this would be an excellent opportunity to expose those institutions of higher education that accept financing from Saudi Arabia in order to support programs that promote hatred of American values and western civilization.
— marty May 18, 09:52 AM #
Education advice from Jeb Bush? Really?
— ReslifeGuy May 19, 08:14 AM #
Speaking of leadership moving forward, lets hope Harvard’s new president, Foust brings some responsible thinking to the Jesuit paradigm?
— Thomas May 19, 01:03 PM #