SPOTLIGHT: INTERVIEW ARCHIVE

Welcome to another Spotlight Interview, this week we discuss the Department of Education's new Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) with its Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, Nina Shokraii Rees. Prior to joining the U.S. Department of Education, Nina was one of four aides to Vice President Cheney, advising him on domestic policy issues. She advised the vice president on education, crime, homeownership, race, welfare and other issues affecting families and children. She worked on the passage of No Child Left Behind and is now helping to implement it.

Nina is also a seasoned veteran of education policy. She is an author, a spokesperson, and has worked closely with members of Congress and state legislatures on policy proposals aimed at reforming federal education programs and aiding disadvantaged students. To learn more about Nina please visit the OII's web site at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OII/index.html

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The Doyle Report (TDR): Nina, OII is a new office and many may not be familiar with its duties and ambitions.  Could you briefly give us an overview of the new office at the Department of Education?

Nina Shokraii Rees:  In a nutshell it was an office created in mid September by the Secretary [of Education].  It was part of a reorganization that peeled off a number of programs from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Education Research and Improvement (which is now called the Institute for Educational Sciences).  The Secretary created two separate offices as a result, one to focus primarily on the safety and security of children in schools, and another one to focus on innovation and improvement.

Our office houses 25 discretionary grant programs along with the Office of Nonpublic Education and Family Policy Compliance Office.  Our focus is […] not just to use this office to better invest in innovative programs through these discretionary grants, but also to bring more attention to the need for parental choice and options in schools.  We're also supposed to coordinate all of our activities with the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education in the area of enforcement of No Child Left Behind – on the public choice and supplemental services front.  So, we have a broad portfolio of programs, almost all of them are focused on innovation and range from programs like public school choice, magnet schools, charter schools, charter facilities, and  down to a variety of smaller programs.

TDR: Taken from the perspective of an administrator, what is the must-know thing about your new office?  Asked another way, what is your closest link to schools across the country?

Nina Shokraii Rees:  We are a grant making body, and our grants are mostly going to public entities (mostly superintendents), but also to LEA’s [local education agencies], and in some cases nonprofits may apply for the funds. 

I like to say that were here to make it easier for a school district to swallow the accountability pill.  So whereas superintendents are, by and large, encouraged and receive a large portion of funds, our funds are primarily targeted at local education agencies and kids in the classroom.  We're here to help and we want a make sure our programs are aligned as possible with the goals of No Child Left Behind, so that when we are disseminating charter schools funds the entities receiving the funds are using the money to build capacity within the public school system to have more options available for children in underperforming schools.  Even in areas like arts and education, it's easy to look at arts as an “outlier,” so to speak, but one of things I have been saying is that a lot of programs and whole school reform programs now a days use art as a vehicle to engage children in math and science and reading.  So, being able to fund these teacher training  programs that actively integrate the arts into the curriculum is one of the goals that I hope we will be able to accomplish through our competitions [that are] coming up. 

TDR: So if an administrator has an innovative program and seeks funding for a great an innovative idea how do they get in touch with you and where do they go for more information?

Nina Shokraii Rees:  There are several ways [to get in touch with us].  We hope to reach out to them first and let them know about what we are doing, but we will also have a lot of information on our web site.  Whenever we have a competition posted, we will take advantage of the resources available to us through the web site as another means of communication to let districts know when a grant is up for competition.

In the near future: let me give you five programs that are going to have competition this year so school districts or states can look forward to getting the funding from that.  One is the charter school program. The charter school grant program is going to run a competition.  Primarily States apply for these funds and allocate to charter schools.  Another program that is running a competition this year is the charter school facilities program.  Unfortunately, last year we were not able to make any funds available to public entities states or local education agencies because of the quality and numbers of applications that we got from local districts were not high, but hopefully will get or attract more interested parties in applying for these grants so that states are actively investing in charter facilities finance. Another program that's running a competition is the history grants program.  […] This is a pot of money that goes directly to schools that have a partnership of some kind with a University or a humanities [program] in the district and we hope that states and districts will take a look at this grant and apply for it  in the coming year.  Our arts and education and the Advanced Placement grant program are also going to be up for a competition, so we hope that district and States will look into those as other sources of funding. 

TDR: Finally, the big news in federal education is, of course, the implementation of NCLB, everyone wants to know how it is going.   What is your office’s role?

Nina Shokraii Rees:  Our role [in the implementation of No Child Left Behind] is to work closely with the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the other offices that are engaged in enforcing the choice provisions of the law to make sure that these choices are real options for parents in different states and districts.  So we're here to help coordinate the activities and to make sure that we're not only publicizing the benefits of choice but also keeping a close eye on the implementation, and advising the different players at the Department (certainly the Secretary) about how quickly progress is being made.  We're not necessarily the enforcers of that piece of the law, because that piece of the law is being implemented in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, but we are going to play an active role in advising […] the Secretary, about the steps we should be taking along the implementation path.  So, for instance, states that have yet to post a list of supplemental service providers on their Web site or make the list available to school districts for them to offer to parents in underperforming schools are states that we're keeping a close eye on; and we hope through technical assistance, and other types of assistance, we can get them to move and the right direction.

The Doyle Report
Issue 3.06
2/1/2003
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