You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
WASHINGTON -- Only in this town would the move of a group of policy analysts from one think tank to another be big news. But the departure of Education Sector's four-person higher education policy team for the New America Foundation, announced Wednesday, is noteworthy.
The changeover is significant to some extent because it comes in the wake of drama involving turnover and turmoil at Education Sector; its most recent executive director, Richard Colvin, left last month barely a year after being named, and the interim executive director who replaced him, John Chubb, was on the education advisory team for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign until he quit a few days ago.
Several people at Education Sector were unhappy with what they saw as an unwelcome shift into politicization at the historically nonpartisan policy organization, and the group's departure leaves Education Sector without higher education expertise, although a spokeswoman said that would soon be remedied.
But the move by the Education Sector émigrés -- Kevin Carey, who will head New America's education policy team, Amy Laitinen, Stephen Burd and Rachel Fishman -- gives New America a deep bench of higher education policy analysts. They will join, among others, Jason Delisle, an expert on student loans and federal education finances, who noted that there has been significant overlap between the two organizations over time. (Burd formerly worked at New America, and is not the only education policy analyst to have moved from one to the other previously.) "When Kevin and his team were looking to make a move, we were a natural choice," Delisle said.
Carey said via e-mail that he had "been in the same position as policy director at Ed Sector for going on seven years and this felt like the right time to step up into a broader leadership role." He added: "New America is a great organization with a lot of complementary strengths so it feels like a really good fit."
