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Positions of Influence

From political advisers to advocates, these three alumni are shaping education policy

By Elizabeth Weiss Green

Hari Sevugan

Campaign Communi- cations Director for Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)

Last year, Hari Sevugan (N.Y.C. ’96) signed up to work on Sen. Chris Dodd’s long-shot bid for the presidency. Sevugan took the grueling job of communications director. As Dodd’s official mouthpiece, he was responsible for crafting the senator’s message to the world, not to mention firing off impassioned and polished Blackberry responses to questions from every last nagging, deadline-sacked reporter. Even in the days following the Iowa caucuses in January, when Dodd had dropped out of the race, an exhausted Sevugan wasn’t faltering. “Both the misguided policy and divisive tone of the last seven years have placed in jeopardy the things that made our country the envy of the world—our commitment to the rule of law and individual freedom as well as the strength of our middle class,” he wrote in an e-mail to a reporter. “The country can’t afford another four or eight years down this road.” Before he jumps back into campaigning, Sevugan, 33, is taking a hiatus to sit on a beach and “breathe.” But if the past is any indicator, the break won’t last long. Sevugan’s first job, as a corps member teaching eighth grade in a New York City middle school, stoked his fire for politics. “I see [political work] as national service and as a way to keep my commitment to Teach For America’s vision that ‘One day, every kid...’” After the corps, his first stop was Northwestern School of Law, and then a big Chicago firm to help pay off loans. But after only two years on the corporate law path, Sevugan took a detour into campaign politics. As policy director for eventual Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Sevugan helped incubate a universal pre-kindergarten program that Kaine is now implementing; with Dodd, Sevugan promoted the senator’s national service plan, which would have doubled the size of the Peace Corps, dramatically increased AmeriCorps, and made community service a requirement for high school graduation. Sevugan says his corps years were great training for the “helter-skelter” campaign lifestyle. “To be able to keep your wits about you when all hell breaks loose,” he jokes, “yeah, definitely teaching has helped prepare me for that.”

Drew Kim

Policy Chief to Tenn. Gov. Phil Bredesen

Four years ago, when newly elected Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen announced his first big victory—the resolution of a 16-year budget deadlock—he made an unusual move for a politician: He shined the spotlight on someone else. Bredesen credited his young policy chief, Drew Kim (S. Louisiana ’92), who had led a commission to address the issue of teacher pay. Bredesen said Kim won his task force members’ trust early on. “He knows the policy, but he didn’t try to sit in the room and decide the answer. He didn’t start out with baggage, as if he was trying to push my agenda against somebody else’s.” Kim honed his mediation skills as an elementary school teacher in Baton Rouge. After the corps, he earned a master’s degree in public policy from Duke University. Six years later, after working for policy groups on education and economic development, he joined Bredesen’s gubernatorial campaign. After the Democrat’s election in 2003, Kim rapidly became one of his top aides. “Drew’s been at the conception of every initiative that the governor’s done,” says Matthew Kisber, Tennessee’s commissioner for economic and community development. “Every governor has people they try to mentor and bring along. There’s no question that Drew Kim is one of those people for Gov. Bredesen.” “The part I love the most,” says the 38- year-old Kim, “is sitting down with [the governor] and trying to find those opportunities, those gaps where you can really try to create something new and big and bold.” It’s what Kim calls the research-and-development phase. He has big ideas for recruiting teachers to hard-to-staff areas, raising teacher pay, and overhauling school-funding formulas. But he knows that nothing will get done without political finesse. “We’ve got to dribble this out and talk to legislators, [the teacher’s union], all those different players, to get a sense of where they are.” Among the programs Kim has successfully ushered in: a voluntary pre-kindergarten program, a health-care plan to cover working people without insurance, and an alternativecertification teacher recruitment program called Teach Tennessee.

Sara Erickson

Program Specialist, National Institute for Excellence in Teaching

In her third year teaching at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, Sara Erickson (L.A. ’01) grew concerned about the quieter kids who rarely raised their hands to participate. So Erickson taught the whole class to spell in sign language; every time she asked a question, they would have to hold up their hands and make the correct letter. “Little things like that—they were really masterful—the way she was able to get everyone involved,” recalls Lara Goldstone, Camino’s principal at the time. After four years in the classroom, though, Erickson felt she had run into a professional wall. She wanted to advance, but with principal jobs at Camino filled, she wasn’t sure of her next step. “Teaching is the only profession where you enter the job and leave the job with the same roles and pretty much the same level of pay, despite what the performance level is,” says Erickson, 28. In her new job as a program specialist at the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, a California group that works with nearly 200 schools across the country, Erickson is focused on improving professional development for teachers and implementing a model for performance-based pay. Using a model developed by NIET, she travels around the country evaluating teachers and instructing them in ways to improve. A group of schools involved in the institute’s teacher advancement program receive performance-based pay. “What’s happening in education is that people are operating within silos,” Erickson says. “They have a difficult time seeing the picture systematically.” She believes that enhanced professional development for teachers is essential to any education reform efforts. “There’s a handful of teachers [who are] not competent,” she says. “But I’d say the vast majority of teachers just need the right supports in place.” The point, she says, is not to stroll in and lecture; it’s to change the way teachers behave. “Teachers will go to conferences and there’s no follow-up. We come back and put the binder on the shelf,” she says. “Ongoing, school-run professional development that comes from inside the school is more effective.” She encourages teachers to study their students’ data more closely and use this information to retool their curricula. Though Erickson still instructs teachers, she spends much of her time these days working with principals. The effort to promote performance-based pay for principals is perhaps her biggest project yet. For the policy to succeed, Erickson is convinced principals must first agree to follow it—and even endorse it. “It has to happen from the ground up, from the grassroots level,” she says. “Organizations that are working to reform schools and change the way schools are run… work closely with the constituents—the principals, the teachers, especially teacherleaders at the school—to create systems or programs or processes that really do impact the students in a positive way.”