Weeks 7 & 8

So this is what it feels like to be a "summer intern"......

I have decided to combine weeks 7 and 8 together as my final blog post for the summer. The reason for this is because the last 2 weeks have been fairly slow, with me working on projects in the office and wrapping up any loose ends before I leave.

Last week (week 7), was a very quiet week considering that I was pretty much the only person in the office. Augustus was away in West Virginia, Jason was in San Francisco, and Jim was in Colorado. John came into the office most of the days, but he would usually trickle in late, and I would be left to work on my projects alone. So the major project I was assigned to accomplish for the last 2 weeks of my fellowship was a project on comparing the ESEA recommendations put out from various education organizations to Knowledge Alliance's recommendations. Augustus had left me a list of about 35 prominent education organizations, so it was my job to search their websites for recommendations or contact them for direct information. The Department of Education put out a blueprint back at the beginning of the year, which gave organizations a sense of what ESEA reauthorization would look like under the Obama administration. After the release of such documents, it is standard here to give organizations a 90 day "comment window" in which they can make their comments and recommendations to the administration. Since most organizations truly believed ESEA would be reauthorized before the end of 2010, most of the groups I was asked to look up did have their recommendations posted online.

So the first couple days of the week were spent printing out these sometimes lengthy comments sheets and emailing key government relations contacts at the various organizations for their recommendations if I could not find them online. Out of the 35 groups I was able to gather 23 comments pages. The next step was to then read through each recommendation piece and highlight all of the comments that matched Knowledge Alliance's 8 priority proposals. This was obviously a time consuming task because after I highlighted as much information as I could in all 23 proposals, I then went through and created a spreadsheet that pulled direct quotes and placed them in one of the 8 priority categories. I was pretty proud of myself for being able to accomplish all of this before I left on Friday for South Florida, especially considering that it was completely done through self-motivation as I was alone at the office.

The rest of the week was spent summarizing news blurbs for the Knowledgeable Source, which this week, I wrote 4 pieces that made it in. I wrote about Google's new anti-net neutrality stance, Tom Vander Ark's claim that i3 grants won't actually lead to innovation, modern day carpetbaggers (aka- companies who are now claiming that they are school turnaround experts so that they can get government money), and a piece on the predictions of who will win RttT round 2 in early September. I actually really enjoy working on these news summaries, and wish that I had been given this responsibility earlier on in the summer. I guess this week will be my last chance to assist with these efforts.

This week (week 8) has so far been off to a very similar low-key start. I actually didn't come into work on Monday because I was flying back from Ft. Lauderdale with Kevin after an amazing birthday weekend. Tuesday began with me attending a symposium on Education in the Media, with panelists of education reporters for Education Week, USA Today and the Washington Post. This was a very relevant and timely symposium to attend considering that over the weekend, the LA Times ran a pretty groundbreaking education piece that publicly released the names of teachers and their test scores. I am not opposed to LAUSD using value added systems (test scores) as one way to evaluate teacher effectiveness, and don't really have a problem with the LA Times reporting on the results, although I do have an issue with releasing the names of teachers. This would not be such a problem if tenure did not exist, but now, parents are going to be outraged if their kids are placed in these publicly ousted "ineffective teachers," and there is nothing the principal can do about it since the teachers have lifetime job protections. Anyways, this symposium was helpful, since it does not seem like members of the media take a lot of time to teach organizations how to best represent themselves in the media, as well as to take the time to listen to many people's qualms and ideas about how education is currently being represented in the public sphere. The rest of the day was kind of a follow-up day where I responded to emails, added some new ESEA recommendations to my chart and talked with Augustus about what the rest of the week would look like. I also helped Augustus come up with a summary list of which priorities to comment on from Sec. Duncan's new document outlining the administration's priorities for discretionary funding. It was good to see that 2 of the priorities had to do with ensuring that sound research and evidence is utilized during the innovation and implementation of education policies and practices. The rest of the week is basically going to be the final wrap-up. I have an exit interview with Augustus on Thursday, and an exit interview with Jim on Friday. Jason will be returning from San Francisco, and Wednesday will be a birthday celebration day, with lunch at an Indian Buffet and then Happy Hour at the Mad Hatter. (Augustus' bday is Aug. 14th, mine is Aug. 15th and Jason's is Aug. 17th). Pretty random, huh? Also, Thursday will be my official goodbye lunch since Augustus will be out of the office Friday, and what better way to celebrate than with another trip to my favorite burger place, Spike's Good Stuff Eatery.

All in all, I could not have asked for a better summer fellowship, and I feel very lucky for having had the opportunity to meet all of the people in my office, as well as numerous contacts around the city, and country, really. I cannot thank Augustus and Jim enough for the exposure that I got this summer, particularly to the process of lobbying, as well as to insight on how to run a trade organization that deals with various members and interests. The amount of just raw policy knowledge I accumulated this summer is astounding. Education policy is SUCH A COMPLEX issue, and I still do not necessarily know how I stand on every single issue because I really truly can see both sides to most stories. I am encouraged at the bipartisan support that I have seen in education policy, but also discouraged by the newfound divide occurring between "reformers" and "formula supporters."

This experience has also definitely confirmed what I thought I already knew- that policy is absolutely what I would like to do with my life. This is exciting since I never really thought I had a "niche" for a career. You know, some people want to be doctors or lawyers or writers, and it is very easy for them to imagine what a career in one of those venues would look like. With me, I didn't ever think that there would be a job that I could have that would combine my interest in politics, helping others and specific interests such as education or health. Now I know that a policy job does just that.

Lastly, one other important realization I came to this summer is that this experience has really renewed me to want to become a much better and more dedicated teacher to my students this year. I think it was very valuable to step away from the classroom mentality for a summer and remind myself what it was like to work with adults, and realize that it is very rewarding to work with students. I have come to really appreciate the role that I have in being a leader, and can't believe I would ever say this, but I really now appreciate how busy I am during the school year. It's not that I wasn't busy this summer, but I definitely have become accustomed to having a never-ending to-do-list and loads of responsibility, and those are 2 things that may not always come with an office job, especially when you are an intern.

So, I guess folks, that wraps up this summer experience. I have really enjoyed my time blogging, and am very thankful that I slogged through it and made myself recap my experiences every week because I know it will be very easy to forget day-to-day details once I return to LA. Thank you to anyone who actually took the time to read this, I hope it gave you a detailed (way too detailed, I know) look into what I was able to observe and accomplish with my time here at Knowledge Alliance. Who knows, maybe I will start to blog regularly, although I find that pretty unlikely once I'm back in the swing of things this school year. Thanks again for reading, and as always, your support!!

Week 6

The Retreat!!! Finally, all of the hard work came to fruition this week, and I will not break down this post by day, but will merely recap the general feel of our "Big Ideas Conference: VUCA in the Education World." (VUCA is a military acronym used to describe a time in war when there is total chaos; it is typically the turning point of a war).

We arrived in beautiful New Mexico, and specifically the Tamaya Resort, on Sunday afternoon, which really gave us time to just relax and get familiar with the property and the space. Jason and I took this task to heart by going for a run around the 3 mile running trail that takes you along the Rio Grande and under the shadow of the great Sandia peak, and then we tested out the awesome water slide that goes into one of their 3 pools. In the evening, we went to dinner at a cute little institution restaurant in downtown Bernalillo called "The Range," and I had some very interesting conversations with some of our members, including Paul Kimmelman from Learning Point Associates and Dave Lash, an innovation strategist.

Monday morning was time for Jason and I to assist John with setting up the ball room and getting registration ready. The conference officially began after lunch, and I must say that the "knowledge catchers," (aka dream catchers) that I had commissioned as conference gifts were a big hit. The first session was a mega-session with Tony Bryk and Louis Gomez from the Carnegie Foundation, and Lindsay Martin from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to discuss the idea of rapid prototyping. The concept really has to do with this idea of having research projects set to 90 day cycles, that really allow researchers to rapidly find answers to small questions, and then have those answers build upon one another to eventually lead to a big picture idea. 90 day cycles are currently being utilized as an effective method of research in the healthcare arena, and the session was aimed to encourage education to try this same prototype for its own projects. Although I have never spent a lot of time thinking about the research priorities of the education sector, this session was still informative. The only qualm I had was when we split up into our "breakout sessions," and I certainly faced ageism with the people at my table questioning my authority of attending the conference due to my obviously youthful appearance. I let off some of my frustrtation with this by taking advantage of the open bar at the reception prior to dinner.

Monday's dinner proved to have one of the most interesting sessions, probably because I could participate fully in the discussion due to its topic. The presentation, hosted by Jillian Darwish, was one on the idea of how fast change occurs, and attempted to take a look at a future learner in 2020. The conversation obviously led to a discussion on how the future of technology, environment and globalism will affect the way learners gather information, and how education researchers and practitioners will have to adapt in order to continue to educate learners effectively in the future. We had very engaging table discussions at our dinner table regarding this topic, and people were interested to hear both mine and Jason's points of view since we were the closest ones at the table who could be considered "digital natives". It is kind of overwhelming to think that the innovations and inventions that will exist in 2020 are ones in which we cannot even imagine today.

Tuesday morning was a full day of conference activities starting with breakfast at 8:00 AM and ending with dinner at 8:00 PM. The morning session was led by Mike Smith, a former under secretary and deputy secretary for the Department of Education, to give a perspective on VUCA in the federal government. We broke out into small group sessions again, where small groups had the opportunity to think about how Knowledge Alliance can assist the research community through the many changes occurring in education. We then ate this ridiculously good buffet lunch that consisted of bbq short ribs and green chili mac and cheese, and after lunch, reconvened for another lecture led by Tom Vander Ark and Ted Kolderie on "Crisis as the Mother of Invention in Education." This discussion led us to think about how the education community can take advantage of the crisis state of education, and how we can use this time to truly be innovative in our practices. We broke into round robin table groups where we were asked to think about and strategize on what we think the greatest levers for change truly are in the education world. As a group, we could not come to a total consensus, but could obviously agree on the fact that the economy, technology, and students themselves will play a key role in deciding the fate of the education community.

The evening activities were followed by another open bar reception and another 5 course dinner, which allowed me to have fascinating conversation with Mike Bowler, the former education reporter for the Baltimore Sun. After dinner, Jim and a panel of members led a wrap-up discussion on the conference as a whole, which aimed to summarize some of the big takeaways from the last 48 hours. The following morning continued the conversation with feedback of the conference being shared over breakfast.

Wednesday morning 8/4/2010 (Happy Birthday, Amy!), Augustus, John and I packed up shop and headed back to the Albuquerque airport to make our return flight home. Once arriving in Baltimore, we made it back to the car, and then spent about 20 minutes trying to find Augustus' car key, which had been accidentally dropped into one of our bags. Overall, I really enjoyed my first ever business trip experience, and was glad to have the opportunity to sit in on a confererence being held with some of the biggest education researchers in the country. Policy really was not the main focus of the conference, so I found myself wearing my "teacher" hat moreso than my "policy fellow" hat during the retreat. It is encouraging to know that so many organizations are dedicating their efforts and time to ensure that teachers receive the best practices to ultimately lead to student success.

Thursday and Friday back at the office were pretty low-key days coming off the excitement of the retreat. John, Augustus and I didn't even show up to the office until around 11 AM on Thursday, and I quickly left at noon to attend my second to last PALI fellows brownbag lunch with my other TFA fellows. Our guest speaker for this luncheon was actually with the Indianapolis cohort, and his name was Dale Chu, and he works with the Indiana Department of Education. He gave us kind of the "state's perspective" on a lot of the federal programs that are circulating through the country right now, particularly Race to the Top and the Common Core Standards. Apparently Indiana's Department of Education had a lot of inner debate as to whether or not to adopt the Common Core since the Fordham Institute put out a report ranking Indiana's current state standards higher than the Common Core. Indiana eventually decided to the adopt the common core, which probably had to do with increasing their chances of potentially being eligible for RttT round 3 money, as well as to be included in any federal assessments that are being written for Common Core states. In the afternoon, after I headed back to the office, Augustus had me work on a project going through the finalists (aka- winners if they can find 20% matching funds) of the Innovating in Investment or I3 grants to see how many of our members were involved in winning proposals. After sorting through the 49 winners' abstracts, we concluded that 9 of our members were involved in at least 16 winning applications, meaning that our members will be involved with appx. 29% of I3 grants. This is great news for our members, since they will be receiving money to be the evaluators or primary researchers for the grants. The competition was incredibly fierce, with over 1,700 applications, and only 49 finalists. Surprisingly, I was personally connected to 3 of the winners, with Forsyth County Schools (my home school system) winning a grant to test a program to reduce drop out race; Teach For America winning one of only 4 scale up grants for a total of $50 million to expand the program; and LAUSD (my current employer) to turn around low performing schools. I am proud of all 3 of these organizations winning grants, but I must comment on Forsyth County. With all of the anti-federalist tea party sentiment swirling around the county, it surprises me that 1. the district would even apply for ARRA money, and 2. take that money if they find a match. I absolutely think they deserve and should have the money, but it should certainly make people question their arguments that the federal government has no place in local jurisdictions, because clearly the $5 Million dollars given to the Forsyth County School system will play an important role in the county's innovation.

Friday, 8/6/2010- Friday was also a fairly slow day, with me attending my very last TFA luncheon with my other fellows. The guest speaker today was also brought to us via conference call, and the speakers Sylvia Puente from the Latino Policy Forum and Maria Whelan with Action for Children, and their job was to discuss the idea of turning policy into advocacy. How can you actually rally and shape public opinion to advance your cause? Obviously they work on various Latino causes, but education is certainly one of them, even if it is not the most prominent issues in the news, because it is an issue of inequality in the Latino community. After the call, I returned to the office, and helped Augustus work on pieces for the Knowledgeable Source. I helped to summarize stories on the i3 winners, Common Core Adoption, and a new Databank debuting on the Dept. of Ed. website. All in all it was a good week, but I can start to feel the wrap up of this experience. Next week, I will be left to work on projects alone as all of my bosses and Jason will be out of the office.

Week 5

By far the most exciting week on the job to date...I'm sure that this will be the week I look back on when thinking about all of the great experiences I've had this summer.

7/26/10: The week began again with the typical morning call to Ellen- not too much to report new other than the anticipation of the Senate appropriations mark up taking place the next day. Ellen was pretty certain that the Senate would not embargo the appropriations like the House, so it would be the first time we would actually be able to get a feel of how R&D would fare in the federal government this year. (Aka- how much does the federal government value the role of R&D in education?). After this call, Augustus, Jason and I headed over to the Raben Group offices (a lobbying LLC), to listen to a head member from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to give a forecast of how the Democrats will fare in the midterm elections. Although the speaker was very optimistic in predicting that the Dems would not lose either the House or the Senate, we were a little less optimistic. It appears as though the Dems are currently raising more money than the Republicans, however, this is not including any of the special interest money from corporations, which will clearly set Republicans over the edge. I really don’t think that anyone knows how the election will play out in November, but it will be certain that we will lose at least 20-30 seats in the House, and maybe 6-7 in the Senate. Either way, this election will only further deepen the partisan divide in Washington for the remaining 2 years in Obama’s first term.

7/27/10: Today was an exciting day for me because I got to attend the National Press Club luncheon to hear Secretary Arne Duncan give a major speech on Education, and release the finalists for Race to the Top round 2. The press club itself was quite the experience , with the old wooden paneled walls, and pictures of old politicians in the press club throughout the ages. The food itself was absolutely terrible, but they had really cute cookies that were “teacher themed” for dessert. Sec. Duncan’s speech was not anything I hadn’t heard before, but since it was being taped for C-Span, I’m sure he was just sticking to his talking points. When he made the announcement for RttT, he ended up awarding 18 states and DC as finalists, which means that those states will now come and make presentations to the Dept. of Education, and most likely 5-10 winners will be selected to receive the grant money in early September. Whatever criticisms people have of the program, it is irrefutable that RttT has caused states to make drastic education policy changes without ever spending a single dime. I don’t want to get into the whole formula versus competitive funding debate, but I do know that the status quo is not working, and we have to be innovative in our approach to ed. reform at this point. After the speech, I headed back to the office, while Jason, Augustus and Jim went to the Senate subcommittee appropriations mark up for Labor, HHS, and Ed. Apparently this mark up was very different from the House subcommittee, which meant that it only lasted 10 minutes, and then everybody just ran up to staffers at the end to find out how much money was given for their individual programs. It was great news for R&D however, because the Institute for Education Sciences actually got an increase in funding for the upcoming fiscal year, while many other programs were being cut.

7/28/10: This morning began with a very early event put on by National Journal Live, and it was an event to discuss the state of education policy in the country. The guest speaker was Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who is the chairman of the House Education Committee, and is a very key player in shaping what education policy passes the House. After his interview, a panel including AFT president Randi Weingarten, and the President of the New Teacher Project came on and basically “graded” the current education system and had to make suggestions for improvement. It was no surprise that the panelists gave the current system a failing grade, although they both agreed that that failing grade was only for some of the students and schools, while recognizing that there are school systems that are working for the students. After this event, (actually in the middle of it), I had to make my way to the Department of Education building to participate in a teacher-focused discussion with some members of the Department, as well as their current Teacher Ambassador Fellows. This discussion mainly focused on trying to come up with solutions to some of the most pressing teacher issues today, such as how can we fairly evaluate teachers? and how can we get teachers to stay at some of the most underperforming schools? It was really encouraging that this discussion was being led by and held for teachers who know best what the conditions are like on the ground. I think some of the interesting ideas that were brought up were potentially having parents involved in the evaluation process, as well as giving the teachers the opportunity to evaluate their administration so that there are 360 degrees of accountability. Lastly, following this discussion, I headed back to the office where we held our final retreat planning committee meeting to go over all of the final details of the retreat. I actually was able to order 80 handmade dream catchers as party favors to be ready by Sunday, and finally finished the agendas.

7/29/10: Today was a very jam packed day as well because I was running all over the place to attend meetings and markups. I attended another TFA brownbag lunch, with guest speaker Frederick Hess from the American Enterprise Institute. Now I knew Rick Hess was a conservative guy who would be speaking about the idea of market-based reform in schools (aka- for profit schools), but I did not realize how inflammatory his remarks would be. I think he is a very intelligent man, who I think does have some interesting ideas, but I found his delivery of them to be slightly offensive and off-putting. I mean, he really did not feel concerned with being politically correct, and he made comments such as all minority parents are crackheads, so why should we think the parents always know best? Or, the implication that segregated schools was a valuable system, and that parents should have any choice in the world to not take their kids to a school where the ethnic composition is high with minority students. I mean, it was certainly an interesting point of view to listen to since he was basically trying to say that the school system is working for many parents and students, and that there shouldn’t be as much attention paid to always closing the achievement gap. I mean, I completely disagree with him, but that’s what makes this country an interesting place. Anyways, after this luncheon, I had to quickly taxi over to the Senate to meet Jason and Augustus in line for the Senate Full Appropriations Committee Markup. This was by far one of the most exciting and important things I have done all summer. The committee room, first of all, was large and grand, and 30 Senators sat around this large square shaped table to take their final votes on the Foreign Services, Labor HHS Ed, and State Appropriations bills. Now the committee is made up of 18 Democrats and 12 Republicans, and in the first time in the last 2-3 decades, the vote to approve the appropriations bills for all 3 bills was voted on a party line. This absolutely upset the Democrats, and it was my Senator, Dianne Feinstein, who gave the most impassioned, level-headed speech questioning why the Republicans would vote down the bill, even though the entire process all along was 100% bipartisan. (This committee is notoriously known for being bipartisan). It was just the principle that the Republicans would ask for programs to receive funding, and even put in their own earmarks, just to vote no on the final bill. The Republican rebuttal, led by Senator Judd Gregg of NH, was that the Republicans asked for the bill to be $20 billion less than the president’s proposal, and even though the Democrats were able to get it down to $14 billion below, that still wasn’t good enough for them. It was just remarkable to see this dialogue going on in a completely civil manner behind closed doors, but it does make me question why the Democrats do not publicly call out the Republicans for this kind of behavior. I mean, to me, it certainly seems cowardly to request earmarks and funding for programs behind closed doors, and then vote no on the final bill, knowing full and well that it will pass because of the Democratic majority, but still running to your constituents to say, “look at how fiscally irresponsible those Democrats are.” I think Senator Tom Harkin from IA said it best since he is the Chairman of the Labor HHS Ed subcommittee, by saying that not a single Republican wrote a letter to him requesting any cuts, but wrote many letters to him requesting his inclusion of their programs. Instead, he was charged with having to make the tough decisions of cutting the programs, while the Republicans got to sit back and claim fiscal responsibility. It was so fascinating for me to watch, and I was so proud of my own Senator for her speaking up in a polite and eloquent manner. After the Republicans all voted no for the 3 bills, but they passed anyways because the Democrats won the 18-12 approval vote, the next step was to go through and have the Senators offer any amendments that they would like to see in the bill. Some of the amendments were to end the Mexico City Law (Global Gag Rule which stated that no foreign country could receive US dollars if they even used their own money to provide abortions), which passed 19-11 (Sen. Collins voted yes), and another amendment to increase funding to the NIH by $1Billion, which failed 28-2. The most interesting amendment, however, was when Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is a Republican, tried to get an amendment to put $10 Billion dollars into re-opening the Denali Health Clinics in her state. Now, talk about hypocrisy…just 20 minutes earlier, she had voted no on the bill because it was not fiscally responsible, and now here she was requesting an additional $10Billion in funding? Unfortunately for her, the amendment failed and the Democrats were not even remotely sympathetic to her request.

7/30/10: Last day in the office before the big retreat! The day began with the weekly CEF meeting, which hosted the Education Leg. Assistant from Senator Durbin’s office as their guest. The meeting was not that informative, and really was mainly spent going over the final appropriations numbers from the Senate Appropriations Committee markup from the day before. Also, news came in that the education jobs bill was going to be added on to the Senate FAA bill on Monday, which means that there is still a chance that $10 Billion will go towards saving teacher jobs, although if passed, that money will probably not trickle down to states and districts until Christmas, which means the first semester of the upcoming school year will face teacher layoffs indefinitely. After the CEF meeting, I headed back to the Hill to attend another TFA luncheon, this time hosting a panel of TFA alum who currently work on the Hill or in the Department of Education. This panel was so informative for me, and just listening to them made me finally realize that this is absolutely what I want to be doing with my life, even if working on the Hill is not very glamorous and is ridiculously stressful. They certainly made me feel confident in my decision to stay in teaching another year, because they said that I should be gaining as much “on the ground” training as I can to become a better policymaker. They also said that people on the hill look at TFA alum who taught more than just their 2 year commitment in a different light than those who leave the classroom after 2 years. It was just very exciting for me to speak with and listen to people who feel the exact same way about policy as I do. I really haven’t felt this way in a long time, and I feel excited to be able to know that I think I might have actually figured out what to do with the rest of my life. Lastly, the day ended with me heading back to the office and assisting Jason with putting any last minute touches to our retreat materials. We put together the packets for the presenters and moderators, created the slide templates to show during the presentations, and ran through one more time what our specific jobs will be during the retreat. I have no idea what is in store, but I am excited to be going on my first ever “business trip.”

Week 4

Wow, I cannot believe that I am already halfway finished with my internship! I feel like I am just starting to fully understand the day-to-day undertakings of our office, and am already feeling sad that the rest of the journey is short lived. I guess the one positive I have with this, is to think about all I have learned and accomplished in my first 4 weeks, and how I have 4 more weeks to learn and accomplish much, much more.

7/20/10: Today was just a normal, conference call Monday. The day started with our weekly call to Ellen, where there was not too much new to report other than just a discussion about the possible Senate markups that would be taking place on Thursday. (This we later found out was being postponed inexplicably until next Tuesday). After this call, Augustus, Jason and I headed to the hill to attend the bi-monthly meeting for the STEM-Ed Coalition, which is a coalition representing all of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education interests in Washington. They were discussing the hopes that their bill, the America Competes Act, would be dropped on the floor for votes within the next few weeks, and also discussed how to better publicize their national STEM-Ed day for teachers. After this meeting, we returned to the office, and I sat in on the board call, which is obviously a strategic and regular meeting for the members of the board of KA.

7/21/10: Today was one of the rare days where I got to stay in the office all day, which was nice considering that the rest of the week is going to be very active and busy. The day began with Jim, John, Jason and I held a retreat planning meeting, which was probably one of the most lengthy, detail-oriented meetings I have ever been to. The purpose of this meeting was to just sit down and flush out EVERY single detail we could think of that needed to be taken care of before the retreat happening in 2 weeks. This included ideas such as, should we order lanyards for our guests, to exactly who should be keeping time for each presentation, to how do we want the presenters to be introduced, etc., etc., etc. I definitely understand why companies hire people to plan their retreats for them, but I certainly do commend Knowledge Alliance's gusto and success thus far in planning their own company retreat. After the meeting, Jason and I dabbled in graphic design by designing our retreat materials, particularly the conference agenda. We decided to save paper and just print half sheet agendas for the meeting, which was much more difficult and time-consuming than originally expected. Once again, I can see why people hire professionals to take care of their graphic design needs, but I must say that I am pretty damn proud of the product we were able to make, because it does look fairly professionally-made if you ask me. The day ended, however, with getting the opportunity to attend the first night's dinner of our DC hill days with our members met members by attending dinner at the most well-known Indian restaurant in DC called Rasika. This dinner was an opportunity for the visiting members to get together to socialize and go over the agenda for the DC days occurring over the next two days, and it was great getting to meet many of the members whose names I have been seeing over the last month, and having the chance to finally put a face to those names. Plus, for never eating Indian food, I was pretty damn impressed. Despite there being a ton of cilantro in some of the dishes, some just blew me away, including the Dal Malsaka (sp?- Black Lentil) and Salmon dishes.

7/22/10: This morning was an early morning, since we had a breakfast business meeting for our DC days at the Monocle restaurant at 7:45 AM. This working breakfast included two guest speakers, Judy Wurtzel from dept. of ed. and David Cleary from Sen. Lamar Alexander's office. Both speakers gave fairly differing talks on the state of ed. policy from an executive point of view and a congressional point of view. Some of the main takeaways we received was that there was certainly no way that ESEA reauthorization would be taking place this year, and realistically, not until 2012; that there needs to be a much better attempt from the research community to not only make their findings accessible to legislators, but also to be able to effectively translate their findings for practitioners on the ground; and that ed. policy work is being conducted on a fairly bipartisan level, despite the fact that many Republicans do not want the democrats or Obama to receive credit for education reform, so the timetable is being for reform is being slowed down. David Cleary is a very blunt, and political speaker, and it was nice to actually bring in an opinion from the Republican side of the aisle, even if I didn't necessarily agree with everything he was saying. After the meeting at the Monocle, I got to sit in on 4 meetings with one of Knowledge Alliance's members, David Monk, who is the current Dean for the College of Education at Penn State. These meetings took us all over the hill, getting to meet with Legislative Assistant's (LA's) from Sen. Spector, Sen. Casey, Rep. Castle, and Rep. Holt's offices. These meetings were really dedicated to discussing the role that Penn State has been playing as a REL for the Mid-Atlantic region, and how the process could really be improved if more funding was available to assist with the dissemination of research. What good is conducting solid, scientifically-valid research if you do not have the ability to actually share the results with anybody? I did get to meet soon-to-be Senator Castle (from Delaware), who happened to walk into the office while we were waiting for his assistant to meet with us, and he actually already knew who we were and shook our hands. That was exciting since apparently members of Congress do not usually go out of their way to interact with those who are waiting in their offices. We also go to shake Rep. Holt's hand as well, although he was running out to catch a vote being conducted on the floor. That evening was the last dinner with our members for the DC days, which was held at a very delicious restaurant called Founding Farmer's. I probably embarrassed myself by ordering the fried chicken and waffles with macaroni and cheese and spinach...but I just had to do it. C'mon, I don't get to eat farm fresh southern food very often :)

7/22/10- At the beginning of the day, Augustus and I headed to the hill to attend 2 meetings with another member, Peter Hofman, from Measured Progress. The first meeting was held with the education LA for Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and the second meeting was held with the very important (and ridiculously busy) Jamie Fasteau, who is the head education staff member for the House Ed. Labor committee. (Basically, she is the lead drafter of the ESEA bill in the house). Both meetings were very interesting for me because I got to learn about what Measured Progress does, which is creates assessments for states and school districts that are standards-based. What Mr. Hofman was trying to establish in both meetings was that the current ESRA bill does not contain strong language for assessment literacy, or professional development that aims at improving teacher's assessment literacy skills in the classroom. Assessment literacy basically refers to the teacher's ability to actually understand how to create and teach students on how to test properly. One of the ideas I heard that I found to be very intriguing was this idea that Measured Progress has begun to create tests that contain a "hint." Students who miss an answer will be provided a hint, but they will receive less points than if they were able to answer the question without one. The idea behind this is that students should feel as though we want them to succeed on tests, rather than just giving them "gotcha" questions. One thought that was brought up that I found to be very thought-provoking was this idea that a student will fail an algebra test, and automatically be down on him/herself and say that they are bad at math. This lack of confidence can in some cases cause that student to forever lose interest in the subject and give up at trying (trust me, I have seen this with my students many times). However, this same student in many instances will go home and play a video game that they will fail at many times, but continue to try to pass levels, because they know they can learn from their failure. How can we as educators replicate this same mentality at school? This is just something that I would like to think about as I begin my third year of teaching in the fall. Anyways, after the meetings, Augustus and I got to try Spike Mendehlson's (from Top Chef) restaurant, Good Stuff Eatery, for lunch. The line was ridiculously long for this burger joint, but wow, what a great burger. I got the Good Stuff melt which contained cheddar, meunster cheese, mushrooms and carmelized onions, and it was pretty tasty. Both Augustus and I promised not to tell Jason who was stuck back at the office that he missed such a tasty lunch. In the afternoon, Jason and I finished putting some final touches on our agenda that we had been working on, and had a very lengthy discussion over which logo to use. We asked our boss which one he liked better, and I'm proud to say he chose mine. This day was also memorable in the fact that Kevin and I got to meet our neighbors across the hall, Jeremy and Christina, and they were so nice. It was great to have social interaction with them and a small group of their friends, and we ended up karaoking with them until 3AM (on a work night, nonetheless)! It was a blast, and I'm very glad that I've decided to make this summer the "summer of yes." It would have certainly been easier to just sit at home that night since I was exhausted, but I'm very glad that we decided to step out of our comfort zones and join a group of strangers in their festivities. The people in our apartment are some of the most accepting, open-armed people I have met in a long time, and it certainly made me realize that I wish we lived in a place in LA where we actually spoke to our neighbors, or at least knew who they were.

7/23/10- Surprisingly, I was not too tired today despite my 3AM stint at karaoke. The morning began with the weekly CEF meeting, where it was very evident that the membership was furious that the Senate had decided to cut the education jobs bill out of the supplemental the night before. There is really no way that the $10B in education jobs will be put through this year, which will undoubtedly mean that school districts will be forced to cut many teacher jobs this year. The guest speaker was Gideon Bragin, the education LA for Rep. Honda (D-CA), and former Bay Area TFA alum. Mr. Bragin filled the members in on how active Congressman Honda is in the education sector, and is hopeful that ESEA reauthorization will be coming soon. After this meeting, Jason and I headed down to the Center for American Progress, where we got to sit in on a speech from the House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer (D-MD). This speech was meant to be a forum on "job creation," but unfortunately all of the ideas Mr. Hoyer had were very long-term solutions, and did not seem to be very quick fixes. I think the idea that I am most counting on, and one that will be heating up very soon, is the idea of allowing the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans (those making >$250,000/year). It just does not make sense to allow these to continue, when they will just be adding another $1.3 trillion to the deficit. I guarantee that this will be the most contentious issue of the November elections, and I am confident that the Democrats have the more convincing argument in this case...but of course, raising taxes is never the most popular stance to take, but I doubt many Americans would condone the deficit increasing so that the wealthy could earn tax breaks...I mean, heck, politicians just recently blocked unemployment so that it wouldn't add to the deficit. Anyways, off of my soap box...Jason and I were not too impressed with Majority Leader Hoyer's speech, but it was certainly neat to hear him speak and see all of the video cameras from C-Span set up to film him. The rest of the day was spent returning to the office and working on more retreat planning tasks.

Week 3

Well I must say that this week has been the busiest week so far, thus the reason for me not being able to blog regularly during the week. With that said, I will try my best to recap the important events that happened for me this week.

7/12/10- Let's just call this the day of conference calls...I guess this is how Monday's will be for the rest of the summer, but it has certainly been a difficult transition for me to have to sit through multiple meetings in a day. Every Monday morning starts off with a call to a policy analyst who gives us the low down on what education policy news is happening in Washington for the week. This week we mainly discussed (or I should say my bosses discussed and I listened in on) how the edujobs bill proposed by Rep. Obey and passed by the house is putting the democratic party and particularly Pres. Obama in a political pickle because now many legislators are being forced to choose between "reform" (aka- Race to the Top), and "jobs" (aka- using money to prevent teacher layoffs). This has split the democratic party, and is certainly a situation where the republicans are probably sitting back and enjoying the show. After this initial conference call, we then had another documentarians call regarding our jobs as bloggers during the retreat. Although last week we had decided not to blog and chat, this week the position was reversed, and a chat was added to the website. Later in the afternoon, we then had a PAG call (which stands for Policy Action Group), which is basically a repeat of the morning call, except this time we had our members on the phone to keep them updated. And lastly, we ended the day with an overall retreat planning conference call, where it was decided that there were too many speakers and panels scheduled, and it needed to be scaled back.

7/13/2010- So today I actually had the entire day free of meetings, and it was nice to enjoy the solid blocks of work time. Jason and I have begun our success stories projects, and so now we are waiting to hear back from our members so that we can compile a list of success stories to eventually bring to the hill during our lobbying meetings. In order to make our lives a lot easier in the long run, we decided that it would be much easier for us to create a detailed tracking sheet documenting which responses we have received, and which ones we will need to send follow-ups to. Other than that main project, I assisted Jason with making edits and changes to the conference website by providing my critical eye, and had the day to do a lot of reading of education news and blogs. After work, TFA planned a very nice dinner for all of the PALI fellows at an upscale soul food restaurant called Georgia Brown's. After indulging in fried green tomatoes, fried catfish and shrimp and grits, I was very stuffed and looking forward to making my way back home. Unfortunately, I left the restaurant at the worst possible time, and just as I walked a block away, the skies opened up, and I got drenched in the pouring rain, despite my efforts to hold an umbrella. On top of that, I had to stand under a burger king awning for about 15 minutes, and watched one of the craziest thunder and lightning shows I have ever seen (or at least remember since I've been in LA for 6 years). I finally decided that it was worth the money to take a cab home, rather than trying to wait for the bus in a thunderstorm.

7/14/2010: This morning, Jason and I got to attend a polling data release event hosted by the Alliance for Excellent Education. The event was actually hosted by the President of AEE, former West Virginia Governor, Bob Wise, and featured the pollsters, Celinda Lake and Christine Matthews. Celinda is a very well-known pollster for the democratic party, and Christine frequently serves as a polling correspondent on BBC America and other news outlets. The poll that had been conducted was trying to test "voters feel towards education issues" in the upcoming election. Not too surprisingly, the results showed that education is a huge voting issue, and overwhelmingly, people from both parties would like to see reauthorization of ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act- aka- No Child Left Behind) by the end of this year. The major take away messages from the data suggest that people would like to see a greater focus of high school reform in the bill, and that candidates running for office would be very smart to run on an education platform since it appeals to people from all parties, and particularly independent women (who apparently will be deciding this November's election). It would have been nice for the poll to have asked questions about how people want to see education reform take place, rather than just explaining the obvious that people think our education system is broken.

P.S.- Happy Bastille Day, this is apparently a big deal in DC considering that I attended a block party in honor of the holiday that was jam packed with festive DC residents.


7/15/2010: I have to say that today has been by far the most exciting day of my internship to date. This is mainly because I spent the entire day on Capitol Hill in a series of meetings and events. The day began with me and my boss Jim attending a forum hosted by the AEE on School Turnaround. This event featured a panel of 2 secondary school principals who were able to turn their schools around in a 5-10 year period, as well as the chief education adviser for the House authorizing committee (majority party), Jamie Fasteau, and the chief education adviser for the Senate HELP committee (minority party), Lindsay Hunsicker. Both of the chief advisers were informative in explaining how the democratic leadership and republican leadership plan on moving forward with ESEA reauthorization. It was certainly a different explanation coming from each adviser, with the democratic leadership really hoping to reauthorize ESEA by the end of this year, and the republican leadership being a little more realistic in saying that it will not happen considering that there are only 7 weeks left in this legislative session. I just do not understand how lawmakers do not feel that education is a priority, especially since the bill has not been reauthorized since 2001- that's almost 1o years since we have let a failing education policy (NCLB) go on without A SINGLE REVISION. Anyways, after this meeting, I then met up with Jason, and we engaged in the oh-so-important intern task of "line sitting." Today was the day when the House Appropriations Sub-Committee for Labor, HHS, and Education were doing their mark up for the FY 11 budget. This is the day that many lobbyists and organizations wait for because it is the day that they get to see how much money is being appropriated to the different programs in the budget. Thus, people actually hire people to come and sit in line for them since the mark up room is so tiny. Jason and I arrived about 3 hours earlier than the mark up was scheduled to take place, and we were still about 25 people back. After enjoying delicious burritos in the Rayburn cafeteria and the 3 hours to sit and read the newspaper and books, Jim finally joined us as we waited to get into the room. Unfortunately, despite our efforts, we did not make it initially into the mark up room, and we had to wait outside patiently until other people started leaving and seats became available. Finally, after about 45 minutes all 3 of us were able to make it into the room. This was very exciting for me because I was about 10 feet away from a large table with 16 house representatives sitting around it making policy. When I came in, the Republican chair on the committee, Rep. Tihart from Kansas, was going through his list of 13 amendments that he wanted to make to the appropriations bill. These amendments were RIDICULOUS, such as, "we should repeal health care," or "anyone detained at Guantanamo should never be allowed to receive federal assistance, even if they are proven innocent," and every single one of them was voted down on an 11-5 party line vote. Finally, after about 3 hours of this, the committee finally voted to approve the appropriations bill (once again on an 11-5 party line vote), and the committee toasted Chairman Rep. Obey (D-WI) for his years of service since he is retiring at the end of this year. Unfortunately, the committee decided to embargo the actual appropriations bill (this never happens) until full committee, so we were unable to see any actual numbers for R&D programs. This certainly has my boss worried because he is not sure if the CC's, REL's and R&D Centers will be receiving funding for next year, and that money would be critical for our members. We finally left the Capitol building around 8 PM, it was certainly a long and exciting day of political theater.

7/16/2010: When the bosses are away the interns will play....not so much. Despite having no bosses at the office, today was actually one of the busiest and productive days I have had at the office. The day began with Jason and I attending a policy breakfast hosted by the Committee for Education Funding (CEF), which is a weekly meeting that briefs those in the education community with all of the happenings on the Hill concerning education funding. This week's guest speaker was the chief of staff from Senator Jack Reed's office (D-RI), who is a very progressive education senator in the sense that he is certainly fighting very hard for the current education jobs bill being included in Senate legislation going to the floor next week. The highlight of the meeting, however, was having special guest Steve Zimmer in the audience. I immediately perked up when they introduced him because Steve is a member of the LAUSD board of education, and was a 1992 TFA Los Angeles corps member. Thus, when I introduced myself, I mentioned that I was a teacher in LAUSD, and when the meeting was over, he was very excited to hear what I was doing in DC, and was even more excited to learn that I would be returning to teach in LAUSD in the fall. He gave me his business card and asked me to send him an email when I returned, which I'm sure was an empty gesture, but it made me feel honored nonetheless. The rest of the day was spent at the office mainly working on editing down some of the success story responses we have received from our members, as well as tweeting for the office (Friday is my day, you should follow us at knowledgeall), and writing blurbs for our weekly publication to our members called the Knowledgeable Source. I really feel like I am starting to get into the groove in the office, and certainly am feeling more confident in contributing to written publications. I am looking forward to next week, which will hopefully include the full House Appropriations mark up and another day on the hill!

Week 2

7/4/2010: Happy post 4th of July from DC! I survived my first experience watching fireworks on the National Mall, and I must say, the crowd situation was a little over-hyped. I mean, I guess attending any event on the National Mall after Obama's inauguration will look like child's play, in terms of crowds and all. Anyways, the fireworks themselves were absolutely spectacular, and there is certainly something magical about watching fireworks with the Washington monument towering in the background. The only thing that I would suggest to improve the experience would be to line speakers up along the mall so that everybody can hear the music that accompanies the fireworks. We could hear it dimly in the background, but it probably would have been much more powerful if it had been turned up. The heat wasn't too bad, and we were lucky to find a nice shady spot to spend the first couple of hours before the fireworks began. Here are a few photos of the big event:



7/6/2010: Today was a pretty slow day at the office considering that it was the day after a long weekend, and Augustus did not come in. Early in the morning, I sat in on the weekly conference call with our political consultant, whose job it is to update KA on the political feel in Washington Education policy for the week. After that call, I simply continued the task of scanning the weekly education blogs, as well as brushing up on my knowledge of current and proposed education legislation. The highlight of the day, however, probably had to be watching the Uruguay vs. Netherlands world cup game towards the end of the day, and then getting to go home early since it was so hot. Kevin and I signed up for a 30 day membership at the Washington Sports Club, and so far, we have enjoyed getting back into a real gym. Oh, and we cooked the quintessential summer dinner- burgers, corn on the cob and green beans, and it was scrumptious :)

7/7/10: Happy Birthday, Emily! This morning, I started off my day frantically trying to find the meeting location for a morning policy breakfast with guest speaker Raymond Buckley, the democratic party state chair for New Hampshire. It was an interesting breakfast put on by the Raben Group, one of the lobbying firms that KA uses for consulting, and just one in a series of policy breakfasts this summer. Although Mr. Buckley did not speak about education policy at all, it was still very interesting to me because it was about his role in GLBT politics. Mr. Buckley himself is an openly gay politician, and pretty much single-handedly pushed through NH's marriage equality act. He basically discussed how he feels like there is no strategy or leadership in the GLBT movement, which is what is prohibiting its ability to make significant traction in state and federal policy. He is a strong proponent for grassroots organization, and feels that that could be a viable solution for the movement. When returning to work, we had our second leadership meeting, and my bosses were impressed with my suggestions for website improvements. I was glad that they were able to acknowledge that I am capable of creating quality work, which hopefully will mean that I will be getting increased responsibility throughout the summer. We had a conference call with some of our retreat planners, and basically decided that my job at the conference will be to assist with logistical support, as well as serve as a "live blogger" during the big sessions at the conference. I am nervous since I have never led a live blog before, but I am sure that by August I will feel more confident in my abilities. The day once again ended with the last world cup semifinal game between Germany and Spain. It was another hooootttt day in DC, which made the commute home miserable. At least the PALI fellows coordinated a happy hour, which helped with me not overheating.

7/8/2010: Today was actually a much busier day at the office than I had originally anticipated. As usual, the day begin with the hour-long process of scanning the newspapers, education blogs, and happenings around DC, and then received my first project from Augustus to assist with the success stories of our members. So each July, KA hosts something called DC Hill Days, which is an event that allows our members from around the country to fly into DC and meet with members of congress and their staffs to help lobby firsthand the need for R&D in education. What Jason and I are in charge of is collecting "success stories," or tangible examples of how their research has benefited student achievement in the past. This requires Jason and I to email all of our members who run Comprehensive Centers (CC's), Regional Education Laboratories (REL's) and Research and Development Centers (RDC's) to collect some recent successes their research has produced in the last year. I was responsible to going onto the Dept. of Ed and IES websites to help make a comprehensive list of which members are directly affiliated with these various research facilities. The emails will go out tomorrow. We also engaged in 2 conference calls today (I swear, I have never had so many conference calls in my life), one in which we helped one of our members schedule appropriate meetings with congressional offices for the DC Days, and the other call was another retreat planning strategy call. The highlight of my day was getting to meet Matt for lunch, it is so cool getting to live in the same city with my brother again! I mean, it's crazy to think that we haven't lived together in the same place since he was in high school.

Week 1

So I've never actually blogged before, but here it goes anyway....

This blog is not necessarily intended to be read by anyone but me. The reason for this is not because I am embarrassed to share my writing style or experiences with anybody, but mainly because this will most likely be pretty boring for anybody to read except for me. This blog is simply intended to be a record of my summer as a policy fellow.

Let me give you a little background: I have always been interested in politics, and have recently discovered that I could actually someday make a career out of this passion. After two years in the classroom as a Teach For America corps member, I was desperately searching for some job/internship/activity that would satisfy this need to discover the day-to-day life of a policy wonk. Needless to say, I spent many hours searching through idealist.org and TFA's LEE site to find any job opportunity that I could take advantage of this summer. Then, I saw it: TFA was looking for applicants to the PALI fellowship program, and the description was "seeking recent corps members who are interested in getting into policy work, but have no policy experience whatsoever." Yep, that pretty much described my situation in a nutshell. So I applied, and sure enough I was lucky enough to be one of 8 fellows to be placed at a policy organization in DC.

One week after my last day of teaching for the year, I had already moved across the country, and began my fellowship with Knowledge Alliance, an education policy organization that focuses on bringing R&D into education policy by lobbying Congress to increase funding for education R&D and increase existing infrastructures to help the dissemination of educational research as a way to influence best practices. I feel very lucky to have been placed with Knowledge Alliance because already in my first week, I feel like a valuable team member and advocate for advancing the Alliance's mission. Since I have had a very fulfilling week already, I figured that for my own sake, I would like to keep a detailed record of what events and meetings I have attended, so that I may look back at the end of the summer and reflect wholly on this once in a lifetime opportunity.

6/29/2010- My First day at KA. Met with Augustus to discuss organizational history, go over the internship manual, and begin to discuss our government relations strategy. (Totally overwhelmed at this point with terminology and a lack of context for many parts of the discussion). After being taken to lunch by Augustus, we headed over to the Hill to take part in 2 meetings with Rep. Rush Holt's (NJ) and Rep. Susan Davis' (CA) chiefs of staff to discuss progress on Leg. Council's review and editing of the Knowledge Bill to be proposed. We received bad news from Rep. Holt's office- Leg. council still had not sent back a finalized copy of the bill, even though it has been over 3 months since its submission. However, good news from Davis' office, because the bill has been finalized, and will be ready to "drop" within the next two weeks.

6/30/2010- For my second day on the job, Jason, Augustus and I attended Education Sector's conference on Teacher Evaluation Systems. This event was comprised of a panel of prominent education policy leaders working for both the Dept. of Ed, New Haven Schools and DCPS. Meeting was interesting not necessarily from a policy intern's perspective, but more so from a teacher's perspective. Basically the meeting discussed ways that certain school districts (such as DC) are beginning to evaluate teacher performance in a more authentic way than just test scores. It sounds as though using observation-based models, such as DC's Impact program, is just the beginning of a long and necessary discussion on how to fairly evaluate the performance of teachers. In the afternoon, Jason, Augustus and I headed back to the hill to sit in on the testimony to the Federal Deficit Commission (with co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles) to show support for one of KA's members who was testifying to ensure that education funding does not get cut when this commission makes their recommendation to Obama in December. Although each person only gets to testify for 4 minutes before their mics get shut off, it was still interesting to see the gamut of people and organizations that were pleading their case to the commission as well. I think the highlight, however, had to be seeing Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform come and try to convince this panel to basically do away with taxing altogether. This created an interesting back-and-forth between Alan Simpson (who is very conservative himself) and Mr. Norquist for quite some time. Pretty entertaining. Also, I learned that one room inside the Dirksen Senate building has pictures of the zodiac scattered around the ceiling. Interesting decor choice if you ask me.

7/1/2010- This morning I participated in my first "leadership meeting" with my office staff. We all came together and went over our progress on meeting last week's stated goals, as well as set new goals for the upcoming week. It felt nice to all meet together as an office, and I felt very welcome into this circle of people. During lunchtime, I attended my first brownbag lunch with the other DC PALI fellows. Every week or so, we will all be meeting together for lunch, and will have a guest speaker come and talk with us about some education policy issue. This week we got to hear from Michael Usdan, a man who has certainly well-known in DC for his involvement with ed. policy. He is currently a senior fellow with the Institute for Education Leadership. He came to discuss with us the history of education policy in this country, and put perspective on the current path that ed. policy is headed. He taught us that historically, ed. policy has always been fairly removed from government, in the sense that it was mainly handled by both state and local jurisdiction, with very little intrusion by the federal government. Ironically, however, it was a republican president (Bush 2) who increased the federal government's role in education more so than any other president before with his reauthorization of the ESEA in the form of No Child Left Behind. This legislation was really the first time that the federal government took such large control over education, and Obama's administration is continuing this trend through his Race To The Top efforts. Mr. Usdan's prediction (even though he claims that his predictions are always wrong), is that eventually education will become nationalized in the sense that the standards for student achievement will be set by the government on a federal level. It was a very interesting conversation, and one that I am sure I will be having many times over the summer. In the afternoon, I headed back to the office, and the staff all came together again to discuss the retreat that will be held in New Mexico this August. I basically learned how important this retreat is in terms of strategy and planning for KA's members, and how we need to make sure that every detail gets thought through before the event. We even got a little silly and decided that this year's conference gift would be a vuvuzela in the spirit of the world cup.

7/2/2010- Today was a low-key day at the office considering that it was a day before a holiday weekend, and Congress had the day off for the July 4th recess. I did have the opportunity to set up my google reader and twitter accounts so that now I am showered with the latest and greatest ed policy news coming to me in real time. I am starting to get a hang of the lingo, and am getting pretty involved in reading as many blogs and articles as I possibly can in the span of a day. Augustus and I finished discussing KA's government relations program, particularly the recommendations the organization has for the reauthorization of the ESEA and ESRA bills. In the afternoon, we watched a little world cup as an office, and I spent my time reviewing KA's website with "fresh eyes" to make sure that it was user friendly. I think that I came up with a pretty good list of comprehensive changes that I would make to make it a more efficient website. Other than that, I got to leave work around 3 PM since it was the Friday before a big holiday weekend.