Los Angeles education advocate Jim Blew is confirmed as assistant secretary in U.S. Dept. of Education
Laura Greanias | July 17, 2018
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Los Angeles’s Jim Blew was confirmed Tuesday by the U.S. Senate as the Department of Education’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development.
The vote was 50-49. He was nominated last September.
Blew, who was educated in LA Unified schools, has been serving as the acting secretary of the department’s office of innovation and improvement. He was director of Student Success California, an education reform advocacy organization affiliated with 50CAN (the 50-state Campaign for Achievement Now), a national advocacy group. He is the former president of Students First, the national advocacy organization founded by former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Blew served for 11 years as director of K-12 reform investments for the Walton Family Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of charter schools. He has held advisory and governing roles for education reform organizations including the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, the American Federation for Children, and the Policy Innovators in Education Network.
Blew earned his bachelor’s from LA’s Occidental College and an MBA from Yale. He graduated from Reseda High School.
He was part of the team that started one of LA’s first inner-city independent charter schools. Watts Learning Center celebrated its 20th anniversary last fall.
Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides funding to LA School Report’s parent organization, The74Million.org.