Deputy Secretary of Education
President George W. Bush nominated Hickok as his Deputy Secretary of Education on March 30, 2001 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 10, 2001. Hickok served as both the Under Secretary of Education and Acting Deputy Secretary between July 2003 and November 3, 2003 when the President nominated him to become Deputy Secretary. The deputy secretary is the chief policy advisor to the Secretary. In this position, Hickok oversaw and managed the development of policies, recommendations and initiatives that help define a broad, coherent vision for achieving the President's education priorities, including the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
However, on December 2, 2004, Hickok announced he was resigning as deputy education secretary, one week after a federal study concluded that charter schools were "less likely to meet state performance standards" due to "higher numbers of low-achieving minority students from poor families." The relative performance of charter schools compared to the national public school system is a debated aspect of NCLB. In addition, two months earlier the Government Accountability Office had also criticized NCLB citing "serious obstacles" and "a lack of clear and timely guidance from federal officials" in response to the program's newly expanded annual testing practices. The GAO recommended that the Department of Education provide states with written guidelines, however Hickok rejected the request.
In July 2005, Hickok was hired by Washington, DC-based Dutko Worldwide to head their education practice. Dutko is a Washington, DC-based government affairs firm who, according to their web site, is "consistently ranked as one of the top 10 most powerful lobbying firms in the country by FORTUNE magazine." Also in July, former deputy education secretary Hickok registered as a lobbyist with the United States Senate Office of Public Records.
Read more about this topic: Eugene W. Hickok
Famous quotes containing the words deputy, secretary and/or education:
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.”
—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“Major [William] McKinley visited me. He is on a stumping tour.... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass. It seems to me to be bad “politics,” and of no use.... It is a stale issue. An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.... Two ways are open to succeed in the South: 1. A division of the white voters. 2. Education of the ignorant. Bloody-shirt utterances prevent division.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)