The goal of the nonprofit, nonpartisan group is to help governors, state legislators and state education officials develop policies at the state level to improve the quality of education. The commission is widely regarded as an unbiased source of information about education policies, trends and data.
The commission alternates every two years between Republican and Democratic governors to chair its organization. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, served from 2013-15. Bullock championed equal pay and increased public education funding since becoming governor in 2012. He also oversaw a tuition freeze at Montana colleges and universities.
Jeremy Anderson serves as president of the commission, directing its staff and working closely with commission members and state officials across the nation. Anderson formerly worked as the director of government and political affairs for Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
Anderson helped pass the largest K-12 funding bill in Kansas history to avoid a shutdown of the schools earlier this year. The bill increased poor districts’ state funding by diverting funds from other parts of the state budget and was signed into law by Gov. Sam Brownback in July.
Bryant said on his Facebook page that his election is “credit to the progress that Mississippi has seen in recent years with our education system.” Mississippi made some of the largest gains in the country on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the nation’s report card on public schools.
Earlier this year, the Commission awarded the state the Frank Newman Award for State Innovation for its education reform focusing on early-childhood reading, the expansion of charter schools and the implementation of a new accountability system for schools and districts.
The award recognizes states for education improvement efforts that can be replicated in and educational to other states; “bold and courageous” policies; and policies and programs that have bipartisan support, according to the commission’s website.
The commission was sparked by an idea by James Bryant Conant in the mid-1960s. He proposed the idea of an interstate compact on education policy, allowing states to share ideas and communicate with one another. Conant proposed this approach as a counterbalance to the growing number of federal government-based initiatives addressing education issues, the commission’s website states.
The idea came to fruition when John W. Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, teamed up with former North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford to create the Compact for Education. Its operating arm is the Education Commission of the States, which opened its headquarters in Denver in 1967.
Bryant and Laurie Smith, the governor’s education and workforce policy advisor, serve as steering committee members for the commission.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.