To the Editor:
As the director of a Montana program funded under the U.S. Department of Education’s office of innovation and improvement, I was interested in your Jan. 25, 2006, article “Whither the Ed. Dept.’s Innovation Office?”
I needn’t tell you what programs are in that office, but a reader of your newspaper might think it has no other function but to promote school choice, vouchers, and charter schools. Since the advanced-placement program was moved from higher education to the office of innovation and improvement, it certainly has had a low profile. Arts education is practically never mentioned.
The Education Department may call this office its “nimble, entrepreneurial arm,” but I would call it, to be kind, a catchall arm. Its real purpose seems to have been to advance the president’s (and thus Nina Shokraii Rees’) love affair with choice and charter schools.
Kathleen Mollohan
Advanced Placement
Program Administrator
Gifted & Talented Grants Administrator
Montana Office of Public Instruction
Helena, Mont.
