The National Board for Education Sciences won’t have to hold its next meeting in a phone booth. (Yes, I’m old enough to remember what that is.) That’s because the U.S. Senate voted last week to confirm President Obama’s nominees to fill some long-empty spaces on the advisory board.
The newly confirmed members are: Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean of the education school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Adam Gamoran, a professor of sociology and educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research; Bridget Terry Long, professor of education and economics at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education; and Margaret R. (Peggy) McLeod, executive director of student services and special education in the Alexandria City Public Schools in Virginia. The four were nominated back in February.
You may recall that the board, which advises the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, had been operating for nearly a year with just six of its allotted 15 seats filled. Four more nominations for the board, however, are still pending.