Page 9 - The Clare Connection_Summer 2018

SUMMER 2018 9
Jack Jennings with his fellow Center on Education Policy researchers and his partner Steve Molinari
at Jack’s retirement party in 2011
Jack Jennings with former President
Jimmy Carter
Even so, Jack made it his mission
to produce objective, fact-based
reports. Since his staff had extensive
experience in Washington, they were
well aware of the education issues
that could arise and were poised
to conduct thorough and accurate
research.
“Half of something is producing a
good product,” Jack says. “The other
half is selling it, and you can’t do one
without the other.”
“Both were accurate, but President
Bush took the latter and said it
showed success, and his Secretary of
Education took the former and said
the results were a bunch of malarkey,”
Jack says. “We could not stop people
from using our reports for their own
purposes, but even that brought
additional attention to our research.”
After Jack retired in 2012, the Center on
Education Policy became associated
with George Washington University,
which helps it to raise money. In
2015, the Harvard Education Press
published Jack’s book, Presidents,
Congress and the Public Schools. This
summer, Harvard and the University
of Tokyo will release a Japanese
translation of that book with a new
So promote their reports they did.
The center worked with the likes of chapter updating the issues, and in
September, the Kappan magazine will
The New York Times, the Washington publish this new chapter in English.
Post and the Associated Press to
get information out, and many of
the reports issued then proved quite
influential in the discussion around
education.
After former U.S. President George
W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind
Act passed, the center set out to
explore its progress in the first year
by surveying all 50 states about its
implementation, as well as dozens of
local school districts. The research
was released within a year of the law
being signed.
“I knew that would be a blockbuster,”
Jack says. “And it established our
reputation of being fast, accurate and Jack Jennings with late Congressman
Carl D . Perkins and key aide Bill Gaul
relevant.”
Despite their commitment to truthful, Now, in August 2017, Jack returned to
unbiased work, however, Jack and his Chicago, where he now lives at The
team realized that leaders would use Clare with his husband, Steve Molinari.
the reports to further their own ends. He is less and less involved in politics
An ironic instance involved later No and education policy, though he does
Child Left Behind research. One such write the occasional article and takes
report produced by the center found to Twitter to offer commentary on
that mandatory testing in reading and current issues.
math as required by the law caused “The problem now for the country
other subjects to be slighted. Another is, how do you improve education
demonstrated that student scores for everybody?” Jack says. “It’s very
were increasing on state tests, but not hard to do in a country like this, where
as much on national tests. everything is so localized.”