POLICYMAKER INTERVIEW

Policymaker Interview:
A conversation with Bethany Little of America Achieves
Julia Hart
The George Washington University

POLICYMAKER INTERVIEW

For this assignment, I interviewed Bethany Little, a Managing Partner at America Achieves, a
non-profit educational advocacy agency that also distributes tools to improve education in the
United States. Prior to her work at American Achieves, Mrs. Little served as chief education counsel
to Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senates Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Committee. I met with Little in her home in Washington, DC during the evening on June 18, 2013.
I have known Mrs. Little and her family for five years, and was teacher to both of her sons at St.
Columbas Nursery School. We spoke for a total of one hour, including some small talk about her
sons and my life. At one point, we were interrupted by the boys returning home from Tai Kwon Do
class.
In researching for the interview, I was surprised to learn just how influential Mrs. Little had
been in her prior position in the Senate. While I had known that she worked in the Senate and
worked long hours, I had not known the extent of her responsibilities. Mrs. Little was a key player
in every educational bill that went through the Senate during her years in the position. She
particularly played a critical part in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was also
interesting to learn how many other influential positions she has held in Washington, including
associate director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, director of government relations at
the Children's Defense Fund, and policy adviser to both President Clinton and Vice President Gore.
I began the interview by asking Ms. Little to tell me a bit about her new job, as she has only
been at America Achieves for one year. She explained to me that she does a lot of work on a stateby-state level. She is engaged with the chief education officers in ten states and works with them to
take small procedural successes and bring them to scale. Little explained that often there are
educational practices or procedures that are highly successful, but they tend to stay highly localized in one classroom or one school building. Rarely, says Little, are these programs brought to a district

POLICYMAKER INTERVIEW

level. In addition to its work with State Education Agencies, America Achieves works to to
advocate for policy changes at a federal level. Issues that America Achieves advocates for include
strong leadership in schools, recruitment of top talent, advancement of the Common Core
Standards, and evidenced based practices.
When asked how her current position differs from her prior work in the Senate, Mrs. Little
explained that when working in the Senate she was doing hands-on policymaking. She had a direct
influence on every piece of education legislation in the Senate. In her current job, she says she goes
at things sideways (personal communication, June 18, 2013). Much of her current influence is
state based. She explains the difference between the two as doing the work versus pushing others
to do things for you (personal communication, June 18, 2013). She did note, that in all of her jobs
over the years, she has worked with many of the same people.
The discussion of the differences between federal and state control of education led to the
topic of Common Core Standards. Mrs. Little informed me that while Common Core seems like a
new idea, she had been involved in the development of such standards since 2006. She also offered
that the development of Early Childhood standards is in the works. I was interested to learn more
about how these standards came about and the relationship between the states and the federal
government in their development and the adoption by so many states.
Because of Littles vast knowledge of educational policy and significant experience in the
field, I asked her to speak about policy in general, rather than just the matters she is currently
involved in. In response to my question about what America is doing well in education, Little
responded that we do well with special education, innovation, and, with the Common Core, we have
higher standards than much of the world. Her view on innovation in the US educational system was
fascinating. She explained that we have some of the most innovative schools in the world. People

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from others countries come to the US to learn best practices and bring them to their own countries.
The problem, says Little, is that while other countries are able to take these best practices and
implement them to scale, in the US we are rarely able to bring these practices to a district- or
statewide level. Mrs. Little explained that she feels IDEA has made the United States a leader in
special education worldwide. According to her, the U.S. does a superb job of including students
with special needs and that Least Restrictive Environment is a strong policy.
When asked the converse question, what is not being done well in the U.S., Mrs. Little stated
that funding, teacher preparation, and teacher-proofing as the main faults (personal
communication). Funding of education in the US is a disaster according to Mrs. Little . While the
U.S. spends more on education than any other country, the inequity of our spending means that we
spend more on those who have the most from birth. That said, she also explained that this is unlikely
ever to change, as it would be difficult to find a politician willing to support allocating funds to
needier districts. She elaborated further, stating that while she has already advocated, and will
continue to advocate, for this allocation of funds in the future, that she would likely be quite upset if
someone were to tell her they were taking funding from her childrens school and giving it to a
needier one. I agreed with Little that it would take a lot to be able to change the nature of
educational funding in this country. It seems terribly unjust that children with the least will be
educated in schools with the least resources.
When asked to explain what she meant by teacher-proofing, Little explained that many of
our policies assume that teachers are not able to teach. She postulates that these policies cause
energetic people to burn out and that they foster mediocrity in our schools. Unions, according to
Little, are partly at fault for this problem. She explains that American unions are quite different from
those in other countries. American unions see teachers as workers, whereas in other countries,

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unions serve more as professional organizations that promote professional development and the
recruitment of highly-qualified individuals. As the daughter of a union lawyer, I found this an
interesting opinion and would be interested to research this topic more in the future.
It was very informative and thought-provoking to spend this time with Mrs. Little. I was
pleased to learn more about her organization, the work she is doing now, and the work she has done in
the past. Little has vast knowledge about a wide range of educational issues and it was a pleasure to
be able to discuss some of them with her. I will be interested to see what America Achieves works on
in the future.