Current Position: Office of Management and Budget Associate Director for Education, Income Maintenance and Labor (since January 2009)
Why He Matters
Gordon will join Peter Orszag at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and will take on the task of finding wasted cash in the financials of the nation. Education and labor are his specialties; he has written extensively on the impact of the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) bill, and has worked in the New York City Department of Education.
A prominent face behind the scenes of political campaigns, with experience working on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Edwards’ (D) presidential campaigns, Gordon has been an advocate for changing teacher tenure rules in public schools, modifying NCLB and increasing efforts to fight crime.
While Secretary of Education Arne Duncan steps in to fulfill President Barack Obama’s goals for education reform, Gordon will be the man looking at the budget, checking the potential impact of education proposals on the U.S.’s financial plan. He’ll also have the task of sifting out unneeded or unproductive programs, giving Obama and Duncan wiggle room for the changes they want to initiate.
At a Glance
Current Position: Office of Management and Budget Associate Director for Education, Income Maintenance and Labor (since January 2009)
Career History: Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress (2004 to 2009); Senior adviser to the NYC Department of Education chancellor (2006 to 2007); Domestic Policy Director to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass) during his presidential campaign (2004)
Birthday: N/A
Hometown: N/A
Alma Mater: Harvard University, B.A.; Yale University, J.D.
Spouse: N/A
Religion: N/A
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Web site
Path to Power
Gordon has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and went to law school at Yale. He spent a little time working as a law clerk for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and as a practicing lawyer, representing children in abuse and neglect cases for the Legal Aid Society in New York City.
In 2003, as former Sen. Edwards attempted to seize a Democratic presidential primary win, Gordon worked as his policy and legislative adviser. After Edwards conceded, Gordon became domestic policy director for Sen. Kerry’s general election bid.
After Kerry failed to win the presidency, Gordon moved to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress as a senior fellow. From 2006 to 2007, Gordon also worked in the NYC Department of Education as a senior adviser to the chancellor, Joel I. Klein.
The Issues
On January 19, 2009, the day before his inauguration,
Obama announced Gordon as his pick for OMB associate director of education, income maintenance and labor. “The Office of Management and Budget in my administration will not only design, manage and implement our budget, it will focus on cutting waste and making sure that our government is serving the American people effectively and efficiently,”
Obama said.
Education
Gordon’s work as a senior adviser to the chancellor of the NYC Department of Education has helped shape his views of the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) act, which is up for reauthorization in the 111th Congress. He’s not an advocate of a complete overhaul of the NCLB bill, but he does believe certain problems exist in the way teachers are hired and paid.
“The first task is to stop the unprincipled attacks on NCLB. At its heart, this is the sort of law liberals once dreamed about,” wrote Gordon in a CAP discussion about NCLB...“NCLB doesn’t guarantee [federal] funding, but it goes one step further by demanding educational results…This has made achievement a legal command, not just a gauzy aspiration.”
In a report published by another liberal Washington think-tank, the Brookings Institution, Gordon, along with co-authors Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger, outlined five recommendations for changes to the public school system:
- Reduce barriers to entry for teachers. Allow teachers to start without state teacher certifications because no evidence has shown this improves student performance. Plus, such a move would help alleviate substantial teacher shortages across the country.
- Make it more difficult for the poorest performing teachers to receive tenure. “The tenure process should be changed, since school districts have much better information about a teacher’s effectiveness after two years on the job than at the point of recruitment,” wrote the authors. “If schools simply set a minimum tenure standard and denied tenure to teachers below that standard, student achievement would rise substantially.”
- Add bonuses for teachers that show solid results in an area with a high proportion of low-income students
- Evaluate teachers using multiple measures that could include Principle evaluations, parent evaluations and classroom observations.
- If a state can show a long-term link between student performance and the effectiveness of individual teachers, then federal grants should be provided to that state.
Gordon’s beliefs about NCLB — and education in general — seem to reflect the opinion that partisanship has hurt the school system more than helping it grow. “Strengthening teaching requires changes to the pay system and school culture that abet mediocrity. Standing alone, the usual liberal solution — across-the-board pay hikes — perpetuates the maldistribution [sic] of good teachers and reinforces the irrelevance of achievement,” wrote Gordon, for CAP.
Blogging at the OMB?
When Obama OMB director (and Gordon’s new boss) Orszag worked at the Congressional Budget Office, he wrote a successful blog discussing a variety of topics from health care to Social Security reform.
Gordon has experience writing for blogs as well, including contributing to The New Republic blog and the Wonk Room, a blog on the Web site ThinkProgress.org. With Obama’s mandate to make his administration more open to the public, Gordon could become engaged in any new blogging efforts by the OMB.
The Network
Gordon has worked at or partnered with two think tanks that have produced a variety of candidates for positions in the Obama administration. Orszag, Gordon’s new boss, National Economic Council (NEC) director Lawrence Summers and NEC deputy director Jason Furman, have all worked for or contributed to reports at the Brookings Institution. Close Obama ally and former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta heads the Center for American Progress, where Gordon was a senior fellow, before moving to the OMB.
Gordon also worked as a policy adviser to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and ex-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) during their respective presidential campaigns. As a younger man, Gordon served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Campaign Contributions
A Robert Gordon associated with Center for American Progress donated $250 to Judith Feder (D) in 2008 for her failed U.S. House bid in Virginia.
