Lisa Graham Keegan named McCain’s new aide
by The Arizona Republic on May. 22, 2008, under Elections, Nation/World, Special
Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan
Earlier this year, as Lisa Graham Keegan was winding down her stint as a board member for New Way Learning Academy, she said she wanted the Scottsdale private school to seek accreditation.
At the same time, the school’s longtime principal was dumped, a move that touched off a torrent of attacks by parents that reminded her anew that change, especially in education, comes slowly.
“It’s really uncomfortable to change,” Keegan said, an observation she realizes applies as much to sweeping national reforms she has helped push as it does to a local school.
Unbowed, Keegan last week left a high-paying Maricopa County job to give more of her time as an education adviser to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign. Her new job offers her a broader platform to again tout a market-driven approach to education that mirrors McCain’s views.
It also could help her land a position in a McCain administration.
Keegan, 48, is known in education circles as one of the leading advocates of charter schools, standardized testing and looser certification of teachers.
The former Arizona legislator and state schools chief helped push Arizona into the vanguard of school reforms in the 1990s and led national education changes favored by conservatives in recent years. But Keegan also has left behind a trail of unfinished programs, questionable management and limited results.
She defends her record, noting that sweeping changes take time, especially when they are resisted.
“Public education looks the way it does for a reason,” Keegan said in an interview last week. She points to changes in such places as Arizona and Minnesota as proof that data-driven assessments are helping reshape education in a positive way. She described instituting changes as a grinding process, “trying to get a foothold in a very hostile environment.”
Before Arizona adopted Keegan priorities such as charter schools and the high-stakes AIMS test, the state ranked below the national average in math, science, reading and writing, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education. More than a dozen years later, it still does.
Even Keegan’s critics acknowledge that she pushed education and necessary accountability measures to the fore as a state lawmaker and during her six-year tenure as state superintendent of public instruction.
“I do believe her when she says she wants to improve public education. I don’t say that about everyone we disagree with,” said John Wright, president of the Arizona Education Association, which was frequently at odds with Keegan. “I knew there would be disagreements. I knew there wouldn’t be anything two-faced or disingenuous about her.”
Key McCain adviser
Keegan, a longtime McCain ally, has his trust and is seen as a key figure in the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign. She is one of about five advisers who are helping to form his broad plans for education, which he has not yet outlined.
“Within that group, Lisa is probably first among her peers,” said David Crane, a senior domestic-policy adviser for the McCain campaign. “She has advised Senator McCain for years.”
Keegan first caught the attention of conservatives as a legislator who helped establish charter schools in Arizona.
As the state’s elected education chief from 1995 to 2001, Keegan led the movement to create AIMS, or Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards, the state test required for high-school graduation.
For a decade, students have been told that they must pass the state’s standardized tests in reading, writing and math to graduate. But educators and lawmakers pushed back the implementation of AIMS, adjusted the test and made exceptions for students who fell just short of passing it.
Keegan skeptically noted that 11 percent of students passed the math test when it was first given, compared with 96 percent who recently passed.
“Is (AIMS) still serving a good purpose? I think it is. It’s just not as honest,” she said. “The bar is really low, but we can raise it slowly.”
Despite problems in implementing AIMS, Keegan established herself nationally with conservatives looking to reshape education.
As President Bush entered office in 2001, Keegan was on his short list of candidates for secretary of education.
She did not get the job, and that May, she quit as Arizona’s schools chief to head the Education Leaders Council, a nonprofit, school-reform group. Not long afterward, the ELC began piling up $23.4 million in federal education grants for its “Following the Leaders” program, which was designed to help states and school districts meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
