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What Bush Thought Was Good for Texas Will be Good for Iraq
The U.S. Department of Defense is considering former Odessan Jim Nelson to lead an education reform team during the rebuilding of Iraq, Nelson said Thursday.
“It is not a done deal,” Nelson said in a phone interview from his home in Dallas. “It has to be approved by the powers that be.”
An official from the Defense Department did contact Nelson about the possibility of heading to Iraq within a few weeks, Nelson said. Nelson said he is expecting to go through several interviews.
“If I’m approved to do it, I am going to do it,” he said.
Nelson was a trustee for the Ector County Independent School District from 1984 to 1995. In 1999, then-Gov. George W. Bush appointed Nelson to the post of Texas Education Commissioner.
During his tenure as the leader of the Texas Education Agency, Nelson oversaw the development of the state’s new accountability test, Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
Nelson left the commissioner post in 2002 to become the senior vice president for state and federal regulations at Voyager Expanded Learning, a private, Dallas-based education company.
The assignment in Iraq would last approximately four to six months, Nelson said. He would share leadership responsibilities for a six- to eight-member education team, one of about 24 teams that will soon arrive in Iraq to “help with infrastructure issues,” Nelson said.
The education team will work with Iraqi citizens to assess the country’s education system, Nelson said.
“He’s the right guy at the right time,” ECISD trustee Phil Fouche said of Nelson.
Fouche took Nelson’s seat on the ECISD school board and grew up with Nelson, he said.
“It’s an opportunity that a lot of people would turn down and a few people would see with excitement,” Fouche said. “He’s one of those to be excited about it.”
But when he received the initial call from a Defense Department official, Nelson said his first thought was that it was a prank.
“My first thought was, ‘I wonder which one of my crazy friends is doing this,’ ” Nelson said.
Nelson doesn’t know what, if anything, former Midlander George W. Bush had to do with the call, he said.
Nelson would do well in the position, Fouche said.
“He’s a very good mediator and listener,” Fouche said.
Nelson said he is currently learning as much as he can about the education system in Iraq.
It’s his ability to bring people together that Nelson feels qualifies him for the assignment, he said.
Nelson is excited at the prospect of having a hand in building an effective education system from the ground up, he said.
“I think just the chance to do something as momentous as seeing a country try to move from a totalitarian, harsh, cruel regime to a free society, especially in an area I care about as much as education.”
If he is officially named a leader of the rebuilding team, Nelson said he would take a leave of absence from his job with Voyager Expanded Learning.
His wife, Karen, would stay behind.
Nelson joked that she was always worried that one or more of their three adult sons would be drafted, but now it looks like her husband could be instead.
— Raechal Leone
Former ECISD trustee could help reform education in Iraq
Odessa American
June 12, 2003
http://www.oaoa.com/news/nw060603a.htm
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