Dr. Grover (Russ) Whitehurst was the Director of the Institute of Education Sciences, and an Assistant Secretary of Education with the U.S. Department of Education under the Bush administration (2002-2008). Dr. Whitehurst administered the Institute, including the activities of the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance and the National Center for Education Research. During his service he advised the Secretary of Education on research, evaluation and statistics relevant to the work of the US Department of Education. He is currently a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.
SPECIAL NOTE: our interview with Dr. Whitehurst was pivotal in many ways.
First, it was only after reviewing the tape that we realized that the camera operator we hired failed to ensure the audio was being recorded correctly. The result was a barely audible sound track. Unfortunately there were 4 other interviews recorded that same day that were also unusable. The consequence was that these interviews could no longer be used in a PBS quality broadcast. Having lost our PBS partner path, the COTC project turned to publishing transcripts on its website and not using these initial key interviews in our live presentations. A few years later while making the DVD series Kevin Manley spent many hours working on the sound track of this interview and making it intelligible enough for use in those DVDs and here. Thank you Kevin.
Second, we were really impressed with Dr. Whitehurst and had hoped, as discussed at the end of the interview, to engage with him to explore what is now called OLSN (bit.ly/3w0dAH8). Unfortunately not long after this interview Dr. Whitehurst relayed a confidential warning that one of his two bosses (George Bush or Rod Paige) was not pleased with how our project was straying off the phonics cheerleader train (bit.ly/3hsx42Z). Because Dr. Whitehurst asked us to not share the message and because revealing it could have compromised his relationship with his boss or bosses, we kept it to ourselves for over 16 years. A consequence of that message was knowing we weren't going to get any help from Washington unless we stayed with their lines. Not only would the Administration not help, it would likely try to "shape the direction of this COTC project" (to use his bosses words).
For an indexed transcript: childrenofthecode.org/intervi...
For more on the Paradigm Inertia Whitehurst's message epitomized: learningstewards.org/paradigm...