Political Move

Jet, Dec 4, 2000

POLITICAL MOVE: Raymond Pierce (r), former assistant secretary of education, confers with U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley at the Education Department in Washington, D.C., prior to his recent resignation there and announcement he will run for mayor of Cleveland, OH, next year. At the Department, Pierce ran its civil rights office for the past eight years.

During a farewell reception, Riley credited Pierce with developing federal guidelines for addressing the lack of comparable resources between predominantly Black and predominantly White schools within school districts. In addition, he cited Pierce's work focusing federal policy on correcting school districts and states which place a disproportionately high number of Black students in special education classes, while passing them up for honors and placement in gifted and talented programs.