Margo Anderson
Associate Assistant Deputy Secretary

Margo Anderson oversees the grant-making offices and operations functions, including those of the Executive Office. She is responsible for adherence to management excellence through financial integrity and program accountability. During her 23-year career with the U.S. Department of Education, she has managed a wide variety of grants programs and has been involved with management improvement initiatives. She has worked with demonstration programs in technology and character education, among others, and on such program initiatives as standards for reviewing and selecting applicants for grant funding. Prior to coming to the Department of Education, Mrs. Anderson was a program manager for arts programs at the National Endowment for the Arts and at the American Correctional Association for five years. She has a Bachelor's degree from Gettysburg College and a Master's degree in management from George Washington University.

Sharon K. Horn
Director, Evaluation and Dissemination

Sharon Horn manages the evaluation and dissemination activities related to innovative programs funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement. These dissemination activities assist in implementing education reform and improvement at the state, local, and regional levels. Her prior responsibilities at the U.S. Department of Education have included being the director of the National Awards Program for Model Professional Development and monitoring grants that support the integration of technology into teaching and learning. She has also been the program officer for contracts with the Regional Education Laboratories, SERVE and WestEd. Prior to that, she was Director of Information Services at the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the Department where she directed activities designed to provide education information to policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as to practitioners, parents, and the general public. She has also been the Associate Director of the National Institute of Education Program on Educational Policy and Organization, and she worked to redesign the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC) system to add the component, Access ERIC. In addition, she taught at Southwest Texas State University and the University of Texas at Tyler, and was a secondary school teacher of business, economics, and political science in Georgia and Texas. She has been a Legislative Fellow with the Labor and Human Resources Committee of the U.S. Senate. Ms. Horn has a Bachelor's degree in business/economics from the University of Georgia, a Master's in Education from Texas A & M University, and a Ph.D. in higher education/curriculum from the University of Texas at Austin.

Linda Jones
Director, Fund for the Improvement of Education

Linda Jones has worked with discretionary grant programs for a number of years and has served as a contracting officer's representative for technical assistance contracts and the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education (ENC). In addition to the Fund for the Improvement of Education, her previous managerial and oversight responsibilities have included the Eisenhower Professional Development Federal Activities program that previously administered the ENC and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the Eisenhower Regional Consortia for Mathematics and Science Education, Civic Education, and the Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education program. Ms. Jones graduated from Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia) with a Bachelor's degree in business administration and has a Master's degree in public administration from the University of Maryland.

Stacy Kreppel
Senior Policy Advisor to the Assistant Deputy Secretary

Stacy Kreppel advises the Assistant Deputy Secretary on a variety of issues related to No Child Left Behind, including the supplemental educational services and public school choice provisions of the law. Ms. Kreppel also serves as a contributing editor to The Education Innovator, the Office of Innovation and Improvement newsletter. Prior to joining the Office of Innovation and Improvement, she served as a Program Analyst in the Department's Policy and Program Studies Service, where she worked for four years on evaluations of teacher quality programs. She successfully completed the two-year Presidential Management Intern Program while at the Department. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Michigan and a Master's degree in public policy from the University of Maryland.

Program Directors

Dean Kern
Director, Parental Options and Information

Dean Kern oversees a portfolio of discretionary grant programs that expand and support high-quality public school choice and parental options. These programs include the Charter Schools Program, Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities, State Charter School Facilities Incentive Grant, Magnet Schools Assistance, Public Voluntary School Choice, Parent Information Resource Centers (PIRC), the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, and Full Service Community Schools. Mr. Kern serves as the Department's resource on national public school choice policy, research, innovation, and technical assistance.

Mr. Kern came to the U.S. Department of Education in 2002 as the Director of the Charter Schools Program for the purpose of increasing the national understanding of the charter school model and expanding the number of high-quality charter schools. Prior to coming to the Department, Mr. Kern had worked for 25 years in education, encompassing a diverse and extensive range of educational options ranging from American sponsored overseas international schools to stateside public schools and charter schools. He is an experienced classroom teacher having taught elementary and middle school students and students with disabilities. His overseas teaching experience includes international schools in Alexandria, Egypt, and Antwerp, Belgium, while later moving to administrative positions with schools in Lisbon, Portugal, and Singapore. Returning to the states, Mr. Kern soon became immersed in Colorado's charter school movement as a principal and later as a Senior Consultant for the Unified Grants and Charter Schools Unit within the Colorado Department of Education.

Mr. Kern has served as a national consultant for the Core Knowledge Foundation, providing professional development and training for public and private schools teachers and administrators implementing the Core Knowledge scope and sequence. In addition, Mr. Kern has served as an accreditation team member for the European Council of International Schools, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, and the Colorado League of Charter Schools Accountability and Accreditation Committee.

Mr. Kern is a native of Kingman, Arizona He received a dual bachelor of education degree in elementary education and special education (1981) and a master's degree in education aAdministration from Northern Arizona University (1988) with continuing graduate work at Trenton State College and the University of Colorado-Denver.

Cheryl Petty Garnette
Director, Technology in Education Programs

Cheryl Garnette has managed discretionary grant programs focusing on technology in education for 12 years. She has been involved in educational technology for more than 20 years, beginning with the Model Secondary School for the Deaf where she established computer-assisted instruction for hearing impaired adolescents. She later studied the impact of television viewership on learning and the use of television in higher education institutions through two separate federally funded grants. She served as the Communications Director of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology where she introduced electronic networking and videoconferencing to state education agencies across the country. In addition to program management, Ms. Garnette has appeared on numerous teleconferences and served as the past Editor of the Research Notes column of the Journal of Educational Computing Research. She was listed in the International Who's Who of Professionals in 2001. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and a Master of Arts in Measurement and Statistics from the University of Maryland.

Peggi Zelinko
Director, Teacher Quality Programs

Peggi Zelinko oversees teacher quality and school leadership discretionary grant programs that include the Transition to Teaching Program, Troops to Teachers Program, Teaching American History Program, National Writing Project, and School Leadership Program. Formerly with the U.S. Department of Labor, a staff member with the West Virginia State Department of Education, a university teacher educator, and a high school marketing education teacher, Ms. Zelinko has been with the U.S. Department of Education since 1995. She has served as a Program Officer for Teacher Quality and School Leadership Programs in the Office of Innovation and Improvement, Team Leader for the Department's Teacher Quality Team, and as the lead person for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education's teacher quality initiatives. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in business management from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Master's in Education degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and an Ed.D. from Temple University.

Edith Harvey
Director, Improvement Programs

Edith Thomas Harvey oversees a variety of programs that support school improvement, including Arts in Education, Women's Educational Equity, Close-Up, Reading is Fundamental, Excellence in Education, and Education Through Cultural and Historical Organizations (ECHO). Prior to her position within OII, she served as Branch Chief in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education where she was responsible for teacher quality, advanced placement, and equity programs. She has extensive experience working with nonprofit organizations and has directed programs focusing on the comprehensive needs of low-income children and their families. She has taught elementary and adult education and managed programs at the state and local educational levels. Ms. Harvey has a Bachelor's degree in elementary education from Kansas State University and a Master's degree in education administration and supervision from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Jack Klenk
Director, Office of Non-Public Education

Jack Klenk has served in the U.S. Department of Education for 20 years. During that time, he has been the Acting Director of the Office of Non-Public Education and Director of the Department's Center for Choice in Education. He also served in the White House Office of Policy Development and directed the Issues Analysis Staff in the Department's Office of Planning and Evaluation Service. Mr. Klenk taught school in Uganda after college and has led several volunteer teams there in recent years. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and has a Diploma in Education from Makerere University College (Uganda) and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.