President Bush named Kathleen Leos as assistant deputy secretary and director of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) on Sept. 1, 2005. In her position, she is the principal adviser to Secretary Margaret Spellings on all matters related to Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act and limited English proficient (LEP) students. As the head of OELA, Leos is also responsible for administering Title VII of the Improving America's Schools Act, which supports high-quality instructional programs for linguistically and culturally diverse students. In addition to Title III and Title VII, her office supports foreign language programs for elementary, secondary and postsecondary school students and high-quality professional development programs for language teachers in these fields.

Leos joined the Department on June 3, 2002, as the secretary's senior policy adviser on Title III. In that post, she helped develop policy, guidance and technical assistance for implementing Title III as well as disseminate its policies and regulations to the nation's educators, who serve 5.5 million non-English speaking students in public, private and charter schools.

As assistant deputy secretary, Leos has now visited 35 states and Puerto Rico to interpret the law, train administrators and create federal-to-state-to-local partnerships to ensure that state agencies and communities understand the responsibilities they have to include all students in the No Child Left Behind accountability systems.

A longtime Dallas resident, Leos earned her bachelor's degree with high honors in classics from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

After graduation she returned to Dallas, where she first directed a children's theater and later worked as an elementary school administrator. From 1988 to 1999, she was the director of the Dallas Services for Visually Impaired Children.

In 1991, serving as PTA president at her child's elementary school, Leos, with other parents and community members from six different cultures, successfully led a movement against involuntary busing in East Dallas and advocated for the construction of two new schools in her neighborhood. As an outgrowth of this work, she also led efforts to create a scientifically based language development and literacy program that has proven successful with diverse populations. This program later grew into the nonprofit Basic English Inc., which she officially founded in 1992, providing comprehensive educational services for adults and young children.

Leos was the organization's president and chief fundraiser until her appointment to federal service in 2002. When she left Dallas to come to Washington, the organization--which supported four learning centers and had an annual budget of approximately $750,000.

From 1995 to 2002, Leos served in various leadership positions--president, vice president and the head of several committees--as a Dallas public schools board trustee and, for six years, served as the board's liaison to the Texas legislature. During this time, she testified often, had a governance and policy development role and collaborated with elected officials on school reforms, and, in 1999, was instrumental in getting the state's "No Exemption" law (Tex. Ch. 397, S.B. 103) passed, by which all English language learners were to be included in the Texas public education accountability system for the first time.

An active single parent of five fully bilingual children, Leos has received numerous awards. In 2001, her company, Basic English Inc., received the Laura Bush First Lady Family Literacy Award. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) honored Leos with its President's Award for Excellence in Education for Hispanic Students in 2003, and, in 2005, the Mexican American Legal Defense Educational Fund (MALDEF) recognized her with its Excellence in Government Service Award.

Leos' articles on education issues have appeared in a variety of English- and Spanish-language periodicals, including Dallas Morning News, Education Week and El Sol de Tejas.

With her five children, Leos divides her time between a residence in the Washington, D.C., area, and her home in Dallas.