The Maryland State Board of Education welcomed two new members, Chester E. Finn Jr. of Montgomery County and Andy Smarick of Queen Anne’s County. They were appointed by Gov. Larry Hogan to fill two seats on the 12-member board vacated by the departures of Charlene M. Dukes and Donna Hill Staton, whose terms ended in 2014.
Finn is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, where he is chairman of the K-12 Education Task Force. He also is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where his primary focus is reforming primary and secondary schooling.
Smarick is a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping education organizations in the public, private and nonprofit sectors become more effective in their work and achieve dramatic results for students. He served as a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education and an education aide at The White House Domestic Policy Council. Smarick also helped launch a college-preparatory charter school for under-served students in Annapolis and was a member of Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s Commission on Quality Education.
