“Biden’s appointment of Cindy Marten as Deputy Secretary of Education is a brilliant choice. She is a caring teacher at heart who can also take on a bureaucracy to bring real progress to our public schools. We made a good choice in 2013 and so has President-Elect Biden in 2021.”
John Lee Evans, Past President, San Diego Unified School Board
The nomination of Superintendent Marten to be Deputy Secretary of Education is an excellent pick by President-elect Biden. He obviously paid attention to the major progress in student achievement in San Diego Unified under her leadership, as reported by studies at UCLA and Stanford, as well as the Broad Foundation and the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
In 2013 when I was the President of the Board of Education we selected as Superintendent a successful principal of a high poverty elementary school to bring her results to scale across the district. She was already doing the work of a Superintendent by forming partnerships with parents, teachers, community members, philanthropists and district officials. Now as Superintendent she has been a leading proponent for school funding with success at the state and national level, which makes her a natural for a national leadership position.
Superintendent Marten is a servant leader. She has supported her staff and has developed a strong leadership team that will continue forward with the reforms put in the place during her tenure. We started developing our Vision 2020 reforms in 2009 and as Superintendent she operationalized those goals and made them a reality in our district. She will do the same for our nation’s public school students.