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An education advocacy group launched by Chancellor Joel Klein and the Reverend Al Sharpton over two years ago has lost its director and faces an uncertain future.

Unveiled in 2008 in Washington D.C., the Education Equality Project was intended to influence discussion of education policy in the presidential election. (Remember those wars — manufactured or not — within the Democratic party?) It was also a way for Klein to broadcast his views on a national scale, much like former D.C. schools superintendent Michelle Rhee is doing with her new advocacy group, StudentsFirst.

After Arne Duncan was named Secretary of Education, EEP seemed to lose steam. Now comes news (via edReformer) that EEP director Ellen Winn is leaving for a job at 50CAN, where she’ll be in charge of expanding the education advocacy group’s work beyond Connecticut.

Winn’s departure was expected, said Democrats for Education Reform Executive Director Joe Williams, who is on EEP’s board, but the group hasn’t found a replacement for her yet. Williams said the board hasn’t met for several months. (more…)

State lawmakers are warning that if the Department of Education doesn’t comply with the new governance law immediately, they will try to force them to.

School officials came under attack earlier this week when they laid out their time-table for implementing changes ordered by the legislature. The law required that community superintendents work exclusively “predominantly” with schools in the districts where they are assigned. Education department officials said that it would take a full school year to make that happen.

Assembly members critical of the department said this week that was too long.

“It’s violating, certainly, the spirit of the law,” said Assemblyman Alan Maisel of Brooklyn.

Maisel said that if the department continued to defy what he said was the intent  of the law, legislators in Albany do have one recourse–amending the legislation.  “There’s no law that says we couldn’t come back and come up with another piece of legislation,” he said. (more…)