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StudentsFirst Staff

Eric Lerum

Eric Lerum

Vice President of National Policy


Eric has been working on public education reform issues for the past decade. He served most recently as Chief of Staff to the Deputy Mayor for Education for the District of Columbia, playing a lead role in school reform efforts, including the mayoral takeover of the school system and the successful Race to the Top application. A 2003 graduate of the Washington College of Law, Eric has served as the Legislative Counsel to the Committee on Education, Libraries, and Recreation of the D.C. Council and as a policy analyst for the DC Board of Education. Eric developed his interests in public education and youth justice while in law school, where he served as a Fellow in the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project and taught constitutional literacy to high school students. Eric grew up in Ohio and attended The Ohio State University.

I approach this from a civil rights perspective, seeing the achievement gap as the greatest injustice of our time. For me, the only education reform is meaningful, aggressive education reform that reflects the urgency of the situation in our classrooms. We have to disrupt the interests behind the status quo — the status quo has no urgency. StudentsFirst aims to push, to innovate...to be unafraid of making students the priority. The achievement gap can be conquered — we can do this.