Atlanta education group names new leader

An Atlanta-based organization that works to improve equity and excellence in education for low-income students in the South announced Wednesday it has a new president.

Raymond C. Pierce has accepted the position as president and chief executive officer of the Southern Education Foundation, effective Jan. 8, the organization said in a statement. Pierce most recently served as chief education officer of the Global Teaching Project, a digital education development company, which he helped launch in 2016.

Pierce is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and a longtime member of the President’s Policy Council of the Alliance for Excellence in Education, a Washington D.C. think-tank focusing on education policy for improving student outcomes and high school graduation rates and dean of the North Carolina Central University School of Law.

The past president, Kent McGuire, left in June to become the California-based William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s education program director.

The foundation, located on Auburn Avenue, was founded in 1867 following the Civil War to provide education for the previously enslaved population and poor whites in the South.

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