Doris Roché Hicks Appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board

U.S. Secretary of Education has announced that Doris Roché Hicks, principal and CEO of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School in New Orleans was one of five leaders nationwide appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) to serve a four-year term that began October 1, 2009.

The National Assessment Governing Board is an independent, bipartisan board whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the general public. The NAGB helps to set policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as The Nation's Report Card. The assessment makes objective information on student performance available to policy makers and the public at the national, state, and local levels.

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed her school in 2005, Hicks gained nationwide recognition for her role in rebuilding King, the only public school to open in the city's devastated Lower Ninth ward.

Throughout the 2007-08 school year, Lesli A. Maxwell chronicled the rebuilding of MLK in a series of articles, "The View From King," a part of Education Week's special series focusing on education recovery and reform efforts in New Orleans.

Go to http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/nola-king/index.html to read about what Education Week described as a "remarkable story of recovery" that was accomplished "through the force of will and personality of the school's principal, Doris Hicks."

In 1997 in recognition of her outstanding leadership, Yale University awarded Hicks the prestigious Patrick Francis Daly Award for Excellence in Education Leadership. Doris has served as an elementary school principal, area superintendent, teacher, and reading consultant. She has also served as president of the Principal's Association of New Orleans Public Schools, the Louisiana Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and the New Orleans Council of the International Reading Association.