Rebecca Hite

Fellowship Placement: Capitol Hill
Cohort: 2012-2013

Prior to the Einstein Fellowship, Rebecca Hite taught secondary science and geography for nine years with the Chapel Hill/Carrboro City schools.

Rebecca served as a Congressional Einstein Fellow in the office of Congressman Danny K. Davis of Illinois’ 7th district.  During her time as a legislative-focused fellow, Rebecca worked on the Congressman’s vision of dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.  She contributed to legislation and advocacy around positive behavior intervention and supports, robust discipline data, and monitoring as well as expansion of student services in STEM for institutes of higher education for under-represented groups.  She also helped connect Chicago-area education and STEM professionals by establishing a network of contacts, organizing briefings and taking meetings with stakeholder groups. Rebecca has learned the power of policy first-hand, and the tangible value of diversity in federal decision-making processes.  In her role as fellow, she was tasked with aiding in the development of ideas for educational reform and analyzing the data, researching the literature, and soliciting information from stakeholder groups—all the while scoring these against her own vast personal teaching experience—ensuring policies would be implemented correctly, effectively, and with fidelity in classrooms across the country.

Rebecca is now a more thoughtful practitioner, confident in her abilities to partake in policy discourse, and take careful, decisive action for education initiatives.   Rebecca believes this experience, coupled with her new-found policy knowledge, will be invaluable for future work in educational organizations striving for reform, focused messaging, policy initiatives, or making research-based changes to their internal structure.