Becca Horowitz

What is your current professional role?

I am a program manager for English Language Arts at Puget Sound Educational Service District. My role bridges policy and practice. I collaborate with the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and a statewide literacy team and also design and lead professional development opportunities for educators in the Puget Sound region.

Can you tell us about your MEP internship experience?

I interned with the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). My internship project was to write a literature review focused on principal autonomy, which means principals who have control over their budgets, resources and academic programming. At the end of my internship, I presented to CRPE policy leaders about the characteristics of principals who most effectively use their autonomy.

What did you gain from the program that you have found helpful since graduating?

I think about change differently now than I did as a school leader. After learning about policy design, I began to understand the different levers that we can use to inspire policy implementation. When analyzing a policy's success, I learned to examine the context of the policy’s implementation, such as the people involved and their prior experiences with similar initiatives. As a newcomer to Washington, I also benefited from tapping into MEP’s professional network of guest speakers, mentors and alumni.