Longtime Mississippi education leader Dr. Laurie Todd-Smith was sworn in as a top education official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Monday.
President Donald Trump tabbed the longtime Mississippi education administrator as the Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Education at HHS. In the new role, Todd-Smith will lead the federal program and manage policies geared toward optimizing education for young children, along with increasing access to quality education for American children.
She’ll also take the reins of two major HHS initiatives, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which provides subsidies to working families with young children to help with childcare costs, and the Head Start program, which provides quality education and other care services to low-income children ages 0 to 5, along with their families.
“I have spent my 30-year career working on issues related to children and families,” Todd-Smith wrote in a social media post following the announcement. “It is such an honor to be serving in this new role.”
Todd-Smith, originally from Phoenix, Ariz., has lived in Mississippi for the better part of three decades, serving under former Gov. Phil Bryant as the head of his education policy team. She most recently served as the America First Policy Institute’s Director of the Center for Education Opportunity & Director of the Center for the American Child.
In 2018, during Donald Trump’s first presidential term, Todd-Smith was appointed to serve as the Director of the Women’s Bureau at the United States Department of Labor.
“[Dr. Laurie Todd Smith] was a driving force behind Mississippi’s education turnaround, what we now call the ‘Mississippi Miracle.’ She didn’t just talk about change. She did the work and delivered results that put our kids first,” Bryant said. “She’s a leader who cuts through the bureaucracy and gets things done, and I have no doubt she will bring that same determination and heart to Washington.”
As referenced by Bryant, Todd-Smith was a key cog in the anomalous education and literacy leap in Mississippi, in which the state bucked national trends for its largest classroom progress in state history.
