English: Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971) is an American politician who is the 55th governor of Louisiana, a former US Congressman, and former vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

In 1996, Governor Murphy Foster appointed Jindal secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, and in 1999 he was appointed president of the University of Louisiana System. In 2001, Jindal was appointed as the principal adviser to Tommy Thompson, the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services by the 43rd President, George W. Bush.

He first ran for governor in 2003 and won a plurality in the nonpartisan blanket primary but lost in the general election to the Democratic candidate, Kathleen Blanco. He then won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in the 2004 elections. The second Indian American in Congress, he was re-elected in 2006. He ran for governor again in 2007 and secured an outright majority in the first round of balloting; in doing so, he became the first Indian American governor in the United States. He was re-elected in a landslide in 2011.

On June 24, 2015, Jindal announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election.

Every four years, as America’s campaign cycle rumbles back to life, two of the country’s smaller states again return to the national spotlight.

Taking advantage of this political stage, The Seventy Four aims to bring the urgent conversation of America’s K-12 education system to both Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming months.

As first reported in The New York Times, The Seventy Four, a non-partisan, non-profit news website about education, announced it will be hosting and organizing two 2015 Education Summits beginning in August. Sponsored by the American Federation for Children, the nation’s leading school-choice advocacy organization, and organized in partnership with The Des Moines Register, the first-of-its-kind summits will gather prominent elected officials, political influencers, and education thought leaders to discuss the challenges now facing America’s education system.

“Last year, 1.3 million children dropped out of school, and U.S. students have flatlined on national and international tests,” said Betsy DeVos, chairman of the American Federation for Children. “It’s time to have a national conversation and no better time than as we look to 2016.” (The Seventy Four receives support from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation.)

The first of the 2015 Education Summits will be held in New Hampshire on Aug. 19 and will be moderated by The Seventy Four co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Campbell Brown and others. Confirmed speakers (thus far) include Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Chris Christie, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Governor Bobby Jindal, Governor John Kasich and Governor Scott Walker. (Check out The Seventy Four's detailed education profiles of the six GOP leaders participating Wednesday) Additional New Hampshire speakers will be confirmed in the coming weeks. Watch The74Million.org and EdSummits2015.org for new announcements, and check back for video and updates from both summits.

“These summits are an unprecedented opportunity to have an honest and intelligent discussion with our leaders about the failures of the education system”

The second summit, to be held in Iowa in October, will be co-hosted by The Seventy Four and The Des Moines Register, Iowa’s most influential news outlet.

The 2015 Iowa Summit will spotlight Democrats from both Iowa and across the nation — elected officials, analysts and thought leaders with clear thoughts on how to solve America’s education challenges.

All speakers at both the 2015 New Hampshire Summit and 2015 Iowa Summit are invited in their current personal or professional capacities and will appear on stage separately for an important conversation about America’s education challenges and opportunities. When it comes to most political debates, K-12 education issues tend to get overshadowed by a landslide of other domestic policy issues. The 2015 Education Summits will keep the conversation focused on America’s most urgent policy issue, affording featured speakers time to provide in-depth perspectives outside the formal parameters of the presidential debates.

“As the political world descends on New Hampshire and Iowa, these summits are an unprecedented opportunity to have an honest and intelligent discussion with our leaders about the failures of the education system,” Brown said. “We must begin to treat fixing our education system with the urgency the crisis demands, as it is vital not only to our children’s future, but also the future of this nation