maddvector

New Orleans lands "top tier" school superintendent
Posted by Steve Ritea May 04, 2007 2:20PM

Vallas relishes opportunity to build new school system "from the ground up"

By Steve Ritea
Staff writer

• Photos

Calling him among "the top tier of superintendents in the country," state officials named outgoing Philadelphia Schools CEO Paul Vallas as superintendent of Louisiana's Recovery School District, a unique challenge Vallas embraced, vowing to bring a first-class team to help a long-broken system claw toward rebirth and reform.

"This is creating a new school system from the ground up," said Vallas, 53, during a news conference at recently restored Martin Luther King School for Science and Technology in the iconic Lower 9th Ward.

With public schools at the heart of any city's vitality, and New Orleans offering the historic opportunity to start over, "We can set the course of the city for the next 100 years," Vallas said.

After nearly a dozen years heading up public schools in Philadelphia and Chicago, two of the nation's largest districts, each with hundreds of schools and hundreds of thousands of students, Vallas will assume control of a state-run system that currently operates just 22 schools with fewer than 10,000 students and oversees 17 charters, although more of each are expected to crop up next fall.

State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek, who introduced Vallas, made a call for unity in announcing the appointment, invoking the spirit of Martin Luther King and asking races, classes and those of differing opinion to stand behind New Orleans' new educational leader.

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/..._tier_sch.html

hagan714

there is only one way for the public schools to go and that up. Rock bottom

ScottF

Vallas was also just mentioned in Time magazine last week, discussing NLCB. New Orleans always has difficulty meeting NCLB goals, and lack of funding is going to make it more difficult.
I was all for getting the SuperDome reopened ASAP- it is the heart of the city-I just hope Nagin and others prioritize fixing education with the same expediency.