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January 23, 2008

The next superintendent of Lowell's public schools should be an "outsider."

I don't mean someone who lives outside Lowell. I mean an "outsider" from the educational establishment.

I'm thinking of the CEO types who handle budgets, create marketing strategies, set priorities, eliminate waste, develop accountability measures, demand success and also have a passion for education.

Where do you find such people?

Well, you don't find them by posting the same requirements and qualifications as you did in 1999 when the last search for a superintendent took place. But that's exactly what the Lowell School Committee is doing.

Lowell could never hire a Michael Bennet or a Mark Roosevelt under the job requirements recently posted in the hunt for Karla Brooks Baehr's successor.

Bennet was a CEO who made millions restructuring ailing businesses into successful ones. The Denver school board hired him in July 2005 to rescue a public school system that had built up two decades of failure under traditional superintendents.

Roosevelt is the former state representative who co-authored Massachusetts' 1993 Education Reform Act. He is also the 1994 Democratic gubernatorial nominee who lost in a landslide to Bill Weld and later went on to be CEO of a biomedical research initiative. The Pittsburgh school board, frustrated with a lack of progress in student achievement, hired him as superintendent in August 2005.

In both cases, the schools boards waived the superintendent certification requirements so Bennet, a Yale Law School graduate, and Roosevelt, a Harvard Law School graduate, could be hired.

Needless to say, the Denver and Pittsburgh school systems are prospering under goal-oriented, innovative management.

Bennet wrote the Denver Plan, a living document that outlines the district's vision for every student, teacher and principal. He's overhauled curriculum standards, balanced the budget and pushed through a first-of-its kind teachers' merit-pay system.

Roosevelt is the architect of the Pittsburgh Promise, a scholarship program that guarantees college aid to every high-school graduate. He's signed all school principals to performance-based contracts. He's negotiated teacher raises without raising taxes. And most impressive of all is that he's stripped away $33 million in wasteful spending over three years.

Find one superintendent in all of Massachusetts who has the business acumen -- or the desire -- to save taxpayers a dime while also being committed to improving education.

Lowell needs a new breed of educational executive, a change agent who'll see things from an accountability and performance perspective. Someone who won't tolerate the expenditure of $1.2 billion in seven years with the result being 19 failing schools.

To land a remarkable "outsider" the school board needs to do three things:

1. Summon up the courage to reject the traditional model.

2. Pay an annual CEO salary of at least $200,000.

3. Recruit, recruit, recruit.

There are 50 superintendency openings in New England, 39 in Massachusetts alone. Most communities will be looking to fill these positions with traditional educational "insiders," making the competition for the status quo extremely fierce.

The way I see it, Lowell's got a prime opportunity to make a break from the past by hiring an "outsider" with uncommon, unique ability.

Jim Campanini is editor of The Sun. E-mail comments to jcampanini@lowellsun.com.

Posted by Admin at January 23, 2008 11:58 AM