Two new faces are slated to join the Department of Education, while the White House’s “drug czar” is departing.
Gerald N. Tirozzi has been tapped by President Clinton to serve as the department’s assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education. And Pascal Forgione Jr., the Delaware superintendent of public instruction, has been named to head the National Center for Education Statistics.
The Senate must approve both appointments.
Mr. Tirozzi would replace Thomas W. Payzant, who resigned last year to become the superintendent of the Boston public schools.
Most recently, Mr. Tirozzi has been a professor at the University of Connecticut. He served as that state’s commissioner of education for eight years in the 1980s and early 1990s.
During his tenure as state chief, Mr. Tirozzi raised teaching standards and certification requirements and accompanied those reforms with higher salaries for educators. These reforms prompted the creation of a $300 million school-improvement fund by the state legislature in 1986.
In 1988, his office released a scathing report on school segregation in the state.
Between 1991 and 1993, Mr. Tirozzi was the president of Wheelock College in Boston. The liberal-arts school is known for its study of early-childhood education.
In a 4-3 vote, he lost out on the chancellorship of the New York City public schools in 1993, when Ramon C. Cortines got the job. Mr. Tirozzi was mentioned as a possible candidate again in 1995, when Mr. Cortines left the post. Mr. Tirozzi was also one of six finalists for the state commissioner’s job in New York last year.
He began his career as a science teacher in the New Haven, Conn., schools in 1959. He later became the superintendent of that district.
Statistics Chief
At the department’s statistics branch, meanwhile, Mr. Forgione is slated to replace Emerson J. Elliott, who headed the agency from 1984 until his final term expired last June. The commissioner serves a four-year term, but Mr. Elliott’s tenure began before the position was given that title--and a status somewhat independent of the rest of the Education Department--by Congress in a 1988 law.
The nces collects, analyzes, and disseminates education data.
Named Delaware’s superintendent in December 1991, Mr. Forgione spearheaded a school-reform effort there. Previously, he served as the executive director of the National Education Goals Panel.
Drug Czar Resigns
Lee Brown left the position of director of the Office of National Drug-Control Policy last month. He returned to his native Houston, where he took a teaching job at the University of Houston. A successor has not been named.
President Clinton announced several weeks ago that he would convene a summit on youth substance abuse this month in Washington. It was unclear whether Mr. Brown’s resignation would affect planning for the conference.
