The Education of Roy Romer
A former governor of Colorado runs the Los Angeles school district with a hands-on passion for high-quality instruction.
District administrators still shake their heads in telling the story. In the summer of 2000, Roy Romer had already shocked them by accepting the superintendency of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It was, to put it mildly, an unlikely career move for a then-71-year-old former Colorado governor and general chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Then, he did something that truly amazed his staff. Anxious to better understand the district’s recently adopted reading program, he read the teachers’ guides over a weekend. By Monday, he could quote them chapter and verse.
“You will find very few superintendents who take the whole program home and study it,” says Maria Gutierrez Ott, the senior deputy superintendent, whom Romer...
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