Plenty of Advice Awaits Boston Schools’ Next Leader

Experts hope district can preserve what works, zero in on weaknesses.

Boston

Urban districts aren’t known for smooth transitions in leadership. Rather than build on the work of their predecessors, new superintendents often bring wholesale changes in strategy.

Boston hopes to avoid that. To help the district’s next top administrator tackle its challenges without scrapping what’s working, a group of researchers was enlisted to take stock of the tenure of Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant, who retired last month after more than a decade on the job.

“There are a lot of good things that happened over the last 10 years that need to be continued, deepened, broadened, modified, and extended,” said S. Paul Reville, the president of the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy in Cambridge, Mass.,...