Superintendent Returns to GSE

More than 40 years since receiving his masters and doctoral degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE), Boston Public Schools Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant will return to the school as a senior lecturer this fall.

Payzant, whose experience as an educator has included five superintendencies across the country—in cities ranging from San Diego to Oklahoma City—and the position of assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education in the Department of Education in the Clinton administration, said that he was excited about returning to the school in a new role.

“I just think it was a wonderful opportunity to have my first experience...at Harvard Ed school in the summer of 1962 and after a long career in schools and school districts to be able to come back in the fall of 2006 and spend this next stage of my professional life in the same place that it started,” he said.

As a senior lecturer, Payzant will convert his experience in educational administration into material suitable for the classroom.

“I’m really interested in leadership issues in urban education: where the superintendents are going to come from, principals who will leave the schools...how we improve whole systems of schools,” he said. “Those are my areas of interest and where I will, over time, probably be developing some courses to teach.”

Acting GSE Dean Kathleen McCartney said Payzant was an attractive candidate for the senior lecturer position.

“He has experience with policy making at the local, state, and federal level so that’s pretty unusual,” she said. “He has contributed to the scholarly literature throughout the years while serving as a practitioner. So I just think he has really a perfect set of skills to teach courses in our school leadership program.”

Boston Public Schools Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning J. Chris Coxon said Payzant’s leadership has helped the school district improve.

“The fact that Dr. Payzant has been able to be here for 11 years, that his message has been consistent and allowed people to go deep in the core areas that we’ve been focusing on, has created a fairly strong foundation,” he said. “We’ve made progress every year in increasing student achievement.”

Coxon also said Payzant’s background in taking educational research and converting it into policies will make him a valuable addition to the GSE faculty.

“I think that continues to be a struggle for many graduate school students, to take what they’ve learned through research and to put it into practice,” he said. “He’ll be a valuable asset in helping make those connections.”

Payzant said that while there are things he will miss once he assumes the senior lectureship position, he was eager to begin this new phase of his career.

“I’m going to miss the people, being immersed in the work of the schools,” he said. “[But] I’m looking forward to thinking about what I’ve learned over the last 40-plus years, the successes but also some of the mistakes that I’ve made, and make some kind of sense of that—that will be a good base for the work I will do at the Ed school.”

—Staff writer Laura A. Moore can be reached at lamoore@fas.harvard.edu.