The Education of Roy Romer

This article describes the successful leadership and management techniques of Roy Romer, Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, former Colorado governor and general chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The tale illustrates the central irony of Romer's leadership, which is that he is not an educator by trade, and yet, by many accounts, he is more focused on instruction than any Los Angeles schools chief in recent memory. Romer has instituted common instructional programs across the 720,000-student system. He has deployed legions of coaches to help teachers at each school polish their craft. He has also built up a system of regional district offices to monitor and improve classroom practice. According to Romer, the task of figuring out how to improve teaching and learning cannot be left entirely to individual schools.