District Administration - April 2010 - (Page 28)

Conversations Rudy Crew and Manny Rivera Getting Back in the Game Manny RiveRa and Rudy CRew, two nationally acclaimed educators, have transitioned from the role of superintendent into that of consultant with their new company, Global Partnership Schools (GPS). Global Partnership Schools’ mission is to accelerate school performance so that young people graduating from school are college and career ready. They have three major initiatives: (1) the Graduation advancement Program, for ninth-grade overage and under-credited students at risk of dropping out, (2) an extended learning program offering unique supplemental educational plans, and (3) an approach to transform low-performing schools by implementing international best practices. Rivera, CeO of the company, served as new york’s deputy secretary for education and was the 2006 aaSa national Superintendent of the year while serving in Rochester, n.y. as president of the company and a professor at the university of Southern California’s Rossier School of education, Crew brings with him years of administrative expertise from his time as chancellor of new york City Schools and superintendent of Miami-dade County Schools. da recently spoke with Crew and Rivera. Former superintendents Manny Rivera (left) and Rudy Crew (right) have taken on new roles as consultants with their new company, Global Partnership Schools (GPS). How has the transition been to your new role as consultants, no longer responsible for the day-to-day duties of being in charge of large urban districts? Q: Rudy Crew: There’s always been a role for private enterprise in the discussion about schools. Most of the time that role has been played out in the context of people who are buying something and people who are selling something. Part of Global Partnership Schools’ uniqueness is that it really offers—in a deeper way—a thought partnership. It’s not just about work that we want to do, and work that we can do because of our own backgrounds and expertise. It’s recognizing that part of the 28 April 2010 landscape here requires us to be partners with other superintendents, district personnel, and school principals whose work is very much alive with the thinking and the vision with what is Global Partnership Schools. The transition has actually not been a difficult one at all. It’s effectively about the kinds of things we’ve been trying to do as superintendents, but now we’ve stepped into a space where we actually offer kinds of services and a menu of offerings that we believe superintendents and district- and executive-level personnel really need. Manny Rivera: (laughs) That’s a good question. Both Rudy and I have a number of experiences over the last 30 years in public schools. Since leaving the superintendency, we’ve remained very passionate about children and improving the quality of education. We came together about a year ago and said, “Look. We’ve both had some successes and we’ve also had some failures.” We wanted to take the best of what we’ve been able to develop and to bring that to creating a company that could help fill the gap. We felt that by aligning ourselves with some of the top educators that we’ve known that have worked with us and building a company around our core values, their improvement indicators can move to a higher level than they might be able to do on their own. RC: But the synergy between these two roles is actually quite suggestive, if you will. In some way, we are creating a kind of connection between a body of new work that people have rightly defined as being global. It’s not so much just about whether you can make AYP, but whether you can function in a global community. The combination of working at a university, specifically USC, and doing the actual work is a perfect complement to dealing with superintendents, and that is really where they’re struggling. It’s also about recognizing that education is going to be District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - April 2010

District Administration - April 2010
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Health
Standards
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Conversations
Sports for Life
Reaching Digital Natives on Their Terms
RTI Goes Mainstream
Double Duty: Schools as Community Centers
Online Edge
Tech Disruptions
Product Focus
New Products
Student Counsel

District Administration - April 2010