Public Schools: Lessons in ‘Mayoral Control’ of Urban Schools
John Portz and Robert Schwartz

John Portz is a Professor in Political Science at Northeastern University and currently serves as the chair of the Political Science Department.  He teaches and conducts research in the general areas of state and local politics, public administration, and public education.  His research interests include school politics and governance as well as leadership.  Publications include a co-authored book, City Schools and City Politics:  Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston and St. Louis, by University Press of Kansas (1999).  In his home community of Watertown, he served as an elected member of the Town Council for eight years and was elected in 2005 to serve on the Watertown School Committee. 

Robert Schwartz currently serves as Academic Dean and Bloomberg Professor of Practice at Harvard Graduate School of Education.  He joined the HGSE faculty in 1996 as a Lecturer, and from 1997-2002 also served as the first  President of Achieve, Inc, a national non-profit organization founded by a bipartisan group of governors and corporate leaders to help state leaders improve their schools.  From 1990-1996 Schwartz directed the education grantmaking program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the nation’s largest private philanthropies.  Earlier in his career Schwartz held a wide variety of positions in education and government: high school English teacher and principal; education policy advisor to the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts; assistant director of the National Institute of Education; special assistant to the President of the University of Massachusetts; and executive director of The Boston Compact, a public-private partnership to improve access to higher education and employment for urban high school graduates.  Schwartz has written and spoken widely on standards-based reform, public-private partnerships, high school reform, and the transition from school to college and career.  He has degrees from Harvard College and Brandeis University.

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