Commissioner finalists: Jeffrey Riley

We have three finalists for Commissioner of education

Jeffrey C. Riley, superintendent/receiver of the Lawrence Public Schools
Angélica Infante-Green, deputy commissioner, Office of Instructional Support P-12 in New York State Education Department
Penny Schwinn, chief deputy commissioner of academics at the Texas Education Agency

Next up: Jeffrey Riley

Jeff Riley is on Linked-in and on Twitter.


Here's the two things about Jeff Riley:

1. He was the first receiver Massachusetts had using a system that Massachusetts (remember, #LeadingtheNation) was being watched for. Prior to his appointment as receiver in Lawrence, Riley was essentially a deputy superintendent in Boston. He didn't get press. Thus nearly all mentions of Riley out there are once he's in Lawrence, and they're retrospective about the rest of his career. I don't want to say that everything before that becomes part of the legend, but I think it's worth noting that it is viewed through the lens of his appointment to Lawrence.


2. Because Lawrence is under state receivership, Riley has been before the Board of Ed a lot. If you use the search bar to the left of a full screen view of this blog and type in "Lawrence," you can find my posts on the receivership. If you search his name, you can read my notes from many of his interactions with the Board, who now, of course, will be those deciding on a new Commissioner. 

Riley entered education through Teach for America as a middle school special education teacher at Booker T. Washington Middle School in Baltimore. He says this about it in an interview:

He still remembers three students being handcuffed and taken away by police during his first day of school.
"The class had gone through four teachers the year before and there was a lot of turnover. It was a real tough school," Riley recalled. "They put you in a situation where it's sink or swim, and you had to figure it out. After that, everything seemed easy. People used to say if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere."
The commitment was for two years. But Riley stayed there for three while earning his Master of Science degree in Counseling and School Guidance at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Riley called it an "eye-opening" experience which exposed him to the disparities in education between students in a suburban setting and those in a rough, urban school system.
"A couple of my kids were killed. One was shot. One flipped over in a stolen car. It was a real rough situation," Riley said.

From Baltimore, Riley became an adjustment counselor and assistant director at the Phoenix Program, an alternative program at Brockton High School (now Frederick Douglass Academy).

He then was Director of Instruction and a principal intern (which was a thing) at the Edwards Middle School in Boston; while he was there, he earned a second master's degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education. From the same above article, his mentor Chuck McAfee says this:

"He's not a person of color and did three years in one of the toughest places to teach," said McAfee, now the headmaster of Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Roxbury. "That impressed me right away." 

The admiration between the two men is mutual. Riley credited McAfee with having the greatest influence over his education career. 

"He made me believe that great things were possible in city schools," Riley said. "This guy took me as an intern and he made me believe that we could get things done. He put me on the path to be a principal." 

If there's anyone capable of turning Lawrence schools around, McAfee said he's confident Riley can make it happen because of his talent for thriving in challenging situations. "When people say it can't be done, it's going to happen, man," McAfee said. "That's the kind of stuff he likes."

Riley left Boston  to become the principal of Tyngsborough Middle School. He was the first principal that school had, as the town changed to a middle school arrangement. In his final year at Tyngsborough, he faced budget cuts that imperiled the middle school model. From a (archived) Boston Globe article of May 2005, he said:

In the three years since principal Jeffrey C. Riley launched the Tyngsborough Middle School, students have boosted their test scores while blossoming as actors, mountain bikers, step dancers, and engineers.
But as Riley plans this week for staff cuts, some of the school's popular programs and even its identity as a middle school are threatened.
"The reality of the situation is we have substantial cuts to make," said Riley, referring to voters' rejection of property tax increases. "Because the middle school model requires a certain number of teachers to run the schedule, we're in jeopardy of losing it."

Riley then became Academy Director at High Tech Academy at Madison Park in 2005, working with his mentor McAfee.
He then was appointed principal at Edwards Middle School. Regarding this, the state's press release on Riley's appointment to Lawrence says:

Edwards Middle was one of Boston's lowest performing schools and on the brink of closure when Riley took over. Riley successfully led the school's turnaround effort, added 300 hours to the calendar as an Expanded Learning Time (ELT) school and adopted a differentiated, data-driven approach to instruction.

Riley was interviewed by Scott Lehigh for an April 2007 (archived) column about the extended day in The Boston Globe, in which he said:

"I have an extra four hours plus every week in instruction time to work with kids," says Jeffrey Riley, who returned to the Edwards as principal this school year after a previous stint as director of instruction. "If a kid is strong in math and weak in English, he gets extra English help, and vice-versa." The longer day lets the school as much as double instruction time in a student's weak subject.
It also leaves ample time for popular extracurriculars. For example, the Edwards has new or expanded offerings in musical theater, Latin dance, art, band, karate, swimming, and soccer. The kids wanted a football team, and so Riley started one last fall.
"In my opinion, these extracurricular activities are crucial for a child's development," says the principal. "Those opportunities often make them want to come to school."

The Boston Globe mentioned the Edwards and spoke to Riley in August 2008 as part of an (archived) article on underperforming middle schools:

One of the state's top priorities is the Clarence R. Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, which has been tapped for restructuring. The decades-old school with worn hardwood floors has adopted new teaching strategies, uniforms, and a longer school day. Along with increasing math and English instruction, the school also has added more music and sports.
"Kids at this age need a lot of structure and unconditional love and people to be tough on them," said principal Jeffrey Riley, noting the students need an outlet for their energy, too. "You can't go after kids with extra MCAS help all the time."

(let me just interject here: I hadn't seen any of this before posting today, but it's of a piece with what Riley says about Lawrence.)
In 2009, Riley was appointed Chief Innovation Officer Boston Public Schools, a title which seems to have shifted to Academic Superintendent at some point during his tenure there. About the only official mention I can find of him during that time is from a (yes, archived) April 2011 article on the expansion of summer learning time:

Jeffrey Riley, an academic superintendent at the Boston School Department, said the city wants to create more opportunities that students need to put them on a path for long-term success.
"At the end of the day, we are trying to provide our kids with a comparable experience as suburban kids, and hopefully, we will have similar outcomes," Riley said.

In January of 2012, Riley was appointed receiver in Lawrence (I've linked to the state's announcement above).

Lawrence then was covered by The New York Times, Education Week, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It was cited as a "middle way" regarding charter schools by columnists in the Washington Post, in part due to this relationship with Phoenix Academy Charter Schools. Governor Cuomo of New York suggested New York should look at the Lawrence model ('though I don't want to link to that without linking to this analysis of it). Riley himself received the TFA award for 2017 in Civic Leadership due to his work in Lawrence, and it was a TFA 25th anniversary case study.

At the same time, there have been concerns over fiscal transparency. There were labor law violation complaints. Fifty-nine teachers were dismissed in a single year, 214 over the course of the past six years.

Also, I get irritated every time he says receivership didn't come with additional funds: yes, but...

You also really can't talk about Lawrence without mentioning that the previous superintendent Wilfredo Laboy, hired in 2000 as a turnaround leader, was found guilty of embezzlement from the district, while at the same time there were a myriad of investigations around the mayor. That was the leadership of the city and the system that Riley was appointed to then turn around.
Last December, Riley wrote a Boston Globe op-ed about Lawrence, as Massachusetts came off the charter school expansion campaign. He said, in part:

All told, it is the story of an entire city rallying behind its children. While state intervention provided the necessary conditions for change, success remains locally driven. Since 2011, LPS has hired nearly 300 additional Lawrence residents; and in a district where more than 90 percent of students come from the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, the number of Latino teachers has increased by more than one third.

Lawrence, at this point, is moving to a receivership board. On announcing his resignation from Lawrence, Riley said:

“It's time to have some more local voices” to run Lawrence schools, he said. “I came from Boston, where I was seen inside the school system as someone who would support you in everything. When I came up here, it was almost like I was Darth Vader. There was a lot of fear and trepidation. The fact that I could let all these people go. That was never my plan. My plan was to try to work with people to get better results for folks. My plan has been put in place.”

will update as necessary