...streets pockmarked North Philadelphia, trekked nearly two miles through some of the city's most dangerous streets, and presented himself at the front desk in the blond brick headquarters of the city school district.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"I want to speak to Paul Vallas," he announced.

The perplexed guards called the head of the district's alternative schools office, a woman named Gwen Morris, who had worked in the system for more than three decades and before that had been a Philadelphia public school student herself.

Morris and a few other Vallas aides called the student's mother and the school principal and efficiently sorted things out. But the boy kept insisting: he wanted to speak to Vallas.

Morris has seen way too much to be easily impressed by the putative saviors who come and go in urban schools. But she still sounds amazed when she tells this story. Even in the fog of his often troubled life, Kareem had heard of Vallas. He knew this building as the place where Vallas worked. And he had absorbed the gist of what Paul Vallas is reputed to be able to do: solve problems in urban schools. Make things better.

Little things. Big things. Of the cadre of non-educators--business leaders, military men, government officials, lawyers--who have been called on to transform large urban school districts in recent years, Paul Vallas has been at it the longest and, in the minds of many, is the one with the best track record. Since 1995, he has tackled the third- and eighth-largest districts in America--Chicago and Philadelphia. Both of them are old-politics big cities with school systems long steeped in racial tensions and marked by tough unions, deteriorating buildings, and white and middle-class flight. Intensifying poverty and racial isolation accompany escalating demands for better student outcomes.

Vallas lasted longer in both Chicago and Philadelphia than most urban school leaders, six years in Chicago and then five in Philadelphia, but he wore out his welcome in both places. He left the Philadelphia district in many ways transformed, most agree for the better, but still with a sour taste and a big deficit. While he won converts among longtime district staff for his energy and commitment, he alienated the people who hired him; things had become so bitter that he didn't show up for his own sendoff. A similar thing happened in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley, who had installed him to clean up what had been described as the worst school district in America, eased him out after he had done just that.

The saga of Paul Vallas, to hear him tell it, is one of too much success.

"What happens with turnaround superintendents," he said, "is that the first two years you're a demolitions expert. By the third year, if you get improvements, do school construction, and test scores go up, people start to think this isn't so hard. By year four, people start to think you're getting way too much credit. By year five, you're chopped liver."

But Vallas has little time for reflection or looking back. He is focused on what may be his biggest challenge yet as superintendent of the Recovery School District (RSD) in the ruined city of New Orleans.

The powerbrokers in New Orleans are thrilled to have him. "He has vision, he has shown us what we can have, what can be accomplished," said Penny Dastugue, a member of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, which runs the RSD. "He's really brought hope to so many and promise, and he delivers. He's created buy-in from all parties, and that's never existed in this city....

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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