Q&A With Beverly Hall

Q&A with Beverly Hall

A new definition in Atlanta: Superintendent's efforts focus on creating a central office that serves the schools, not vice versa

By Tracy Crow

Categories: Change management, Educator evaluation, Leadership, Outcomes, School leadership, System leadership

JSD: In today’s large urban school systems, how does the central office best support a focus on teaching and learning that helps all students? How have roles changed over the last several years? Hall: I don’t think we have any other choice but to re-create our central offices because principals clearly must focus on instruction. They must spend the majority of their time supporting teaching and learning. The old central offices never allowed for that kind of focus. The bloated bureaucracies — where people could never get a response, where the central offices told the schools what they needed and did not find out what the schools needed from the central office — those days are long gone. If you listen to principals and if

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Authors

Tracy Crow

Tracy Crow (tracy.crow@nsdc.org) is associate director of publications of the National Staff Development Council.

Beverly Hall’s top 3

Accelerate the progress of the district. Remove barriers to students meeting and exceeding standards.
Increase numbers of students graduating from high school and finishing college successfully.
Put an effective teacher in every classroom; provide adequate compensation, career oppportunites, and meaningful professional development.

Beverly Hall

Beverly Hall has been superintendent of Atlanta public Schools since 1999. Before coming to Atlanta, Hall was state district superintendent of Newark public Schools, deputy chancellor for instruction of New york City public Schools, superintendent of Community School District 27 in New york City, and a principal in Brooklyn.

Hall chairs Harvard university’s urban Superintendents program Advisory Board, mentoring doctoral candidates. She is a member of the board of trustees of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Smart government Advisory Board of the Center for American progress.

In 2009, Hall was elected to serve a oneyear term as secretary-treasurer of the Council of the great City Schools. Hall has received numerous honors and awards, and in 2009 was named National Superintendent of the year by the American Association of School Administrators, as well as State Superintendent of the year by the georgia School Superintendents Association.

Hall earned a Doctor of Education degree from Fordham university and obtained a master of Science in guidance and Counseling from The City university of New york and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brooklyn College.