Doctoral Candidate Named Deputy Chancellor of Teaching and Learning in New York

Cambridge, MA -- May 9, 2006 -- Andres Alonso, who will earn his Ed.D. from HGSE this June, recently accepted a position as deputy chancellor of teaching and learning in New York City.

"I'm excited," Alonso said. "I've been in the department for three years now participating in a huge reform effort that allows me to contribute in many different ways."

Alonso, who will begin the position as deputy chancellor on July 1, will have authority on questions regarding the curriculum, instruction, professional development, and programs for the New York City public school system. He is currently serving as chief of staff for the department of teaching and learning in New York while completing his work at the Ed School.

"Andrés is a brilliant educator and, during the past three years, he has played a key role in implementing many of our Children First reforms," said Chancellor Joel Klein.  "He is enormously talented and I am overjoyed that he is taking on this new responsibility on behalf of the children of New York."

Keppel Professor Robert Peterkin, director of the Urban Superintendents Program (USP), is overjoyed with Alonso's forthcoming position. "He's done what we expect graduates to do. Alonso has very much been one who has learned to march to his own drummer within a bureaucracy. He will do well for New York because they're trying to get out of that approach to education," he said.

Alonso participated in the USP, a doctoral program designed for professionals who have worked in urban school districts as teachers, school principals, or central office administrators.

"Part of the USP's mission from the start was to identify women and people of color who had been left out of leadership capacity pool," Peterkin said

Alonso, who immigrated to America from Cuba in the early 1960s, embodies the USP mission. A former lawyer, he became a teacher and spent 11 years in the classroom before coming to HGSE. Upon his entrance into the USP, Alonso began his internship working with Peter Negroni, superintendent of Springfield, Massachusetts, public schools.

This role opened the door to New York where he was recruited to work as chief of staff for the department.

"The year I spent in the doctoral program at Harvard was essential in terms of distilling many of my views about education and challenging many positions that I now need to descend and need to help establish," Alonso said. "I consider this the best superintendent program in the country."