Tom Payzant

Tom Payzant was a good school leader and good human. He passed last week after a long illness.

Subject for a longer post, Payzant’s approach in Boston could be described as sort of three Ss, slow, steady, and sustained. I think most people would agree it was steady and sustained. He had an unusually long tenure for an urban superintendent in a city like that. But, there is a lot of disagreement about the pace of change in Boston (and elsewhere). Yet Payzant cared deeply about inequities. Speed of reform creates various tradeoffs and it would be good to see those discussed more forthrightly because there are pro-equity folks on all sides of those questions.