Joseph Marinelli

Seven people remain in the hunt to become Florida's next education commissioner. On Tuesday, the State Board of Education will trim the list further. Leading to that meeting, the Gradebook will provide mini profiles, one each day, on the candidates. Today, meet Joseph Marinelli. (This is the last one. For the previous profiles, click here.)

Marinelli has been a top school administrator in upstate New York for 13 years. But what is striking about his resume is the emphasis on his long-ago activities in Florida. Almost as lengthy as the civic and professional involvements he lists in New York are the many ties he once had in the state where he came of age: board of directors for the University of Florida Alumni Association, president and charter member of the Gator Club of Central Florida, president of the Florida Association of School Administrators, and on and on.

Turns out he has straddled the two states since childhood. Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., his family moved to Miami when he was 8. When he left state in 1989 to take a superintendent’s job in Michigan, he had been rising through the ranks for 12 years at Orange County Schools in Orlando and was an associate superintendent. Since 1994, Marinelli has served in a dual role in New York’s rural Finger Lakes region, about 35 miles southeast of Rochester. He’s a superintendent overseeing 25 school districts in five counties and also CEO of a cooperative that answers to an elected school board and provides services and programs that small districts couldn’t pay for on their own.

Marinelli declined to discuss his bid to be Florida Education Commissioner, saying Florida officials asked him not speak with the media until his interviews were complete. But his application materials provide some insights, as do the notes we kept from 2004 when he applied to become superintendent of Pinellas Schools. At the time, Marinelli told the Pinellas School Board he never expected to spend so much time in New York and it has long been his goal to return to Florida.

Now 64, he makes the same point in his application for the commissioner’s job, saying: “I spent 30 years in Florida, 20 years of those as a professional educator. I would welcome the opportunity to return to Florida where I spent most of my professional career in order to accept the professional challenge of leading the improvement of K-12 and postsecondary student performance.”

Earl Lennard

Seven people remain in the hunt to become Florida's next education commissioner. On Tuesday, the State Board of Education will trim the list further. Leading to that Sept. 18 meeting, the Gradebook will provide mini-profiles, one each day, on the candidates. Today, meet Earl Lennard.

If Earl Lennard is named Florida's next education commissioner, it will be the first time in a 40-year education career he has left Hillsborough County. The son of a truck farmer and a graduate of local schools, he worked his way up from a classroom teacher to the superintendent of one of Florida's largest and, at the time, fastest-growing districts. (See his resume here.)

Lennard's no stranger to the idiosyncrasies of Florida's school system, from its unique financing system to its quirky politics. In nine years as a local schools chief, he led Hillsborough into the brave new world of FCAT, school grades and controlled choice (see story here), and through a period of massive schools construction. (For stories that bookend his term, see here and here.)

His tenure wasn't without controversy: A whistle-blower case dragged on (see stories here, here and here), and Lennard was tied to complaints of cronyism in a district some still see as a good-old-boys network (see stories here and here). But his trademark, the St. Petersburg Times wrote, was "quiet change." Given the lightning-rod qualities of the last two commissioners and the storm clouds that keep the FCAT-based accountability system in a funk, that quality alone make some ed observers think Lennard is the dark horse for the commish job.

William Harner

Seven people remain in the hunt to become Florida's next education commissioner. On Tuesday, the State Board of Education will trim the list further. Leading to that Sept. 18 meeting, the Gradebook will provide mini-profiles, one each day, on the candidates. Today, meet William Harner.

Harner's resume makes one want to stop and take a breath. It has two parts: His first career as a military officer, and his second as an on-the-rise educator.

The West Point graduate spent 20 years in the Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel and infantry battalion commander. He speaks with pride of his military service, and said the transition to education made perfect sense. He talked about participating in the Troops to Teachers program before Congress.

His ascent into education unfolded with military-like precision: a high school principal job, followed by four years as superintendent over Greenville, South Carolina's 63,000 students. (That's slightly smaller than Pasco County, for comparison.) Then Harner stepped back, taking another principal position and then a mid-level administrative post in a smaller Georgia school district. He says it was not a step down, but a chance to learn new skills while attending the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy. He made similar comments to the Gainesville, Ga., newspaper after taking the middle school principal job there. (See story here.)

But other papers offer a different view.

William J. Moloney

Seven people remain in the hunt to become Florida's next education commissioner. Next week, the State Board of Education will trim the list further. Leading to that Sept. 18 meeting, the Gradebook will provide mini profiles, one each day, on the candidates. Today, meet William J. Moloney.

William J. Moloney is all about accountability. It's been his guiding philosophy for the entirety of his decade-long tenure as Colorado's education commissioner. He helped create and implement the state's 1998 Accreditation Accountability Act, the 2000 School Accountability Reports and the 2001 Coalition to Close the Learning Gap.

One needs only review his own writings to learn how important the issue is to him. Moloney began a March 16, 2006, column in the Rocky Mountain News like this: "If you asked the question, 'What one thing has changed public education more than anything else in the last 20 years?' there could be only one answer: The rise of state accountability testing." He followed a year later with a column calling for a national test. And he suggests in a USA Today piece that if our students are failing these tests, it's the fault of American culture.

For almost 10 years, his viewpoint carried the day with Colorado's GOP-dominated government. He didn't have to do much to convince leaders to continue down the path. And according to news reports, he didn't reach out to education leaders around the state for support. Superintendents often complained that Moloney did not work well with the state's school districts. Moloney responded that it wasn't his job. (See story here.) By 2006, the superintendents were calling for more interactive leadership in Denver. (See story here.)

Eric J. Smith

Seven people remain in the hunt to become Florida's next education commissioner. Next week, the State Board of Education will trim the list further. Leading to that Sept. 18 meeting, the Gradebook will provide mini profiles, one each day, on the candidates. Today, meet Eric J. Smith.

He's known as an agent of change. In education policy circles, he's a superstar, sought after for the biggest of jobs. Eric J. Smith is the guy who led the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) school system to reductions in the achievement gap between white and minority students. (See Charlotte Observer article here). And when he took over the struggling Anne Arundel (Md.) district, he implemented major reforms that shook some of the lowest performing schools into academic improvement. (See this Education Week profile). Smith has high demands and expects people to meet them.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Smith is not beloved by all. Few who rattle the status quo are. Among his biggest critics have been the teachers of Anne Arundel County, who complained loudly that they were the true reform agents, putting in long hours to make his ideas work, only to be ignored when contract talks came around. (See this 2003 Washington Post article.) The complaints were similar to those of teachers in Charlotte (see comments at end of article here).

It was such tension, in fact, that led to Smith's departure in 2005. "The union was poised to vote on a no-confidence motion when he abruptly resigned," the Baltimore Sun wrote in an article announcing Smith's candidacy for the Florida job. The Washington Post described Smith this way: "The nationally renowned educator who ... brought three years of academic prosperity and political tumult" before resigning. (See full story here.) Is he a vision guy who doesn't see through his initiatives? Or a true visionary? A columnist for the "post-partisan" New America Foundation used Smith as its key example for an article called "The Superintendent As Scapegoat" (see piece here).

Jim Warford

Seven people remain in the hunt to become Florida's next education commissioner. Next week, the State Board of Education will trim the list further. Leading to that Sept. 18 meeting, the Gradebook will provide mini profiles, one each day, on the candidates. Today, meet Jim Warford.

Arguably, nobody on the short list for education commission has a resume as colorful and diverse as Jim Warford's, or a personal story as moving. A former musician and entertainer, Warford now heads the influential Florida Association of School Administrators. He says his mother was a 14-year-old, unwed, eighth grade dropout. He says he was the first in his family to graduate from high school. "Public school teachers, coaches and principals did more than just change my life," he writes in a letter he submitted as part of the search process. "They saved it."

Warford's rise in Florida's education circles has been rocket-like. In 1999, he was a high school teacher. In 2000, he was elected superintendent. In 2003, Jeb Bush and then-commish Jim Horne made him No. 2 at DOE (see story here). In 2005, he abruptly quit (see stories here and here). Six weeks later, he landed on his feet at FASA (see story here).

As superintendent, Warford embraced strong accountability policies, including a test-heavy instructional approach he imported from Texas called the Continuous Improvement Model (see Ocala Star-Banner stories, and an editorial about teacher views of CIM, here). As chancellor, he was a strong supporter of Jeb and the FCAT. "The answer isn't to do away with the test," he told an FCAT-bashing crowd in St. Pete in 2004. "The answer is to pass the test." (See story here.)

Cheri Pierson Yecke

Seven people remain in the hunt to become Florida's next education commissioner. Next week, the State Board of Education will trim the list further. Leading to that Sept. 18 meeting, the Gradebook will provide mini profiles, one each day, on the candidates. Today, meet Cheri Yecke.

She's a middle school expert with an impressive resume, a down-to-earth demeanor and as firm a grasp on ed policy as any wonk anywhere. But Cheri Yecke is also preceded by a right-wing rep that could make her an easy target for critics of school accountability.

Jeb Bush yanked Yecke out of Minnesota in 2005 to join his ed team as K-12 Chancellor, essentially the No. 2 at the Department of Education. Her hiring generated a flurry of coverage, including this story  in the St. Petersburg Times.  But since then, Yecke has been quietly grinding on a suite of policy issues, including teacher quality and performance pay, and largely avoiding the negative spotlight that dogged her during a rocky, 16-month stint as ed czar in the Gopher State (see story and column about those days here.)    

A former teacher, Yecke has written two books about middle schools, including "The War Against Excellence." The 2003 publication includes a forward by none other than Bill Bennett, the right-wing culture warrior who served as U.S. education secretary (and yes, admitted gambling problems after penning "The Book of Virtues"). The book, which even has its own website, argues that under the guise of reform, left-wing ideologues hijacked middle schools and diluted academic rigor with fads like "cooperative learning."