Earlier this month, the Boston School Committee announced their choice for the next superintendent of the city's school system: Brenda Cassellius, former Minnesota education commissioner.
Joining Boston Public Radio to discuss how she has responded to the appointment and other topics in education was Paul Reville . Reville is a former state secretary of education and a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, where he also runs the Education Redesign Lab.
Reville said Cassellius "really hit the ground running" in terms of reaching out to her new district.
"She's done a great job of entering the community so far," Reville said Thursday. "She's amazingly wide open. She hands out her phone number to everybody."
Reville said he was impressed that Cassellius has weighed in on hot-button political issues facing the school system, including standardized testing.
"She's got strong opinions on things that may be impolitic for her to have strong opinions about. ... She's sort of in the anti-high stakes testing on any single test for students category," he said.
Reville said he believes Cassellius has great potential as a leader for Boston Public Schools.
"She strikes me as someone who's got a great set of values, and a very good background in terms of the kinds of things we're dealing with [in Boston]" he said.