Ed.D candidate Jean-Daniel LaRock

In hearing how Ed.D. candidate J.D. LaRock's life led him to HGSE, one might wonder whether his career choices were carefully calculated or if somehow everything just fell into place.

LaRock, 32, has already completed law school at Georgetown University; served as a spokesperson for the New York City Board of Education and as a television reporter for NY1, New York's popular all-news TV station; and earned a Presidential Fellowship to HGSE to study the effect mayoral takeovers have on school improvement.  "There is next to nothing known about whether governmental change at the top affects the bottom or makes a difference," LaRock says.

His doctoral research has already been making an impact. In the past year, he cowrote a U.S. Conference of Mayors report on education, Mayoral Leadership and Involvement in Education: An Action Guide for Success, and is contributing to a book on education politics slated for release next year. Mayoral Leadership advises mayors on how to become more involved in education and includes strategies for dealing with school budgets, instructional issues, and school district organization and politics. Every mayor who belongs to the Conference received a copy of the report.  In fact, it was so well received that a reissue of the report was slated for March 2006.

LaRock's research is also making news. His op-ed collaborations with Fritz Edelstein of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Mary Doyle of the Center for Collaborative Education have been published in Education Week and the New York Daily News, and he continues to work with Edelstein and HGSE visiting professor David Shimmel on pieces about education law and politics.  As vision and development editor of the Harvard Educational Review, LaRock has led a major effort to improve the publication while at HGSE.  He conducted an interview with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings that was published in the Winter 2006 issue of HER, and has organized a symposium of essays on mayoral involvement in education that will be published in the journal this summer.  LaRock also coedited a book, Special Education for a New Century, which was published last year.

With all of these accomplishments under LaRock's belt, he could end up being one of the best and most diversely prepared educators in the business. In May, LaRock will start a job working as a senior education advisor for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. As an advisor, LaRock will focus on higher education issues. In particular, he will work on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act this spring.

Raised in a family of educators--his mother and father both began their careers as teachers and rose through the ranks of the New York City school system--LaRock says that education was always something he thought about. While growing up, he enjoyed talking about issues in schools and found himself involved in youth political activities.

When it came time for LaRock to enter college, he chose Harvard, where he studied government, earning his bachelor's degree at only 19. He entered law school immediately after finishing his undergraduate studies. However, within a year, he questioned whether he made the right choice. In order to gain some experience outside of school, he took a year off and enrolled in the Urban Fellows program, a New York City fellowship that gives young professionals an opportunity to work in public policy, urban planning, and government operations. He was placed in the New York City Parks Department, writing speeches for the parks commissioner. After one year as a fellow, he returned to Georgetown and completed law school.

Despite opportunities that came his way, he didn't have much interest in working as a private sector lawyer. Instead, he landed a job working for the New York City Board of Education as a spokesperson for then-Chancellor Rudy Crew, where he spent two years. That experience eventually led to an offer to become a television reporter for NY1.

"I figured I knew the subject well and they could train me to be on camera," he says. But covering what he had once publicly represented wasn't an easy feat either. "In the first year, I had to learn to be a reporter, how to look on television, and how to get past the mistrust some people had about my switching from an agency spokesman to reporting on my former agency."

It was as a reporter that LaRock first started to think about the possibility of leading an urban school system, encouraged by the consecutive appointments of two former lawyers, Harold Levy and Joel Klein, as chancellor of the New York City public schools.

But the schools would have to wait. For three and a half years, LaRock focused on his reporting career and contemplated remaining in the news business. However, one day his mother noticed an advertisement for the Presidential Fellowship, a HGSE program offered to the top 15 percent of admitted doctoral candidates that grants funding for four years of doctoral studies. He applied and four months later was offered the fellowship.

As LaRock wraps up his doctoral studies, he says he would consider working as a principal or a professor, although his long-held interest in being a superintendent remains.

As a reporter LaRock says he often analyzed the actions of the education leaders he covered and often pondered how he would do things differently if he were in their place.  Now, with the benefit of a HGSE education, he says he feels ready to take on that challenge. "Our field needs leaders who understand management and politics, but it's also important that leaders understand how educators think so that they have the credibility to build lasting support for school reform," says LaRock.  "That's the kind of leader I want to be."