Three Superintendent Finalists Identified, Called Highly Qualified

All three finalists for superintendent of Anne Arundel schools have put in time as educators in the Washington region. But they are men at very different points in their careers.

Dana Bedden, not quite 40, is a newly minted superintendent in the Philadelphia suburbs. Kevin Maxwell, 54, is a respected deputy to Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast who has worked his way up the ranks. Robert Schiller, 59, is ostensibly retired after running two statewide school systems and five local districts.

One of the three is about to replace Eric J. Smith, a nationally known educator in his own right, as superintendent of the 74,000-student Anne Arundel school system. Smith resigned at Thanksgiving over differences with the school board and the teachers union. Nancy Mann, a recently retired administrator, returned as interim superintendent and has focused on patching things up.

Eugene Peterson, a school board member who interviewed the candidates April 3 and 4, predicted that any of the three would be up to the job of superintendent. All three candidates will be in town next week, and the new schools chief will be in place July 1.

"They're all accomplished men, and they're all very bright, and they're all very eager to serve Anne Arundel County," Peterson said.

Bedden, the only minority candidate among the finalists, came to prominence in the District as principal of the School Without Walls, an unconventional public high school he led from 1999 to 2003. The school's combined SAT average rose from 1052 to 1084 in those years, and its rank among D.C. high schools rose from second to first.

He then went to a regional superintendency in the Philadelphia school system, and from there to superintendent of the 5,500-student William Penn School District in the Philadelphia suburbs. He has been in that job 16 months.

Bedden said he has a love-hate relationship with the federal mandate No Child Left Behind, which has placed teachers and principals under considerable stress even while it has increased attention on minority achievement.

"Do I agree with everything about it? No," said Bedden, who is black. "But I also know there are parts I do like. We have never looked at subgroup performance as carefully as we do now. And I'm part of one of those subgroups, so it's kind of personal for me."

Maxwell made such strides as principal of Northwestern High School in Hyattsville that he was lured to a better-paying job in Montgomery County six years ago. He led Walter Johnson High for four years before ascending to the post of community superintendent, overseeing 38 schools and 27,000 students in the Gaithersburg region.

Maxwell said there is "a deliberate methodology" to his carefully paced career. "I do feel I'm more than ready to be a superintendent," he said.

When Maxwell arrived at Northwestern in 1992, only nine of 2,100 students took Advanced Placement exams. He increased participation tenfold. In a successful campaign against gang violence in his community, Maxwell summoned gang members from the streets into his office to work things out.

This is the third time Schiller has been a finalist for a superintendency in the D.C. area.

He was among four finalists for the D.C. superintendent's job in 2004 and received the highest score when a search committee ranked the candidates that summer. But in the end, Schiller said, "it was not a good match."

He was a finalist for the superintendent's job in Fairfax County in 1997. He dropped out of that race, he said, because he was only a few months into a year-long term as interim superintendent of the Baltimore school system. "I chose not to leave Baltimore in the situation they were in" after a state takeover, he said.

Schiller had previously served as state schools superintendent in Michigan and as a deputy superintendent in Delaware and Louisiana. After Baltimore, he was superintendent of the 48,000-student school system in Shreveport, La., and then state superintendent in Illinois, a job he held until 2004.

Schiller said he sought the Anne Arundel job because he misses being a superintendent -- "the satisfaction, the fulfillment, the challenge."