Richard Laine MPP/MBA 1993

Laine Seeks, Pulls Levers for Education Change

During his multifaceted career, Richard Laine, MPP/MBA'93 has worked on Capitol Hill, in state government, for a business-backed non-profit, and most recently for a foundation. The common thread has been his role as an education change agent.

"With a myriad of social issues and problems, it all comes back to the idea of education as a lever of change," Laine says. "They've all been positions that have enabled me to use the role and the resources and influence of the organization to bring some important social change to public education."

Laine's current position as education director at The Wallace Foundation, where he began in 2002, has focused on developing leadership at the state and local level to improve student achievement, especially for the students with the greatest needs. He has led the effort to push beyond the idea that districts merely must recruit talented people.

"A lot of people thought the issue of education leadership was [centered] around finding the next great leader," Laine says.

Instead, Wallace has found training and system change are key, "so well-trained leaders have the data they need, the authority they need, and the capacity to meet the needs of kids," he says. "I operate on [the] premise that, if you put a good person in a bad system, you can bet on the system. So we are attempting to improve both the quality of the leaders and the system they work in to enable them to increase student achievement."

Wallace is aiming at both improvements in university preparation programs and districts' mentoring programs as well as better working conditions for educators, with a resulting positive impact on student achievement.

"Right now, the expectation is [leaders] must walk on water," Laine says. Given these unrealistic expectations, "The job becomes undoable. Making sure leaders receive enough resources (people, time, and money) and the authority to allocate those resources to meet their students' needs is probably the hardest area of work we're doing because it's the most politically volatile," he adds.

Laine first experienced the intersection of politics and public policy in the late 1980s as associate director of an office serving California's congressional Democrats. The crosscutting nature of education issues hit home during the military base closings of that era, when foresighted communities engaged in issues beyond housing and economic development.

"It was an opportunity forced on them, in a sense, to start to re-think, 'How are we going to educate the kids in the community?' " he says. " 'We're going to have a hole in the budget. How do we re-think what we're doing?' You're changing the tax base. You're changing the demographics in the community. We helped these communities find creative answers and new resources."

During Laine's years at the Harris School in the early 1990s, he served as the executive director of the Coalition for Educational Rights, which brought a constitutional challenge to Illinois' school funding system.

Although ultimately unsuccessful, it turned out to be a lever for change by spotlighting the issue, he says. "It was a means to increase, through the legislature, dollars for education."

After receiving a combined master's degree in public policy and business, and a certificate of advance studies in education, Laine joined the state system as associate superintendent for policy, planning and resource management. From there, he moved on to the Illinois Business Roundtable, on whose behalf Laine returned to Capitol Hill to testify regarding No Child Left Behind.

The Roundtable supported the bill's premise -- using data to push accountability and incentives to drive improvement for all children, he says. "But we also believed that without the capacity to bring about change, you don't get the results kids need."

That focus on results informs Laine's current work at The Wallace Foundation, where he explores questions like: "How can you enhance the training of education leaders and at the same time, bring about the changes necessary to improve the system and incentives that can enable these better trained leaders to succeed? How best can leaders have large-scale impact on students with the greatest needs? And, most importantly, "What's the impact on absolute student achievement and in closing the achievement gap?"

Laine's passion for education has impacted his personal life, as well. He met his wife, Sabrina -- with whom he has a daughter Sofia, 5, and a son Cooper, 2 - at an education-related conference. "There is hope for policy wonks that go to these conferences," he says with a laugh, adding that his family is "a great counterpart to my crazy work life."

Ed Finkel