Under Vallas, elementary school reading and math test scores, though still low, are at seven-year highs.
Company co-founder Dean Vallas says Internet demographics are one reason they're so eager to get on-line.
Now the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, Paul Vallas, has gone too.
Vallas put 109 poorly performing schools on academic probation at the start of the 1996-97 school year.
Vallas has made a name for himself running troubled urban school systems in both Philadelphia and Chicago.
Vallas showed he meant business when he threw out the custodians in defiance of the building trades union.
"The most interesting demographic that's watched television for the last fifty years has already abandoned network television, " Vallas says.
Vallas' presence in a tough neighborhood, where VIPs are a rare sight, sends a powerful message to children and parents.
"People tell me I'm getting things done through fear, "Vallas says, admitting to a reporter that he relishes his tough-guy image.
Unlike other big city school bosses, like New York's Rudy Crew or San Francisco's Waldemar Rojas, Paul Vallas is no educrat.
In addition, Pastorek says that Vallas will bring something that New Orleans needs badly - a national reputation and national contacts.
Wendy Beetlestone worked as Vallas' general counsel in Philadelphia for three years.
Test scores were in the basement when Vallas took over in 2002.
Even if he did take the job, Mr Vallas would have little hope of acting as decisively as he has in Chicago.
Right from the start, Vallas showed that he knew how to use politics and publicity to get done what needed to be done.
Vallas knew he had to tackle the unions, but he started small, using his powers under the new state law to privatize custodial services.
Impressed with Vallas' ability to crunch numbers and cut through red tape, Chico asked Mayor Daley to appoint Vallas to run the school system day-to-day.
Vallas surprised them by offering a 14% raise over four years.
Much of what Vallas is doing, other cities would dearly love to accomplish -- but they lack the will and authority to fight destructive union practices.
Soon the lanky, bespectacled Vallas, 44, leads a pint-size parade of orange and green parkas across a dirt lot littered with broken bottles, and into the school.
The three most innovative urban school chiefs are Michelle Rhee of the District of Columbia, Paul Vallas of New Orleans and Joel Klein of New York City.
But when all that gets straightened out, Mike Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools says this is where Vallas will probably try to make his mark.
It helps that Vallas comes from outside the educational establishment.
Working fast, Vallas moved on to the toughest part of his job -- making public schools accountable for their results rather than blaming poor test scores on parents or society.
Wearing a black wool cap pulled down against the biting chill of a Chicago winter morning, Vallas bounds up to the doors of tenements on the city's gritty South Side.
In a press release announcing today's move, Louisiana education chief Paul Pastorek says one reason he chose Vallas was that he'd raised math and reading scores 20 percent in Philadelphia.
Vallas got the job three years ago after the Republican-controlled Illinois state legislature in Springfield passed a sweeping reform bill that gave Mayor Daley effective control of the Chicago public school system.
Mr. Vallas, working with a state-appointed school board made up of five members of the Connecticut business and education community, has already "significantly reduced a large budget gap, made significant leadership changes, reviewed all the schools and is laying out a new direction of reforms, " said Robert Trefry, the school board's current chairman.
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