Commitment and Common Sense: Leading Education Reform in Massachusetts

David P. Driscoll was the twenty-second commissioner of education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was appointed by the Board of Education on March 10, 1999. Dr. Driscoll has a forty-five-year career in public education and educational leadership. A former secondary school mathematics teacher, he was named Melrose assistant superintendent in 1972 and superintendent of schools in the same community in 1984. He served in that role until 1993, when he was appointed Massachusetts deputy commissioner of education, just days after the state's Education Reform Act was signed into law. He became interim commissioner of education on July 1, 1998. Dr. Driscoll earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics at Boston College, his master's degree in educational administration from Salem State College, and his doctorate in education administration from Boston College. He is past president of the Harvard Round Table of School Superintendents and the Merrimack Valley Superintendents Roundtable, was an elected member of the executive board of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, and was vice president of the superintendents' association at the time of his appointment as deputy commissioner. Dr. Driscoll was president of the Council of Chief State School Officers and currently serves on several boards, including Teach Plus, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the K12 Advisory Board, and the National Institute for School Leadership. He was appointed chair of the National Assessment Governing Board by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in 2008. He is the youngest of ten children. His wife, Kathleen, is a former reading teacher at North Shore Vocational High School. The Driscolls have four children and three grandchildren. They live in Melrose, Massachusetts.