Goodbye to the boss.

Soon after the AASA Executive Committee named Paul Houston to head the association early in 1994, one of his cabinet members in Tucson, Ariz., advised me to hang on tight. We'd be in for one wild ride, pushed to some new frontiers by the new boss's edgy thinking and endless generation of innovative notions about leadership.

He was right. I'm still holding on.

Everyone on the AASA staff is going to miss the personable guy down the hall in the corner office here at headquarters in Arlington, Va. Paul leaves this month after 14 years as AASA's executive director.

I've had the distinct pleasure of being his editor at the magazine for the entirety of his tenure. His Executive Perspective column, which has been a monthly fixture since 1997, never fails to provoke, inform or amuse, sometimes all in one 900-word package. I've basked in the attention his column and his occasional extended pieces have brought to our little corner of the education publishing world. I can't imagine too many magazine editors at professional associations can honestly claim that readers eagerly turn to the executive director's column first because of the pleasure they find in the message.

I'm also going to miss the several occasions each year when I've sat in Paul's office to listen to his mind at work as he discusses some of the latest thinking he's encountered in the half dozen new books in his active reading pile that always ventured well beyond the confines of K-12 schooling. I'd enter seeking a few story ideas for the coming months and leave with a notepad brimming with angles and authors to pursue--sometimes leading to the venturesome topics you've seen show up in our pages. (Who would have thought we'd address the role of spirituality in leadership on a recurring basis?)

It seems especially fitting to salute our retiring executive with a focus on contrarian thinkers, such as David Berliner, Richard Rothstein and Gerald Bracey, in this issue. A profile of Paul by education columnist Jay Mathews as a leader of this pack begins on page 30.

I'm hoping Paul's imminent departure to retirement in Arizona at the end of this month won't mean we've seen the last of his potent thinking on contemporary public school leadership. We do wish him well in the next phase of his journey.

Jay P. Goldman

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