Dr. Michelle King – Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership

Dear USC Rossier Students,
It is with profound sadness that I share with you the passing of Dr. Michelle King EdD ’17, whose death from cancer was announced this past weekend.As many of you know, Dr. King became a member of the Trojan family when she earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership at our school in 2017. She never missed a class, even though she had been named superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District a year earlier, in January of 2016. She had been on the job for only two years when she stepped down to undergo medical treatment.

The first African American woman — and 11th Trojan — to lead the nation’s second-largest school system, she embraced its challenges and set goals that some people thought were impossibly high, such as a 100 percent high school graduation rate. In her all-too-brief administration, she managed to move the needle on that issue and others. She advanced STEM and bilingual education and oversaw the launch of two all-girls schools, with an emphasis on math and science at one and athletic leadership at the other.

Those of us who were lucky enough to know her understand with an ache in our hearts what we have lost.

“She just exuded leadership, and not from a forceful standpoint but from a standpoint of collaboration,” said Dr. Michael Escalante EdD ’02, who chaired Dr. King’s dissertation committee. He recruited her for our EdD program’s first executive cohort, which was made up of 16 superintendents and assistant superintendents. Their studies took them to Ireland to collect data on school science fairs. In her thesis Dr. King examined the influence of globalization on STEM teaching in the Irish educational system.

Dr. King was a native of Los Angeles, who attended LAUSD schools from kindergarten through 12th grade; she graduated from Palisades High School during the years of court-ordered busing to reduce segregation. After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UCLA and Pepperdine, respectively, she returned to L.A. Unified to teach middle school science.
In 1997 she began her ascent through the district’s ranks, serving as an assistant principal, principal, administrator of secondary instruction, regional superintendent and senior deputy superintendent. After a national search, she won the Board of Education’s unanimous support as superintendent, stirring excitement throughout the district and the communities it serves because of her long history in Los Angeles. After a series of superintendents who had come from somewhere else, she was the first LAUSD veteran in a decade to reach the No. 1 job.

After accepting the superintendency, she said: “I want to ensure that the enthusiasm for teaching and learning that I experienced in LAUSD … is the reality for all of our students.”

“She could never see herself anywhere other than L.A. Unified,” said Dr. Maria Ott, PhD ’94, a former senior deputy superintendent in the district. “She had a lot of innovative ideas. She just didn’t have enough time.”
I know you join me in extending USC Rossier’s deepest condolences to her family. She would want us all to Fight On.

Sincerely,
Karen Symms Gallagher,
PhDEmery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean
USC Rossier School of Education