Peter McWalters is the Rhode Island commissioner of elementary and secondary education. For over twenty years he held educational leadership and teaching positions, including superintendent of schools in the City School District of Rochester, New York. As commissioner, he has cultivated an education system that accepts responsibility for student results—from the classroom to the state house. He supports the development of high student performance standards, assessments that measure what students know and can do, school improvement procedures that inform school and district decisionmakers, and professional development that improves classroom practices. Mr. McWalters is cochair of the National Task Force on the Arts in Education, and is a past president of the Council of Chief State School Officers. He earned a BA in history and philosophy from Boston College, and he received both an MPA and a certificate of advanced graduate study in school administration from the State University of New York at Brockport.