John Connolly's Home-visit Heroes

He was Boston's education City Councilor. Then when John Connolly stepped down to run for mayor, his heart and head stayed with schools. Even after he lost that race, he rebounded to a new focus, one he calls his mission.

He founded the 1647 organization (its website has no real content yet).He has his vision, has begun staffing up, and has a pilot underway involving students, parents and teachers. He is off tweaking the schools one kid at a time.

Connolly joins us to explain how intensive home visits by teachers find out how each student learns best and what the parents and teachers can do to foster that. 

The nascent project gets some funding from Chris Gabrieli and his National Center on Time & Learning. For his part, Connolly is serious as ever. He has turned down offers from law first and others and he swears he won't run for any office. He’ll tell us what results he's seen, how the system works and what his aims are.