LUMINARY BIO
Alberto M. Carvalho was appointed eight years ago as Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s fourth-largest school system, and nothing in Miami was ever the same. To turn around failing schools he requested the help of the entire community and even reached beyond, enlisting the help of celebrities and athletes like Goldie Hawn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elie Wiesel and David Beckham. He expanded educational opportunities for minority students and closed the achievement gap, which won the District the Broad Prize for Urban Education, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for educators. Carvalho pushed for more choices for students, and Miami-Dade now has more than 600 offerings including programs in fine and performing arts, biotechnology, engineering, robotics, aviation, forensic sciences, and many others. He has welcomed the President of the United States, who praised his work in bringing technology to students; the First Lady, who applauded the District’s meal program; and the King of Spain, who visited the District’s celebrated bilingual program. Despite his accomplishments in making M-DCPS one of the nation’s highest-performing urban school systems, Carvalho keeps it real, humbly informing visitors that he is just a poor kid from Portugal who has encountered some wonderful opportunities to help today’s children. In 2014, Alberto Carvalho was named Nation
