National school choice advocate Fuller to retire from Marquette
Howard Fuller, former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and nationally known advocate for school choice, is retiring after decades at Marquette University, where he served as a distinguished professor of education and founder and director of its Institute for the Transformation of Learning.
The university announced his decision in a statement Friday, saying he will retire at the end of the month.
“I just felt like it was time,” said Fuller, 79, who acknowledged a weariness in his voice in an interview with the Journal Sentinel on Friday.
“Anybody who’s conscious would be worn out,” he said, an apparent reference to the national tumult over race and racism. “It’s just time to figure out how you make a contribution with everything that’s happening and given the stage of my life I’m at.”
In addition to leaving Marquette, Fuller said he has resigned from all boards on which he served, other than that of the charter school he founded, Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy. He’s also stepped back from leadership roles nationally.
“I just feel like you need different voices. You need a new generation of people who have ideas and new ways of trying to solve problems. I hope that I can be of some assistance to those individuals.”
Bill Henk, dean of Marquette’s college of education, said the work Fuller had done on behalf of school children of color through the Institute for the Transformation of Learning “has been broadly and deeply impactful.”