"A lot of our kids in the school district have social-service needs, and those systems aren't always as aligned with what's happening inside the school district," Shorr, who had been a vice president at the Philadelphia Youth Network, said after a City Hall news conference.

Shorr, 44, of Chestnut Hill, will serve as director and chief education officer of the Office of the Public School Family and Child Advocate.

The latter is a new position that will require Shorr to be confirmed by City Council. The position was created by a city charter change that Council passed in June and voters approved in November. Shorr's salary is $115,000, Nutter said.

He also announced that Sharon Tucker will serve as the deputy chief education officer. Tucker, 30, of Mount Airy, had been the adviser to the deputy secretary of elementary and secondary education at the state Department of Education. Her salary is $95,000.

Shorr said she had already begun working on aligning city and school-district services with Donald Schwartz, deputy mayor of health and opportunity.

"It's not about bad people doing a bad job; it's about big systems that move under their own weight," she said of the undertaking. "How do you get people to slow down for two seconds and talk about how their systems can be better coordinated?"

Before an audience that included several Council members, state Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak and School Reform Commission Chairwoman Sandra Dungee Glenn, Nutter proclaimed his two appointees the "dynamic duo of education."

Added Nutter: "I am very confident and optimistic that we will achieve the goals that we have set out, because we have a team in place to make it work."

Among his goals are to halve the dropout rate in five to seven years, to double the number of city residents with college degrees, and to boost the literacy rate.

Nutter said that city Finance Director Robert Dubow and his staff will be working closely with school officials to help them with their budget plan and "to make sure that we're keeping track of all of the taxpayers' dollars."

When asked, Nutter said little about the school district's search to find a new chief executive officer, deferring to the reform commission.

Last week C. Kent McGuire, dean of Temple University's College of Education, withdrew his name from consideration.

Remaining as candidates are Arlene Ackerman, an education professor at Columbia University's Teachers College and former superintendent of schools in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.; and Leroy D. Nunery II, a businessman and former executive with Edison Schools Inc., a for-profit school-management company. *