The superintendent forums ended last night with finalist Ingrid Carney, a deputy superintendent with the Boston school district. Carney exhibited a forceful charm that kept the questions coming in the East High School auditorium longer than any of her co-finalists.

Raising academic achievement, Carney said, is her first priority. Increasing the graduation rate, she said, would naturally follow.

"Increasing graduation rates is more a result of concentrating on the core instruction," she said. "And I think that means that we have to look for ways to make that interesting and more relevant to students. We tend to think that all kids drop out because they can't do the work. Many bright, capable kids leave school because they're not interested."

Her passion, Carney said, is training and developing principals and senior staff. She started a professional development program for principals in the Chicago schools, training 1,800 principals, administrators and lead teachers. Students in schools with principals Carney trained, she said, have been academically outperforming other Chicago schools.

Carney has not directly negotiated union contracts or budget commitments from city or county governments, but said she has contributed to those discussions as a cabinet-level advisor to the Boston and Chicago school superintendents. And she made it clear that she supports unions and the right to form unions, but it has to be a collaborative relationship that puts the needs of students first.

"If I had a magic wand, I would give teachers whatever they want, because I believe they deserve it. They are the ones in the classroom with children," she said. "Teachers need all the support we can give them. The whole thing becomes political because of a scarcity of resources. We have to find a way to work collaboratively."

But some of the best moments in Carney's question-and-answer session came when she responded to somewhat personal questions.

When asked what she did in her leisure time, she dispensed with pretentious academic answers. "Sports and shopping," she said.

And when asked about the most difficult challenges of her 37-year career, the agony of terminating a person she liked socially was at the top of her list.

Carney was intelligent, capable and genuine. She told the audience she had been preparing for the job of superintendent all of her life. And, yes, she did apply for the recent opening for superintendent of the Boston schools (when former Rochester schools superintendent Manuel Rivera declined the job last spring).

Carney has a master's degree in administration from Chicago State University and a doctorate from the University of Illinois. She completes a rigorous superintendent training program with the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation later this month.