Nearly eight months after a legislatively set deadline, Mayor Adrian Fenty has submitted to the D.C. Council the names of two education researchers chosen to serve as independent judges of the city’s public school reform.

The two watchdogs were promised in the mayoral schools takeover legislation passed in June 2007, and the posts were supposed to be filled by Sept. 15.

But the mayor and Chancellor Michelle Rhee have only now finalized their selections. The two men recommended are recognized experts in school reform, Kenneth Wong and Rick Hess. The council will vote on whether to appoint them.

Wong, a professor at Brown University, has written and edited several books on urban school governance. He has also served as an independent evaluator for school reform in Philadelphia, which, like the District, has a long history of failure.

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Hess is the resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and is a faculty associate at the Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance.

The two were selected from a pool of about a dozen candidates following a national search, said Dena Iverson, the mayor’s spokeswoman.

Their work will be paid for with private funds.

“We have a donation agreement for $750,000 for five years; the fund is separate from the D.C. government,” Iverson wrote in an e-mail.

Wong told The Examiner that he and Hess will release their first oversight report in September and then craft four more annual reports.

They will take a hard look at the management and business practices of the school system’s leadership and students’ academic achievement.

“The idea is that we’ll work very closely,” Wong said. “I bring a nationwide perspective ... and he will bring his understanding of local issues.”

The lack of independent evaluators surfaced during a Feb. 22 D.C. Council oversight hearing when Council Chairman Vincent Gray scolded Rhee for dragging her feet on the process.

“When you wanted the reform legislation passed, you were banging on our door. ... Yet we ask for something and it takes months,” Gray said.

The chancellor told Gray at that time that she would recommend someone within a month. However, it took a full month longer. Wong said he was approached about being an evaluator in late February or early March.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com