Gaynor McCown, who died Monday at 45, was executive director of the Teaching Commission, a New York-based organization focused on a nationwide effort to attract highly qualified people to the teaching profession.

Previously, McCown was a senior educational policy analyst for President Clinton’s administration, and a senior vice president at Edison schools, the for-profit charter school company.

McCown was lead author of the Teaching Commission’s 2004 report, “Teaching at Risk: A Call to Action,” which warned that educational achievement in America’s schools was approximately the same as it had been in 1970, and was unlikely to improve unless concerted action was taken.

The chairman of the Teaching Commission and former chairman of IBM, Louis Gerstner, called McCown a “tireless,passionate fighter for the causes in which she believed.”

A native of Mobile, Ala., McCown was a champion swimmer and diver in grammar school and high school. After graduating from Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., she worked for Catholic charities. She spent a year in Santiago, Chile, counseling families with members who were grappling with drug and alcohol addiction.

In 1987, McCown received a master’s in education from Harvard, and became a teacher at Bronx Regional High School. She later helped establish the East Side Community High School in Greenwich Village.

After the election of Mr. Clinton, Mc-Cown was named a White House Fellow in 1993, and stayed on after completing the fellowship to spearhead several projects,including the administration’s efforts to introduce uniforms in schools. She then worked for the New York City Partnership and the Chamber of Commerce, where she helped devise a plan to give financial rewards to top educators. In 1998, she joined Edison Schools, as the head of marketing and communications.

During testimony before a congressional panel last year, McCown talked about the challenges facing education in the 21st century. American education, she said, “has entered the 21st century as an undisputed world leader.

“That’s the good news.The bad news is that the nation will not continue to lead if we persist in viewing teaching – the profession that makes all other professions possible – as a second-rate occupation.”

Rosemary Gaynor McCown
Born September 23, 1960, in Mobile, Ala.; died November 14 at her Manhattan home of bile duct cancer; survived by her husband, Jonathan Miller; two brothers, John McCown and James Mc-Cown, and two sisters, Eugenia Mc-Cown and Robin Mumford.