Clay Burell's Library tagged joel_klein →  View Popular

I think our society is in dangerous territory on this subject of accountability. The so-called "reformers," the guys (yes, guys) who call themselves the Education Equality Project, would have the world believe that accountability is the key to improving American education. They think it can be done fast, not incrementally. They think the key to improvement is punishing the bad students, the bad teachers, and the bad schools. Their latest formula, as enunciated by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is to close down 5,000 schools and re-open them. I wonder where he plans to find 5,000 new principals and thousands of new teachers, or does he just intend to reshuffle the deck?

This approach rests squarely on the high-stakes use of testing. One only wishes that the proponents of this mean-spirited approach might themselves be subjected to a high-stakes test about their understanding of children and education! I predict that every one of them would fail and be severely punished.

“They appear like smiling liberals, but they are all a bunch of condescending bigots,” Sharpton said while speaking on an education panel regarding the release of McKinsey & Co.'s report, “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools.”

Good thing U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan left the event immediately after giving his remarks preceding the panel.

He compared those in charge to then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace and the “door blockers” of the 1960s, saying, “It may be a different day, but the people in the doorway now are those we thought were our friends.”

He added anyone who does not try to fix the education problem “are co-conspirators” to Wallace’s attempt to stop desegregation.

“Newt Gingrich and I agree on the idea of there being no sacred cows in this,” he said. “[We] teased about doing a poster together that says ‘no sacred cows.’”

The report concluded that if those achievement gaps were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3 billion to $5 billion more per day.

This was the second report on education issues by the firm’s social sector office, which said it was not commissioned by any government, business or other institution. Starting in fall 2008, the researchers reviewed federal and international tests and interviewed education researchers and economists.

With the economic crisis still unfolding, it’s clear that the researchers and reform advocates hope such numbers will get people’s heads turning. Secretary Duncan weighed in that the report “calls for radical and fundamental change with a huge sense of urgency. . . If we don’t do this now, I don’t know if we’re ever going to do it.”

Rev. Al Sharpton, who works with Klein on ed-reform issues, spoke of achievement gaps as a civil rights issue and warned of people “standing in the doorways” to change, an idea Chancellor Klein echoed in a later interview when he mentioned traditional interests blocking systemic progress. Though neither would point to the unions specifically, Chancellor Klein faulted “a system that protects tenure and the way we compensate people. ... We’ve got to challenge those alignments.”

While all the panelists were in agreement about the necessity of change, Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said that a damaged education system—not teachers—should be being blamed for the data presented. He likened the teaching profession to the legal one, saying that even the best attorneys have a 50 percent chance of losing their cases and that a loss is not always the reflection of skill level. But in a later interview, Chancellor Klein expanded on the metaphor, saying, “I tell you, if you’re on trial for your life, you want the lawyer to win cases.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s allies say that the results of the current system are so spectacular that the law should be renewed without change. Secretary Duncan agrees: “I’m looking at the data here in front of me,” he said while in New York. “Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up ... By every measure, that’s real progress.”

It sounds good, but in fact no independent source has verified such claims.

Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed him chancellor of the New York City Department of Education in 2002, Joel Klein has drawn headlines, praise, and criticism for his hard-nosed leadership of the nation’s largest public school system. His tenure has become a leading example for those arguing for and against mayoral control of urban school systems.  A former assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the longest-serving New York City schools chancellor in history, Klein oversees thirty-two school districts, 1,400 schools, more than one million students, and an operating budget of more than $20 billion.

During Klein’s tenure, the district has started dozens of small high schools, worked aggressively to remove ineffective teachers, created an autonomy zone for high-performing schools, reworked problematic collective bargaining provisions to promote teacher performance pay, instituted an A through F grading system for every school, encouraged the formation of charter schools, and overhauled the department’s human resources and information technology systems. His supporters have hailed these moves as examples of breakthrough leadership; his critics have charged his administration with a misguided embrace of business practices, inattention to curricula, secrecy, and disinterest in community input.