(NYC) Departing Schools Chief (Joel Klein): ‘We Weren’t Bold Enough’

[alp227]

Javier C. Hernandez interviewed outgoing New York City public school chancellor Joel I. Klein.
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JOEL I. KLEIN invited me to breakfast last year at an Upper East Side haunt, one of those places where a bowl of yogurt goes for $23 and waiters circle the room sweeping up crumbs like pigeons at a feast.

I was covering the New York City school system at the time and thought maybe Mr. Klein, the chancellor since 2002, planned to resign and was giving a little notice. We had come to know each other via e-mail, bantering about the news media’s coverage of education, his refusal to join Twitter (“I truly do have a day job,” he said) and which A-through-F grade he would give the latest production of “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera.

But when I asked Mr. Klein about his future on that summer morning, he said he was enjoying the job too much to leave. Instead, he wanted to talk about the city’s rising test scores, about his belief that reporters had not done enough to highlight the success of charter schools and about another favorite topic: love.

“I couldn’t survive if I didn’t have someone to go home to when I got beat up,” he said.

Last month, Mr. Klein, 64, did announce his resignation. After more than eight years in the job, he is one of the city’s longest-serving chancellors; his last day is Friday. Mr. Klein is joining Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation as an executive vice president in charge of educational ventures.

Before leaving, Mr. Klein sat for an exit interview of sorts, after a visit to the Urban AssemblySchool for Applied Math and Science in the Bronx.

Some parents and teachers have derided Mr. Klein as a tyrant, a political opportunist and a tone-deaf bureaucrat. When I asked if he had neglected them, he seemed insulted. He pulled a stack of greeting cards from his briefcase: “Thank you for being my advocate,” wrote a third grader at a charter school in Harlem.

(snip)

Below are excerpts from the interview; audio clips are at nytimes.com/nyregion.

What has been the hardest part of your job?

There was really a deep belief that there’s only so much you can do, particularly for high-poverty kids. That poverty is, if not destiny, a significant hindrance to effective education. And changing ideas, changing hearts, changing minds — those things are difficult. And not surprisingly, people are going to push back. It’s a lot easier for the school system to say we graduated 45 percent of our kids because our kids had lots of problems and there’s only so much education you can do. It’s a lot harder to say we graduated 45 percent of our kids because we blew it; we didn’t do the job that we needed to do. That kind of ownership is a major kind of transformation.

Are you bothered by the fact that after eight years, there are still schools in the city that are failing huge numbers of children?

I’m always haunted by schools that I think are getting poor results. The question is really the capacity of the system. I mean, we’ve closed almost 100 schools; that’s, like, unprecedented. So even though there are more that I wish we had been able to restructure and phase down, we’ve created probably 450, 480 schools under my watch.

What regrets do you have as you prepare to step down?

There were things that I wish we had pushed harder on and faster on. Everybody always said I was impatient. I guess I would say I wasn’t impatient enough.

(snip)

What was your greatest success?

Empowering poor people with choice has been a powerful stimulus to reform in this city, and no place more so than in Harlem, quite frankly, where 40 percent of our students now start school in a charter school. And that’s as robust a competitive environment as you’ll see in public education.

Your daughter, now grown, attended private schools. Would you send your children to public schools today?

There are schools in this city that I would send my children to without a moment’s hesitation, and others that I wouldn’t. Schools have to turn around from within. There’s not somebody at a central office who waves a wand on this stuff. That’s why I want to give people choices.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/nyregion/26klein.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Seriously? A public school chancellor who sent his children to private schools and who will work for the owner of the mind-melting Fox News? WTF?

[SoBronxSchool]

1. Advocate?????

I am a teacher. I seriously doubt a third grader can knows what advocate means and can use it in the proper context. However, in the morning I will ask my son who is in the fourth grade if he knows what it means and to use it in a sentence.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. They like that word.

Caroline Kennedy campaigned for (appointment to) Clinton's empty senate seat on the strength of her experience as an "education advocate."

(Mr. Klein's wife had been Caroline's roommate in college so they created a made-up job for her at DOE).

I'm not 100% sure that Caroline could define it either.

And these are the "reformers."

What. A. System.