Tag: Cathleen Black


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Four Burning Questions in School Reform: It Starts with (Cathie) Black


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Just because it’s Thanksgiving week doesn’t mean there aren’t points to ponder: What is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s next step in getting support for making Cathleen Black chancellor…

Photo courtesy of Fallbrook Bonsall Village News

Just because it’s Thanksgiving week doesn’t mean there aren’t points to ponder:

  1. What is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s next step in getting support for making Cathleen Black chancellor of New York City’s schools? Based on what some speculate, some folks (namely New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and New York AFT boss Michael Mulgrew) want a more-education industry-versed person (essentially, a member of the educational status quo) to serve as Black’s co-pilot in overseeing the city’s Department of Education. Will Bloomberg play ball or pick one of outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein’s former deputies (notably Chris Cerf) and dare his opponents in a game of political chicken.
  2. Will incoming House Education and Labor Committee Chairman John Kline actually attempt an investigation (or show trial, depending on where one sits) of the Obama administration’s handling of federal stimulus funds — including Race to the Top money? Will he help back an effort by Utah’s Jason Chaffetz — who may take over one of the House subcommittees overseeing the District of Columbia — to revive the now-shuttered D.C. Opportunity voucher plan? The answer may be “no” to both.
  3. When will the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers admit that defined-benefit pensions and other parts of traditional teacher compensation are no longer worth defending? That answer may come in the next few years as the pension deficits of their affiliates finally start hitting the bottom lines. Or they end up like the NEA’s Indiana affiliate and go bust altogether.
  4. Will Detroit and Indianapolis — home to two of the nation’s most-persistent dropout factories — be among the latest cities to have their districts be taken over by state education departments. Indiana’s education czar, Tony Bennett, has already fired his shot across the bow of Indianapolis Public Schools (which has  seven of 21 schools — including the notorious Manual High — under probation for five consecutive years) and other districts. Eduspiel speculated on what would happen to Detroit Public Schools earlier this year. Either way, both can’t end up like Philadelphia — whose five-year Promoting Power rate declined from 74 percent for the Class of 2001 to 64 percent for the Class of 2009 since Pennsylvania state officials took over the district nine years ago.

By the Way: The State of Black CT Alliance — which helped successfully push for the Nutmeg State’s Parent Trigger law — is hosting its first annual Building Blocks of Educational Excellence Campaign Dinner and Awards Ceremony. Congressman Chaka Fattah, Education Trust President Katie Haycock and yours truly will be speaking at the Dec. 16th event in Stamford, Conn., and will talk about to reform American public education and  Learn more (and buy your tickets) at the State of Black CT Alliance’s Web site.

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A Considerable Legacy: Joel Klein


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Joel Klein wasn’t exactly the natural choice for chancellor of New York City’s gargantuan and stupendously dysfunctional traditional public school system when he got the job in 2002. After all,…

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Joel Klein wasn’t exactly the natural choice for chancellor of New York City’s gargantuan and stupendously dysfunctional traditional public school system when he got the job in 2002. After all, the former U.S. Assistant Attorney General was better-known for his successful antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s than for any forays into education. As it turned out, the school district — which was taken over by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as one of the first major efforts to place school systems under mayoral control — needed someone who wasn’t fully ensconced in the  stale status quo of the traditional education establishment to set it on a course for the better.

Eight years later, as Klein steps down as head of the nation’s largest traditional public school system, one can say he has changed the district’s once-infamous culture of mediocrity, byzantine bureaucracy and shockingly banal corruption. Graduation rates for the district (based on eighth-grade enrollment) have increased from 56 percent for the Class of 2002 to 63 percent for the Class of 2008, according to Dropout Nation‘s analysis of federal and New York City data. Student achievement levels have progressed steadily even as New York State has revised its own state tests for greater rigor.  The district is still a work in progress; the city’s abysmally low graduation rates for black males (and the New York Post‘s report about the travails of Wayne Knowland (who graduated from Fannie Lou Hamer High School despite his functional illiteracy) shows that there is still more work to be done. But the city is still doing better for its kids than it did nearly a decade ago.

Meanwhile New York City has become the pioneer for concepts that are (sadly) still considered innovative for education. Its development of the ARIS system has given teachers and administrators a tool that can be used for identifying potential dropouts, improving instruction and fostering long-term connections between teachers and their students. The shutdown of the city’s worst dropout factories and their replacement with smaller high schools with new cultures and more-dynamic staff has also shown an alternative to the rather faulty model of school turnaround efforts being advocated by the Obama administration. And Klein’s relentless pursuit of teacher quality reform — including efforts to use student test data in evaluating newly-hired teachers (and keeping laggards from gaining near-lifetime employment through tenure), and the attempt last month to publicly release Value-Added performance data has helped galvanize school reformers and others around dealing with one of the most-crucial steps in stemming the nation’s dropout crisis.

But Klein’s tenure isn’t just notable for its results. It offers some lessons to school reformers everywhere: You can successfully overhaul a traditional school system — and take numerous tough steps — and still be amiable to allies and critics. Traditional districts can be top-notch authorizers of high-quality charter schools — and even play significant roles in fostering their development (and giving families escape hatches from the worst traditional public education offers). And he has proven that education should not be left to teachers, principals and traditional players alone. We will not revolutionize American public education until we create dynamic cultures that embrace the genius within all of our children.

Cathleen Black, who succeeds Klein as chancellor, will have to do as good a job as he has. She has no choice but to succeed. Our kids need her to follow upon Klein’s stellar work revamping the Big Apple’s school system.

Watch this Dropout Nation excerpt of Klein’s speech earlier this year about turning around New York City’s high schools


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