Gary Rubinstein posted a review of Joel Klein’s book by someone who worked in Klein’s Department of Education central offices for many years.
I have not read Joel Klein’s book. I have had calls from two reporters asking if what he said about me was true. I asked, what did he say? They said: He claimed that I had turned against “education reform” (e.g., charters, merit pay, school closings, and high-stakes testing) because he refused to give a job to my partner or promote her or fund her program. I answered that I never asked Joel Klein to give a job to my partner; I never asked him to promote her or to fund her program.
When Klein arrived in 2002, she was executive director in charge of principal training at the New York City Board of Education. Just about the time Klein started as Chancellor, her program won a competitive federal grant of $3 million as one of the best principal training programs in the nation. My partner had been a teacher for many years, the chairman of social studies at Edward R. Murrow High School, one of the best in the city, and the founder and principal of a small public high school in Manhattan, affiliated with Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools and Deborah Meier’s network of small schools.. Chancellor Harold Levy asked her to create a program to help hundreds of new principals. Her program was built around the concepts of collaboration, mutual respect, and mentorship; she recruited some of the city’s best, most experienced principals to exchange regular visits with new principals, and she started a summer institute where the mentor principals taught the new principals whatever they wanted and needed to know. The members of her corps of principal-leaders were called the Distinguished Faculty, and principals were honored to be invited to join the Distinguished Faculty.
When Klein arrived, he had a deputy tell Mary he was disbanding her program, appropriating the $3 million federal grant her program had just won, and turning it over to his new Leadership Academy. He selected a businessman from Colorado with no experience in education to direct the Leadership Academy. My partner stayed on at the Leadership Academy for a year; she retired in 2003. It seemed that Klein wanted very few experienced educators in decision-making roles. He preferred young MBAs, businessmen, and management consultants to guide him. He did not respect teachers, principals, or others who had made a career in the school system.
Was his treatment of Mary responsible for my change of mind about “education reform”? He flatters himself. I remained on the boards of two conservative think tanks until 2009 (the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution). But at the same time, what I observed in New York City affected my views: the heavy emphasis on testing as the measure of all things; the favoritism showed to charter operators; the explosion of no-bid contracts; the contempt expressed towards parents who wanted to save their schools or wanted class size reduction; the gaming of the system by opening small high schools that were allowed to exclude students with disabilities and English language learners, then boasting about their success; the closing of large high schools that Klein turned into dumping grounds for the students excluded from the small schools; the school report cards based mainly on test scores; the endless reorganizations of the entire system; the exodus of highly-respected principals.
Yes, Joel Klein did influence my views, but not because of what he did or did not do to my partner. That is his pettiness and vaingloriousness speaking. He made me realize over a period of years that the business model was wrong for education; that experienced educators had more wisdom than his cadre of management consultants, Sir Michael Barber, McKinsey, and 20-something graduates of business schools; that data-driven decision-making can drive the heart and spirit out of education; and that testing is not a tool for equity but a guarantor of inequity when used to rate schools and students and teachers.
I had very little contact with Klein while he was chancellor for eight years. I think we met twice. Our meetings were cordial. I never wrote anything personal or petty about him. He did not reciprocate. I don’t recall the precise year, but about 2005, an emissary from the DOE came to my home to warn me that if I did not stop writing critical articles, I would be “outed.” In 2007, I noticed on several occasions a young man from the DOE press office sitting in the audience and taping my lectures. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was gathering material for a dossier called “Diane Ravitch, Then and Now,” which showed that my views had changed on issues like merit pay. According to a story by Elizabeth Green in the Néw York Sun, the DOE was unable to find a newspaper interested in writing about this revelation. Eventually, a piece appeared in the Néw York Post under the byline of the head of the Néw York City Business Partnership (our version of the Chamber of Commerce), accusing me of being an untrustworthy hypocrite. I promptly responded that I had indeed changed my views after seeing how poorly they worked in reality. By the fall of 2007, I no longer believed that NCLB would achieve its goals; that fall, I wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times called “Get Congress Out of the Classroom.”A month later, I attended a scholarly conference about NCLB in D.C. at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. It was my assignment to summarize a dozen reports from across the nation, all of which said that neither choice nor testing was making a difference. It was already evident to me that NCLB was a failure, and their reports confirmed my awakening. From conversations within those conservative think tanks, I knew that charters were no panacea, and many were failing schools. My change of mind was gradual, not sudden; it was evidence-based, not a fit of pique. Klein’s dictatorial and insensitive style had something to do with it, but not for the reasons he cites.
I am reminded of an old slogan from the days when Nixon published his book: “Don’t buy books from crooks.”
“I am not a crook!” “I’ve earned everything I’ve got”
Diane, what a shame that you felt need to defend yourself against Klein, and this is not meant as a critique of you. Klein is many explitives and will go down in history as a negative. Many people are thankful to you and what you do and what you stand for. Klein’s admirers are cut from the same elitist, bully, profiter/privatizer, self-absorbed, “do what I say, not what I do” cloth. He is hated. You are loved and revered. Personally, I could care less what he has to say/write. You, Ms. Ravitch, are the real deal, and a hero to many. He is an empty shell of a brute.
This.
And thanks to Gary for reading the book so the rest of us don’t have to. I’m going to have a hard enough time reading the review.
I didn’t believe I was possible for me to consider Klein more vile and despicable. Reading the above proved me wrong.
Agreed. He is a very low form of human being. The fact that he attempted to blackmail Diane and uses threats and dirty games to get his way shows how despicable he really is.
We needed no explanation from you.. We about Klein from his history – he was a ‘hit man’ then as he is now – and the company he keeps. Just as we know you, Diane ,in the same manner, from your public history, your writing and the educational and personal company you keep.
Your writings are inspirational to all of us, Diane. I am very thankful for your blog, and it gives me hope each day I step into my classroom. I know that other teachers in the U.S. are experiencing the same things I am, and it is so reassuring to me that we all clearly see what the rich politicians are up to. Your daily blog keeps me informed and gives me the energy to keep fighting for what is best for my students each day I walk into my school building. Thank you so much!
What is evident and obvious and is reinforced in this post is— your bottom line was always about what was best for the children. You even changed your views because you discovered the reforms were not what was best for the majority of students in public schools. God bless you. The reformers bottom line is about privatizing public education so they can reap the profits.
AlwaysLearning: what you said.
😃
And riffing off your post…
Diane Ravitch sets the sort of example that the “reformers” instinctively recoil from—
She walks her own talk. She says what she means; she means what she says. She is one of her own harshest critics. Agree with her, disagree with her, but what you see is what you get.
Nothing more, nothing less. And that is what it will take on that never-ending journey to a “better education for all.”
And she is not alone on that journey. One of those very dead and very old and very Greek guys knew the type long long ago:
“A decent boldness ever meets with friends.” [Homer]
😎
How slimy of Klein to revert to making this debate personal. Surely he cannot actually let facts get in the way of “truth!”
Diane, you owe no one any explanations. You live, breathe, and eat the real truth. Too bad Klein has no pedagogical defense against his critics that he has to resort to such pettiness.
Perhaps I’m a bit guilty of Schadenfreude as I delight in the notion that you’ve gotten under his skin. Keep it up!
Joel Klein.
A major, not a bit, player in the self-styled “education reform” movement.
And how do the rheeal movers and shakers in the charterite/privatizer movement come to their conclusions? How in the world do they justify their words and their deeds?
Sometimes they just make things up. Really! And then they call it informational text…
😏
Or when that requires too much effort and imagination, they let others make things up for them and believe whatever flatters their egos and fattens their wallets and puts them at the tender mercies of a fawning MSM. You know, outsourcing for you bidness-minded promoters and enablers of the “new civil rights of our time.”
For example, how else to explain that Michelle Rhee could listen, with a straight face and not challenge, her boss asserting [as it turns out, with literally no documentation and still, no confirmation from that admin], that the ‘One and Only’ had—all by her lonesome with nary a thought about the teacher with whom she worked—took “her” students from the 13th to the 90th percentile? And repeated that fantastical delusion for years and years until it was pointed out that her hard data points lacked even the insubstantiality of the windmills of Don Quixote’s mind? Could her magnum opus on her meteoric rise through, and fall from, the “education reform” firmament bear the unlikely (if derivative) title “Gullible’s Travels: America’s Love Affair With Me Rhee”?
¿😳?
No wonder edusupernovas old and new like Michelle Rhee and David Coleman clutch their pearls, find the nearest fainting couch, and flee from even the hint of a public discussion with Diane Ravitch.
Where’s the $tudent $ucce$$ in that?
😎
Thank you for your response. You serve public education every day by having the courage to tell the truth and reveal how failed reforms hurt students. Your public voice gIves all of us who teach educators and school leaders opportunities to have a debate about school reforms and testing models.
I guess Klein does not understand that a truly educated person is one who does change his or her mind. WhT is that quote about insanity again
Prominent economist John Maynard Keynes, was once accused of changing some of his views over time. He supposedly replied,
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
I suggest that educators steer clear of Klien, Cerf and all products/services of “Amplify”.
Avoid Amplify if you can, sabotage if you must.
Get off your knees and fight back!
It is the old routine. If you cannot kill the message, kill the messenger. The politics of “education” gets worse and worse.
Klein in German means little. An apt description.
Bravo.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi
I wrote about Joel Klein in the opening chapter of my book, A Chronicle of Echoes. The second chapter is based on a public records request of over 100 emails exchanged between Klein and NY charter queen Eva Moskowitz.
Both chapters are available here and may be read for free:
deutsch29: your generosity is much appreciated but as a third party with nothing to gain either way—
Viewers of this blog. Read the two chapters for free if you must.
Better yet. Buy the book. Read the whole thing.
I did.
And there is a better than 98% “satisfactory” [thank you, Bill Gates!] chance of certainty that your money, time and attention will be put to good use.
😎
Thanks, but I’m buying the book for Christmas!
Hi, Mercedes,
I’d like to read those two chapters. When I click on the book, it brings me directly to Amazon to buy the book. How do I access the two chapters to read for free?
Are there other places to buy the book besides the union-bashing Amazon?
There have got to still be some independent booksellers left in Vermont many of whom probably have websites. If you have to go big, Barnes and Noble is still there.
What makes me angriest about leeches like Joel Klein is that they accept every single taxpayer-supplied freebie and perk (chauffeurs, conferences in the mountains, dinners at the best restaurants) while teachers reach into their own pockets to make sure children have the books and supplies that they need. These corporate defrauders are into money and power and do little or nothing for children not their own.
I love how Amplify’s biggest market is public schools, yet Joel Klein has made a career out of bashing public schools.
Forget that. They can sell their tablets somewhere else.
Well done reply Diane. Just the fact that you were confronted with being “outed” is morally nauseating and educationally irrelevant. I am so glad we have you in our corner. Keep on, keeping on.
Joel Klein is a slug and will always be a slug
Be aware Bernie that the SSSS has requested that you not mention their esteemed members in the same thought as Joel Klein. The Society has plenty of slug attorneys on retainer if you don’t cease and desist from associating that “little” man to the Society’s members.
Lesson in phonics . . . Follow the scripting:
“Boys and girls, yesterday we changed a single letter in a word family to a different single letter, and we got a whole new word. Today, we are going to do it with a blend instead of a single letter. We are going to learn that when you change a blend in a word from a word family, you get a whole new word with a whole new meaning. That’s what you’re going to be doing today.
Watch me as I change this word, which is located under a photo of Joe Klein, to a NEW word that fits the photo. Remember how we said we always use picture clues?
“I’m going o erase the “sl” in slug to and put in a “th”.
Now what do we get?
That’s correct, boys and girls! We get the word to describe Mr. Klein.
Let’s do another one. This time, do it with me.
Would someone like to come up to the board and erase the “sl” in “slug” and write in an “sm”? Who would like to come up to the board? Raise your hands if you love to work with dry erase markers?
Everyone, get ready to be called on!
Great! Now you can start to understand Mr. Klein’s disposition with the new word you just formed!
Now I want you to try this one with a partner to describe Mr. Klein’s relationship with ALEC.
Change the “sl” in “slug” to “sn”.
What new word did you get?
Excellent!
Now try this one without a partner and do it completely by yourself:
Change the “sl” in slug to “pl” to describe Mr. Klein’s mechanism in blocking and stopping legislation to protect children, families, and democracy.
I’m going to come around an check in on you!”
Where were you when I need you? Areal teacher.I missed out, big time. No, you can’t go home again.
Mr. Rendo
1d Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources–4
2b Establishing a Culture for Learning–4
2b.1 Outing a Vulture Who Negatively Impacts Student Learning–4
3a Communicating with Students–4
3c Engaging Students in Learning–4
3d Using Assessment in Instruction–4
5a Inspiring Students to Discriminate Between Truth and BS–4
5b Facilitating Meaningful, Colorful and Appropriate Word Usage–4
5c Demonstrating Analysis of Petty Psychological Mania–4
5d Effectively Evaluating Nasty Practices of an Education Official–4
HIGHLY EFFECTIVE
[For some of these indicators, you are definitely wearing a cape.]
John A,
Stop by for after school help and we’ll work on your mechanics. Maybe you need more work in typing than mechanics.
Did you mean “You can’t go back to the green again”? I suppose the idiom can vary depending on where you live.
You nailed me, Robert. My careless typing is well know. I try but… As for teaching. The NYC public schools from the mid ’50s to mid ’60s, was for me, endless pain and finally dealing with schooling via classic defense mechanisms (see, Anna Freud and Sigmund Freud’s classics: “The Ego and The Mechanisms of Defense”). So, I write, once again, after reading a goodly number of your intelligent, humane and oft times witty postings, where were you?:)
As for Joel Klein: he is a reprehensible slug(and thug).The harm he had done to the NYC Board and school students lives after him.
LG,
Governor Cuomo of NY would like to disagree with you, as I have received too many high ratings from you, and test scores (although I don’t teach a testing grade, pragmatically speaking) are still at 40% for those getting 4s on the ELA.
I think we all are developing in our mission to organize and protest, to push back and fight, but 5 years ago, I can clearly remember when the country was at an “ineffective”.
We shall strive to become effective civic participants. We’re getting there.
Charlotte Danielson herself has said that we live in the 3s and visit the 4s.
As for your rating system, I think you should partner with the pensive Ms. Danielson and see what you can work out.
Lucy Calkins did, and look what became of her!
You have great talent, LG. Don’t waste it and get busy publishing those rubrics and framework.
Maybe you and I can get together and draft a business plan for a “Civic Participant’s Workshop Model” . . . .
Ms. Calkins, are you listening?
I use a “Civic Participant’s Workshop Model” every day. It’s called engaging colleagues in face-to-face contact whenever they question a new district-mandated practice relating to CCSS or PARCC.
As an evaluator, I realize I would be jeopardizing my mid-year and end-of-year bonus by evaluating anyone with a result of all 4s. 😛
I will take your recommendations under consideration. 😉
This thread is fun . . . . .
“He claimed that I had turned against “education reform” (e.g., charters, merit pay, school closings, and high-stakes testing) because he refused to give a job to my partner or promote her or fund her program. I answered that I never asked Joel Klein to give a job to my partner; I never asked him to promote her or to fund her program.”
I thought it was nonsense. It doesn’t make any sense.
All the money and clout is on the ed reform side. There’s no career benefit to being a public school advocate. I don’t think public school advocates could get hired at a think tank or in state or federal government. They’re pretty much completely shut out.
The smart career move is being an ed reformer. It’s not even close.
Reblogged this on Daniel Katz, Ph.D. and commented:
I don’t usually reblog, but this bears repeating. Joel Klein is quite a piece of work…
Why doesn’t anyone review his book on Amazon? So far he has received a perfect score. I’m guessing he had all five of his friends write glowing reviews. Makes my blood boil.
Mercedes? I job for you in all your spare time (tongue in cheek)? You have credibility.
I can see why Rupert Murdock hired Joel Klein; Klein has the sleazy character required to do Murdock’s deeds. Wonder how much the guy from DOE got paid for following you around. Klein was channeling J. Edgar Hoover – “Diane Ravitch – the most dangerous woman in America!”
Somebody on twitter posted a link to an article where Klein lamented that during his time as NYC Schools Chancellor he would have liked to have been able to meet with teachers and done brown bag lunches, etc. but the union contract prevented him from doing so.
My response was that perhaps teachers had no interest in meeting an anti-trust lawyer with no education background who needed a waiver to become chancellor and who was hell-bent on destroying public schools. (Well, with only 140 twitter characters I didn’t quite say all of that but that’s what I meant!)
Anyway, I also couldn’t resist responding to Klein and letting him know that teachers flocked to see our new Chancellor, Carmen Fariña, speak at our UFT Spring Conference and also at town hall meetings which were held at every UFT Borough Office. Carmen, a life-long educator, also attended New Teacher events throughout the City.
I also let Klein know that our new Chancellor had a welcome back message that was live-streamed to all NYC schools on our second day back in September. Teachers cheered during her message and there was enthusiastic applause at the end.
Finally, I reminded him how well-loved he was by teachers, parents and students who booed for five straight minutes at one of his puppet PEP meetings in 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3km1iIY0MQ
Finally, I know former NYC Councilman (now NYS Assemblyman-elect) Charles Barron has some very radical views on certain issues, but he nailed it when he called for a citizen’s arrest of Klein for impersonating an Educator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvq8Fx2ImYM
So Klein can remember his tenure as NYC Schools Chancellor any way he wants, but those of us who lived through it know the ugly truth. Perhaps Klein’s charter school friends like Eva Moskowitz and the “teachers” from the astro-turf organization Educators 4 Excellence cried when Klein stepped down but real educators and those who value public education across NYC let out a collective cheer.
Diane, I continue to be astonished at how cool you are under fire. I don’t have that ability. I admire it in you.
Diane,
Joel Klein is a little weasel akin to Templeton in Charlotte’s Web . . . .
Let’s just say that he is the fly buzzing around, you are the big whip-like fly swatter, and 99% of your readers here have excellent aim . . . .
SPLAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been following this blog for quite some time and I am so thankful to have this group of intelligent, understanding educators to fight for what is right for the children and the educators in this country.
I am grateful everyday for Diane Ravitch who fights, organizes and leads us in the right direction. I am grateful that she “saw the light” and admitted the country was headed in the wrong direction.
After reading about Klein, I just had to enter the conversation.
My daughter teaches kindergarten, about 12 years ago, when she was a brand new teacher, I’m guessing it was 2003, her school and particularly her class were chosen for a photo op with Klein. He actually came to her class and was photographed with her class. She introduced herself to him as Ms Blank, he called her TEACHER.
He asked TEACHER to move out of the way so he could be photographed with the class. She told him they needed consent to be photographed, his crew moved her out of the way, photographed the class and printed it. He just walked in and out no intro treated her like she wasn’t even there. She was shiny, new and had done extraordinarily well so the Principal chosen her to speak with him.
I realized then exactly what type of human being he was.
Well, Carla, he is NOT human, and that’s the point.
Your daughter had a protocol to follow because there are always some kids who may be on a do-not-film-or-photograph list, and that must be followed.
I hope your daughter, after shaking his hand, went home after work and disinfected herself. . . . . Even if done a la Karen Silkwood, she put herself at risk making contact with that virus-upon-two-legs.
Brave woman!
As a mother, I can imagine what you wanted to do to that rude boor. As a teacher, I can invent an infinite number of scenarios in which CHANCELLOR would meet his comeuppance. It is so hard to get my mind around the idea that this incompetent buffoon had anything to offer worth putting up with his condescending sneer.
Robert,
She never did shake his hand. He distanced himself immediately.
That’s why I wrote my anecdotal. It says it all!
Thank you for reading and all responses.
I remember reading “The death and life…” and thinking (as I said to you in Chicago) that Jerry Bracey must be rolling in his grave. But as to Joel Klein’s libels — as we’ve experienced here in Chicago, when they can’t answer our arguments or the facts, these people try to reduce the discussion to personalities — or simply blacklist and blackout some people (like me here in Chicago since Vallas sued us for a million dollars). You don’t have to take the time, unless you want to, to correct the nonsense Klein is spewing. After all, there are a dozen pundits ready to spout the same stuff so it’s often a waste of time, unless you have unlimited time.
Thanks, George Schmidt. I won’t spend a lot of time saying anything more about Klein’s claims. What I wrote is what I have to say.
I believe the conversation was about Joel Klein’s book. In the book he (Klein) stated that he wished he could have gotten to know teachers better over a brown bag lunch, while speaking to them but the UNION prevented him from doing so.
Well, here he was in a classroom, with a new and eager teacher, with no agenda and he couldn’t even say a few kind words. He treated her like she didn’t exist.
Conversely the new Chancellor, Carmen Farina, has had many open dialogues with teachers.
So, he could have spoken to a teacher and Farina does speak with teachers and the UNION has not intervened in their conversations at all.
I follow this blog because it empowers educators from all over the country to take action and it is working.
Thank you Diane.