Andrea Gabor recently attended an invitation-only event in New York City to meet Joel Klein at Teach for America headquarters in lower Manhattan, where he reflected on his legacy.
She writes:
How did Klein feel about his legacy—what was he most proud of, what would he do differently—especially in light of the policies of his successor?
This would be the second question of the evening posed to Klein. And the former schools chancellor’s response, at first, surprised me.
What he most regretted: “We never got teachers on our side. We didn’t communicate and listen well enough.”
However, Klein quickly followed with what he was most proud of: Opening 200 charter schools.
And, where he saw the biggest problem in New York City schools: The teachers union “polarized” the teachers.
Here, in a nutshell is the contradiction—even the tragedy—of the Bloomberg/Klein regime: Klein, a child of a “dysfunctional inner-city home”, who saw public school as his refuge and claims that his teachers made the difference in transforming his life, sees the proliferation of charter schools, not the improvement of public schools, as his most important legacy. (A biography, incidentally, not unlike that of former Education Secretary John King, another reformer who prioritized privatization and carrot-and-stick policies for teachers.)
It is hard to remember now how disliked Klein was by teachers, not just the union. He turned the schools into a test-and-punish experiment where teachers were expendable. He closed many schools, closed almost every large high schools, fired most of the city’s principals or drove them away, including some of the best veterans. He gave preferential treatment to charter schools, especially Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies.
It is hard to know why Klein dislikes public schools as much as he does. It wasn’t based on his experience as chancellor. He came into the job with a strong conviction that the public schools were a disaster and it would take business thinking to fix them. He reorganized the system at least four times. He brought in Michael Barber (Sir Deliverology, now the Chief Academic Officer at Pearson) to advise him. He boasted about “reforms” on the day he launched them, then overlooked them when they silently disappeared. He surrounded himself with young business school graduates and lawyers, not educators, and invented new titles to enable them to serve (“chief talent officer,” “chief knowledge officer,” etc.)
After he left the school system, he joined Rupert Murdoch and urged him to buy Wireless Generation, a tech company that had worked for the Department of Education. Murdoch bought it for $300 million or so, and invested about $1 billion in Klein’s tech company called Amplify. Amplify planned to revolutionize education through technology, and it built its own tablets and curriculum. I hear the curriculum was good, but the tablets had many technical problems (the screens cracked, the plugs caught fire, etc.) A few years ago, haviglost hundreds of millions, Murdoch dumped the company, which was bought by allies of Klein. Klein soon was pushed out, and he is now at an online healthcare business called Oscar, owned by Jared Kushner’s brother.
After he left the NYC schools, Klein continued to rail against public education. He wrote articles decrying the high cost of teacher pensions (but when he left office, he immediately filed to collect a pension of $34,000 a year for life based on his eight years as chancellor).
The piece-de-resistance of his anti-public school activism was a report that he and Condoleezza issued, under the sponsorship of the Council of Foreign Relations, claiming that America’s public schools are so dreadful that they are a risk to national security. Their cures: Everyone should adopt the Common Core, and every state needs charter schools and vouchers.
Why does he hate public schools so? He often claimed that his own life was changed by his public schools and teachers. But he wanted to move in a world of elites where no one ever went to public schools and where it was conventional wisdom that public schools stink. He reflected not his own experience, but the class into which he aspired to belong.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
I truly believe Klein and his TFA friends are WARPED. They are taking their anger out on others, when the anger lies in their souls. These deformers need therapy to work out their ANGER and SELF-Concept issues.
In a nutshell, indeed. The goal is enacting the reform itself, not systemic improvement in general or equity in particular. So, he is proud of establishing charter schools, whether or not it impacted most kids positively. He regrets the lack of teacher support, not because he cared about what teachers value, but because it thwarted his apriori ideological goal.
“. . . because it thwarted his apriori ideological goal.”
Arthur, did you misspell idiological*?
*Idiological (adj.) Of or pertaining to having, expressing an idiology**.
**Idiology (n.) Belief system based on falsehood and error so common in modern American culture. The ideology of idiots.
Union bashing is misleading because the bashing infers that unions are corrupt and autocratic with a dictatorial leadership without every mentioning the fact that labor unions are complex democratic organizations with local, state, and national levels, and a labor union represents its members who vote for the leadership that can be removed with the next union election.
Labor union presidents do not have the power of a corporate CEO and do not work to boost profits. The presidents of local, state and national labor unions have one main goal and that is to protect the pay and benefits of the union members. Labor unions are not managed like autocratic, for-profit corporations.
This is similar to how community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public school districts operate where voters and/or parents vote for the democratically elected school boards that have the power to hire and fire the administration that run the local school district. These school districts are not managed by autocratic, for-profit corporations.
Corporations are like dictatorships but the dictator is called a CEO. Corporations are not governed by state and national Constitutions, and as long as the corporation keeps meeting its projected profits, the CEO’s highly paid job is usually safe, and CEO’s never have to run for election.
The movement to turn transparent, non-profit public schools into secretive, autocratic, for-profit corporations is a direct assault on democracy at all levels.
Can’t be having any democratic syndicates cropping up anywhere in a democratic republic now can we??
I wonder if the mafia and other crime syndicates elects its leaders.
What makes the analogy of corporate CEO’s to dictators most apt is the fact that CEO’s will actually do things for their own interests alone, EVeN at the expense of the corporate clients and the shareholders they are supposed to be serving.
That CEO’s would screw the company’s clients and shareholders for their own benefit was the “flaw” that Alan Greenspan “discovered” in his free(for all) market theory after the financial meltdown of 2008.
Klein is an attention seeker. But John White has referred warmly to him as a mentor, though maybe not quite in that word. Klein must be a fiercely self-righteous wrongheaded ideologue and a uniquely corrupt person.
You may have heard that Governor Kasich thinks that all public school teachers in Ohio should be required to have a professional development day shadowing someone who operates a business. State certification could be at stake.
Well, some creative democrats in Ohio have a different view of what is needed.
State Rep. Brigid Kelly and state Rep Kent Smith this week announced new legislation — the Governor’s Externship for Training of Realistic Expectations of Academic Leadership in Schools (GET REALS) Act — to require the governor to complete an annual 40-hour externship in a public elementary or secondary school ranked A-F.
“If Governor Kasich is serious about strengthening our schools and preparing our students to succeed, his public policies should be informed by real world, on-the-ground experience that, quite frankly, he lacks,” said Smith.
Under Smith and Kelly’s bill, the governor’s annual 40-hour on-site work experience in a school would be split into five, eight-hour days, each in a differently ranked public school. The governor could work alongside teachers, food-service staff or custodial staff.
“No one understands the challenges and opportunities our children experience in the classroom better than educators, and this bill would extend that same necessary insight to the governor and his policy proposals,” said Kelly.
What a refreshing proposal from these legislators. In a straw poll this week, nearly 80% of subscribers to the Cincinnati Business Courier thought Kasich’s idea was not worth supporting.
IN addition to thinking teachers are ignorant about business, Kasich does not want to fund higher education programs that fail to produce jobs in Ohio.
I just can’t help seeing corporations salivating as public education is attacked and for-profit charter schools continue to vie for the ever diminishing funding. Talk about school to private prison pipeline-now they want to start at the elementary level reaping profits.
Take it from a person who worked under Klein in the NYC public school system while midget mike bloomberg was Klein’s boss and the mayor of NYC. Joel Klein is a complete sham and a disgrace to our society. I would not trust this guy not one penny. He is such a quack people. This is what has happened in our society where you have a guy like Joel bottle coke glasses Klein who thinks he knows how to manage a school system or thinks he knows about education. Klein s training of course in in law. Klein has been a failure in the NYC schools and FAILED with Rupert Murdoch trying to sell this shitty education plan with a company called amplify – which goes out of business – no surprise there. Bottom line, Joel Klein is a corrupt as corruption gets and this guy would sell his own mother down the river for a pat on the back and some cash.
“. . . like Joel bottle coke glasses Klein . . .”
Hey now, let’s not denigrate by linkage those who are sight impaired with Klein.
I guess I knew–I started my teaching career under his reign here in New York–that Mr. Klein was obtuse and tone deaf, but I wasn’t aware of to how great an extent.
“We never got teachers on our side.” What, exactly, did he to as chancellor to invest teachers as stakeholders? He treated us, in word and deed, with active contempt on an almost daily basis.
Anyone who taught under the reign of Bloomberg knows about Mr. Klein and his “respect” for teachers.
The red looseleaf binders they handed out to every teacher in every school (regardless of student population) within a month of his stewardship as chancellor. Everything from the carpet/rocking chair reading area to correct spacing of bulletin board items, carefully listed and diagramed.
Then the 1 1/2 page “contract” proposal which was actually nothing short of a declaration of war.
My principal at the time was very good at her job and had risen through the ranks to that position. She knew that I’d come from a corporate background and, so, intercepted me in the hall one day. She asked me to read a recent email, sent to all principals from the new chancellor, Mr. Klein:
“…As front line managers, you are expected to…”
She told me to stop there and asked, “Am I a front line manager? I thought I was a principal”.
This woman really was an excellent principal. She retired at the end of the year along with many others. Unfortunately, this played right into the hands of that administration.
“Self Reverence”
Reform is a whine
In Bottle of Klein
The fruit of a vine
With Mobius twine
Technical problems with the tablets was definitely a problem with the Amplify project.
Another area of difficulty might have been one of Klein/Murdoch’s prime goals: the use of a tablet/iPad as the centerpiece of the classroom. Read, write (type), research, homework assignments, test, follow directions, see feedback, etc. All in one handy little package.
Left out of the equation was the role of the teacher as the orchestrator of the classroom learning experience. And the use of varied tools of instruction. Pencil/crayon/paper, group instruction and projects, set and separate computer time, and personal human feedback.
Technology is a fantastic educational tool but it’s not the be all and end all. Without human interaction you miss out on one of the prime goals of education: socialization. Both during and between instructional time.
Left out of the equation was the role of the teacher”
A cynic — of even a realist — would say that was no accident.
Technology IS the be all and end all of companies like Apple and Microsoft.
And these are precisely who is behind the push for the techno-classroom. Their goal is not to simply “help” teachers but to replace them entirely, though people like Bill Gates will deny that vociferously, of course.
Realistically, what is the role for the teacher in “personalized learning”?
There is none — other than to trouble shoot technical problems with hardware and software.
The classroom teacher will become little more than tech support and even that role will eventually be eliminated when the job is farmed out to companies in India, China and elsewhere as has already happened with other tech support roles.
A plausible scenario of the future classroom.
A tech support person in China who barely speaks English tries to walk little 6 year old Johnny through an “issue” he is having with his “personalized learning” program.
Maybe we should start teaching Chinese in Kindergarten or even pre-school so kids will be able to understand the tech support people on the other end of the line by the time e they are in first grade.
Gitapik, I think the goal of Amplify was to make the teacher superfluous.
Yes…no argument there.
I left that conclusion out so that any reader outside the profession would see that it’s widely held and doesn’t need to be prompted by just one persons’ post. Provide the dots. Connecting them is child’s play if you’ve been forced to endure the assault.
No respect for the teacher’s role and a blind push towards a profit oriented educational model = Joel Klein and the billionaires he has represented.