Carl Cohn is a veteran educator who served as superintendent in Long Beach and in San Diego. He has received many awards for his service.
The selection of a new superintendent in Long Beach prompted him to write his thoughts about previous crises faced by the district and about the importance of teachers today. No superintendent can succeed without building relationships of mutual respect and collaboration with trusted teachers.
I first met Carl Cohn when he was selected to clean up the damage done by the first effort to disrupt a school district. That was San Diego. At the turn of the century, San Diego was one of the most successful urban districts in the nation—perhaps the most successful—but the school board decided it needed a massive overhaul. They hired lawyer Alan Bersin to disrupt the district. I described what happened there—including demoralization of teachers, and a philosophy of changing everything all at once because (as the saying then went) “you can’t jump over a canyon in two leaps.” The philosophy of the leadership was that change had to be abrupt, immediate, and “pedal to the metal.” Billionaires sent money. Books were written about the “bold” reforms. The infighting and controversy became so inflamed that the public eventually threw out the “reform” school board. San Diego, however, was the model for Joel Klein’s disruptions in New York City, which were the model for the same in D.C., and on and on.
I spent a week in the district interviewing teachers and principals and school board members. My last interview was with Carl Cohn. I saw him as a calming figure whose job was to restore morale, order, and professionalism. He succeeded.
After the collapse of the disruption era, the San Diego school board hired an experienced educator, Cindy Marten, who had been a teacher and principal in the district. Although she has had to impose devastating budget cuts, she has been a steady hand at the tiller. I met her in 2006, when she was a principal, running a progressive child-centered school. When I visited San Diego a few years ago, she took me for a drive, and I surprised myself for taking a paragliding ride at Torrey Pines. Needless to say, I am delighted that San Diego has such trustworthy, experienced leadership again.
I began my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education with the San Diego story. It is a cautionary tale. If you read one chapter in that book, read that one. It ends with my interview of Carl Cohn.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I experienced that episode (i.e. San Diego City Schools under Bersin) as a professor of education in San Diego. It was a disturbing time, as Dr. Ravitch has described. I worked under a dean who was “all in” with Bersin, took millions from the charter-backers, and established a principal-preparation program that turned out dozens of teacher and counselor disrespectors and naive folks who had drunk the Kool aid of the Bersin/Alvarado regime. Eventually, the program was brought to its knees, thankfully. One sad and telling element in all this was the wedge driven between this university’s school of education and local teachers’ unions. As in so many other social and professional domains in most parts of the country, the divide between faculty who did not see public school teachers and teacher unions as the enemy and those who had jumped onboard the charter train was widened. In years of reflection on the whole experience I have come to the conclusion that the rebuilding of public education needs to take place alongside the reconstruction of new approaches to strengthening civic literacy and civic competence. We shall see how it all plays out in the aftermath of the pandemic.
reading charter-backers as Charter Bankers.
Chain of power; Alan Berlin to Staci Monreal to Cindy Martin. Union flack Jonathan Mello is the plant in the union who suppresses teacher reactions. They wine and fine and flip their critics. Diane fell for it or was threatened with lawsuits and other fixer moves.
Susan, I didn’t fall for anything. I first met Cindy Marten in 2007, when she was principal of Central Elementary School. She impressed me then. I have met her for a lunch of tacos many times since then. She attended the NPE annual conference when it was held in Oakland a few years ago. She assisted Carol Burris in her research about charter fraud. She is a friend.