Joel Klein On NYC, New Book, And Education Reform

3 Replies to “Joel Klein On NYC, New Book, And Education Reform”

1. Why believe that Klein has any more understanding of real NYC schools now as opposed to his first days when he knew nothing?

   Or, should I say less than nothing? Clearly he had strong but reality-free opinions before taking the schools over and didn’t rethink them

2. Very nice John.
   Another case of Mr. Klein’s reality free statements has to do with P-Tech school. Supposedly a miracle, hailed by the Professional Education Reform crowd.
   Teach For America corp’s Gary Rubenstein demolishes that fantasy on his blog.

   And for all his desire for civil conversations, Mr. Rotherham loves to wallow in gossip. At the start of the month, he refers us to a self serving piece by one of Klein’s proteges who shares Klein reality distortion field and seeks to denigrate Diane Ravitch.
   Dr. Ravitch has this response:

   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.

   Keep it classy, Andy.

3. It is encouraging to hear Klein come around to the work of Hirsch. That said, Klein points to Shankars’s mention of increased professionalism in teaching, and also points to Finland as a model. I agree that increasing the rigor of pre-service teaching programs is a good start. Nevertheless, I must also must point out that countries like Finland a) pay their teachers much better than the U.S., b) trust their teachers to make classroom level decisions about delivery, and c) don’t rely on standardized tests as measures of student learning and teacher effectiveness…all things that I would be surprised to hear Klein advocate for.