Interview with Joel Klein, Chancellor (2002-present)
New York City Department of Education
Hedrick Smith: You have the interesting experience of a layman coming into a field of specialists. You're not unique. There are others, like Alan Bersin. What do you do when you have not been an educational professional? How do you get your ideas for what you want to do?
Joel Klein: I think the first thing I did was set out to find good people to work with me, people who actually had some of the experience and expertise. Now, remember, one of the reasons you've seen recently so many what they call “nontraditional” superintendents or chancellors is because of a sense that the major issues in education are not simply technical issues, but really reorganization, reincentivizing a system that hasn't worked. This is the system throughout the United States in large, urban areas that simply hasn't worked very well for vast numbers of children. So, what you do is you bring in people with educational expertise and experience, and you build a team. And then those people obviously reach out to members of the community. I've met often times with the people in the universities here, at the education schools. You study the literature. You have advisors, and it's through that process that you bring a lot of the experience, expertise to the table.
But I continue to believe the really challenging issues in public education are not the issues that are, if you will, within the ambit of expertise. They're much more in the ambit of organization, management, accountability and, in the end, properly creating incentives.
Smith: Do you turn to people who may not be folks that you are going to put on your team? I mentioned the name of Alan Bersin. I think maybe Alan Bersin's somebody you turned to, or Tom Paysant, Tony Alvarado, people who've been around a long time, working at these problems. Can you talk a little bit about any of that kind of expertise?
Klein: Sure. One of the first things I did, even before I think I actually took the job, is I went out to San Diego and met with Alan Bersin, someone that I knew from my time in the Clinton administration, and Tony Alvarado. And I spent the day with the two of them and their teams, talking about the issues. I spent time with Roy Rohmer, who's also a nontraditional superintendent who's in Los Angeles. I still spend time with these people – with Arnie Duncan, in Philadelphia, just recently. I was talking to some other superintendents on a pretty regular basis, and Tom Paysant, whom you mentioned.
And you ask them about, you know, “What do you think about this?” “How are you tackling this kind of issue?” There're a lot of people willing to help. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who had actually been in New York, who's now the superintendent in Cleveland, she's been very helpful to me. So, there are a lot of people willing to give you their views – and their candid views, which I appreciate.
Smith: Now, when you get all done, what do you consider the hallmarks of your reform effort here in New York, gathered from these various sources?
Klein: First and foremost, is accountability. This is a system that has had no accountability. And very few systems that we know that work well have zero accountability. Basically whether you perform well or you perform poorly, you're fundamentally treated the same. And that's been an organizing principle.
The second thing, I think, that's been critical is the focus on leadership. You know, I went out, Rick, and created probably the most dynamic and certainly the largest Leadership Academy for training principals in the United States. We raised close to $75 million from the private sector to support this effort. I believe, and I believe it deeply, that a great principal is critical to restructuring education. Leadership matters. Teachers, others in the school building, guidance counselors, parents, they will tell you the difference between a great principal and one who is, shall we say, not ready for the job; and principals as administrators, as managers, or principals as instructional leaders, principals as instructional leaders, but with a focus on both. You've got to have the leadership qualities.
Again, it goes back to the issue you started with, in a way – the question of expertise. There is an expertise, obviously, in effective instruction. Although, quite frankly, as you know as well as anyone, there are lots of arguments about the different, if you will, pedagogic techniques. And I actually have some views about that. But no question, though, that running a school requires leadership skills. How you build a team, how you get your teachers to support what you're doing, how you get your community, your parents, how you bring in the resources that you need to help run it – those are major leadership issues. And we created this academy. We've got people like Jack Welch, Dick Parsons working with us on this academy and really focusing on leadership. I think it's critical.
The third thing we did was focus on a core curriculum. Biggest problem we have in New York City is our students, many of them, are not ready for basic math and reading. I mean we have kids in high school – this is hard to believe – we have kids in high school who can't read. And one wonders how this happens; it's because the system just pushes people through the system without, again, any accountability.
So, we focused on trying to shape a core instructional approach and realign our administrative resources to implement that instructional approach. And we've had enormous, I think, success in the reorganization – not that it's been easy. But we now have a local instructional leader responsible for ten or so schools, with a real focus on why are our children not learning reading and math. That's key.
The next thing we did which, I think, will be a hallmark, is our New Schools strategy. And that has two components. One, we welcomed charters. I am a guy who believes we need innovation. We need people with fresh blood and different ideas side by side with the current system. And so we've been very user-friendly to charters, and I'm glad to say we're having real success in attracting people. If you read in the papers, you'll hear about Amistad, which is really an extraordinary operation – a middle school charter in New Haven that's doing outstanding work with very hard-to-serve kids. They're coming to New York, and I'm proud of that. KIPP Academy, some of the others.
And then a lot of our secondary schools, which had two, three, four thousand students and graduation rates that were pitiful – 25, 30% – we're restructuring them to make them smaller, academically more rigorous and focused on student achievement. And we've gotten a lot of support for that. I'm really proud of it, especially given my past. Bill Gates and his foundation have supported us in a major way, so that's been a very successful initiative. And we know something about that initiative, which is, right now the schools we've opened under that initiative have much higher attendance rates. I mean much higher. And they have higher promotion rates. It's early, but the early data are very encouraging.
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