Joel Klein: 3 steps to better public education
Joel Klein, the former New York City Schools Chancellor, sat down with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task to discuss his new book “Lessons of Hope: How to Fix our Schools” and his views on the most effective approaches to remedying some of the toughest challenges facing educators around the country.
Klein confronted the bureaucracy of the largest school system in the country while he served as New York City Schools Chancellor, serving from 2002-2010. He was appointed by New York City’s then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg after Bloomberg recruited him for the post, despite Klein’s lack of background in the field of education.
During his tenure, Klein and Bloomberg implemented sweeping changes, closing and reorganizing many schools which the New York City Department of Education deemed as “failing,” and opening more than 600 new schools, many of them smaller schools and charter schools. This, and other policies lead to criticism of his approach, but Klein says the results speak for themselves. “The bottom line… the [high school] graduation rate, after it had been flat for almost a decade at 45% went up to 65%,” says Klein, speaking of his tenure as Chancellor.
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During his conversation with Yahoo Finance, Klein outlined the critical points he believes are essential in addressing some of the issues facing the American education system today which he refers to as “the core lessons of hope.”
The first, says Klein, is providing parents and caregivers options when selecting a school for their children. “Choice works in every industry in America and yet we think we can rely on a monopoly school system,” says Klein. He points out that most of the 600-plus schools opened while he was in office “were all schools of choice that parents selected.”
Another key strategy, according to Klein is to professionalize the field of teaching and at the same time remove the “assembly line approach to teaching [based on] seniority, job security. Let’s make it based on excellence; let’s recruit great people to teaching; let’s support them; let’s pay them well for performance and let’s pay them for taking on the tough jobs.”
Another crucial step, Klein says, is recruiting great school leaders. “Let’s get the best people we can to run our schools.” Klein also notes that the same students in a different school can get very different results. He emphasizes that school environments and teachers can make all the difference in terms of student performance and educational outcomes. “Family and poverty, these things matter, but kids in a different school with great teachers and great leadership get very different results.”
Task observes Klein seems to bring “private sector sensibilities to the public school system.”
Klein is currently the CEO of Amplify, which is an independent education subsidiary of News Corporation (NWS).
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