Klein in the Rockies : Klein Fibs to the Glitterati

Joel Klein flew into Aspen, Colorado to sell his anti-union gospel to an audience unaware of the dissatisfaction of parents and educators back in NYC. Conservative Fox News commentator Mort Kondracke, wrote a glowing piece about Klein’s remarks. We’ve included two responses to the article below.

By Ron Isaac

Dear Mr. Kondracke,

I was intrigued but not taken in by your Roll Call postmortem of New York City public schools chancellor Joel Klein’s vetting before the Aspen Institute’s prestigious “Ideas Festival.” Sounds like a ball. No doubt the guests at this banquet of thoughts feasted on red herrings and treated the ensuing mental ptomaine poisoning with applause and self-congratulation.

You describe Mr. Klein as a “star figure” whose “riveting” message was received by a “rapt” audience of “financial glitterati.” Deep pockets don’t make for deep wisdom, sir, and “glitterati” will not lead our kids to the promised land of skilled fulfillment and responsible citizenship.

Chancellor Klein, like all his fellow non-educators on his rah-rah corporate team, see teacher unions as a monolithic bugaboo, an obstructionist werewolf, a titan among predators, tearing huge chunks of freedom flesh from the birthright-pure body of American enterprise. He sees unions as a reverse panacea, inflicting systemic malaise with every new contractual protection.

Klein dredges up the same half-dozen fallacies that have been the staple diet of deluded pundits for many years. He was forced to make his pitch on the Aspen slalom because his credibility is shot in New York.

You would be hard-pressed to find a single educator in New York City who has a kind word for Chancellor Klein. Doesn’t his wholesale alienation of an entire professional workforce bother the sages of the Aspen Institute? Aren’t they just a tad curious about the extraordinary genesis of this unique loathing? If they won’t be honest brokers of doctrine, can’t they be objective observers of the educational scene?

Here are just a few points to consider:

1) The UFT’s own charter school, fully unionized, is performing splendidly according to everyone, including critics in whose throats union prosperity sticks like a chicken bone.

2) Union contracts are compatible with good labor-management relationships, as shown in such places as Dade County and Toledo.

3) New York City’s unionized schools are academically outpacing most school districts in the nation where collective bargaining is not allowed. This is no fluke. How does Klein account for it?

4)Despite the clear link between smaller class size and superior student achievement, Chancellor Klein openly resists measures that would bring New York City sizes in line with practically every flourishing district in the nation. The union is spearheading that movement.

5) Why has the Chancellor chosen to compromise student safety rather than collaborate with unions as in the past?

6) Why is there no transparency of his city agency’s operations, such as closed-door, no-bid professional development operations?

7) Why have parent organizations mutinied against the chancellor citywide?

Why has Klein determined that a person with no experience as a teacher or in educational administration and supervision can be an exemplary educational leader after a crash course, and be appointed as a building’s leader as a fait accompli, without any traditional interview process?

9) Why is Chancellor Klein wiping his hands and walking away from the substantial pitfalls of the No Child Left Behind Law?

10) With a bigger budget than some nations, why has the chancellor made his Department of Education more top-heavy than ever, at the expense of universal pre-k and programs for the gifted and academically needy” Why has he eviscerated science, foreign language, and arts programs across the board?

11) With the collapse of his micromanagement initiative, why does Klein still cling to his adversarial attitude against teachers, and scorch the educational earth with blame rather than cultivate new hope?

I do not presume to lecture you, Mr. Kondracke. As a thirty-five year veteran New York City public school teacher, I would welcome more than words could say, the chance to share with you thoughts that I have gathered not on the slippery slopes of Aspen, but of the City of New York.

Thank you.

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Klein Fibs to the Glitterati
By Peter Goodman

As the Klein initiatives continue to stumble he desperately tries to blame “teacher contracts” as the source of all evil. If my memory serves me right it was Klein who dismantled the highly regarded Chancellor’s District, a rigidly structured pre-K to 12 initiative, in a partnership with the teachers union, working with the poorest and lowest achieving schools.

Klein’s rigid topdown Regional initiative, which specifically excluded the union has been a dismal failure.

Klein has now distanced himself and encouraged NYC schools to self select into an Empowerment zone and work with considerable autonomy. Over 95% of the applicants, seemingly every school whose application wasn’t misplaced was “selected.”

Who is to blame for the failure of the Klein school system?

A leadership with virtually no school experience?

A system driven by press release with little or no transparency?

A tone deaf school district leader who alienates kids, parents, teachers and principals?

Of course not, blame “teacher contracts.”

A star figure at the second annual Aspen Institute Ideas Festival — attended by several hundred, mainly liberal intellectual and financial glitterati — was Joel Klein, the former Clinton aide who is now chancellor of New York City public schools.

Klein made a riveting case that teachers-union contracts are the main obstacle to improving urban education.

“The contract protects the interests of adults at the expense of kids,” he told a rapt audience, describing how it bars pay differentials based on student performance and service in difficult schools; makes it impossible for principals to fire underperforming teachers; and allows teachers to choose their own professional development tracks, regardless of supply-and-demand needs, such as those for more math and science teachers.

The reality is that management hires teachers and assigns them to schools and all teachers serve a three year probationary period. The “its the teacher unions fault” mantra is a canard. Klein espouses a Walmart union free environment that includes the de facto repeal of the 13th Amendment, the proper role of teachers according to Klein: peonage. He would be far more comfortable in China with union clones appointed by the local despot.

His ideas have proven totally incapable of building trust: and the success of schools is built upon trust among stakeholders.

It was the union, not Klein, that spent months internally debating and eventually creating a Lead Teacher position and negotiating it into the contract. The Peer Intervention Program, an assistance program for tenured teachers was created in 1988 to help teachers “who are in trouble in the classroom” has been highly successful.

As these pages have noted major teacher unions have negotiated contracts with “pay for performance” plans.

“Pay for performance,” “value-added,” and “tenure” are thorny issues: how do we measure teacher performance? Should individual teachers or schools be rewarded? Is tenure an impediment to raising pupil achievement or simply an excuse for management failures? Think tanks continue to issue reports that ignore input from key stakeholders, teachers and their unions.

It is distressing when the Aspen Institute invites key educators to an “idea conference” and ignores teacher union leaders.

The major initiative of Klein has been the rapid creation of over 150 small high schools: a good idea poorly executed. In the last few years older small schools have started appearing on the SURR (failing school) list. Two careful evaluations of the small school creation initiative, one by the teacher union and one by an evaluation firm have closely paralleled results.

Klein has spent his tenure demeaning his constituents: albeit teachers or principals or parents or unions and antagonism continues to grow.

The irony is that his “policy of blame” has driven teachers and parents and a host of public school advocates closer than ever.

He can talk to the “rich, famous and powerful” in the Rockies all he wants … until he talks to the real stakeholders, the public school “lifers,” our schools will continue to stumble.

If he cannot create and sustain trust instead of anger and hostility it is probably time for him to move along.