Joel Klein

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Joel I. Klein is Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States with over 1.1 million students in over 1,420 schools.

Prior to his appointment to Chancellor in 2002 ^[1] by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Klein was Counsel to Bertelsmann and served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States in charge of the Antitrust Division. Klein may be best remembered for prosecuting the United States Department of Justice antitrust case against Microsoft. Before heading up the Antitrust Division Klein was the deputy to Anne Bingaman, (the wife of Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico ) in that office, and worked in the White House Counsel's office. He was in private practice for many years, specializing in appellate cases. Klein received his B.A. from Columbia and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He served as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. Klein is married to Nicole Seligman, General Counsel to Howard Stringer of Sony Corp. Seligman represented former President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings in the United States Senate. Klein is rumored to aspire to succeed Mayor Bloomberg, who is term limited and cannot run in the 2009 election.^{[citation needed]}

1 Early Life
2 Work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
3 Criticisms
4 References

Early Life

Klein was born October 25, 1946 in the Astoria, Queens neighborhood of New York, New York. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1971, Klein clerked for Chief Judge David Bazelon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1973 until 1974, before then clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. Klein joined the legal team of a mental health clinic, called the Mental Health Law Project in 1975. In that capacity, Klein developed a specialty in health care and constitutional matters[1].

Work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Despite their opposing positions in the Justice Department antitrust case against Microsoft, Klein was able to work with the Gates Foundation to fund small high schools in New York. At the 43 small high schools funded by the Gates Foundation graduation rates are 73% compared to 53% at the schools they replaced. [2]

Criticisms

The appointment of Klein as chancellor drew fire from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the labor union representing most New York City teachers, because he lacked education experience. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to receive a special waiver from State Commissioner of Education in Albany, New York to appoint Klein as NYC Chancellor since he held no educational experience or background [3]. Klein was also criticized by the UFT for micromanagement of teachers and installing a deficient literacy curriculum [4]. In 2006, a Klein-led effort to install a charter-school within a successful lower east side New York City public school, NEST+M, was successfully defeated by a PTA lawsuit. [5]Klein is also criticized by progressive educators--though not by the UFT--for buying into standardized tests as the exclusive means of determining the progress of schools and of students. A consequence of this is the depreciation of science, music, and art in the curriculum, in favor of the tested skills, literacy and social studies. In general, critics assert that a test-taking culture tends to dominate schools to the detriment of a more meaningful curriculum. Klein's antics over the years have included attempting to use student test scores as the sole factor in determining teacher tenure, a move the UFT successfully defeated. More recently, Klein has proposed that each principal assign a minimum number of unsatisfactory ratings to teachers each year, whether the teachers deserve them or not. Not surprisingly, more teachers (whose attrition rates have always been high) have resigned under Klein's leadership than that of any previous chancellor in the city's history.

Klein has also been widely criticized by both parents and students for his enforcement of a ban on cell phones in all New York City public schools. Parent organizations have been very vocal about their opinion that cell phones are a critical lifeline for their children in the case of an emergency.[6] Students feel that methods of enforcing the ban (unannounced metal detector scanning, primarily) violate their privacy and that money and time spent enforcing the ban could be going toward a better cause.[7] Further adding to the head scratching is that on February 27, 2008 the New York Times reported that some schools will be rewarding good grades with cell phones for students. [8]

Another change that Joel Klein has made to the school system of New York City is increasing the amount of standardized testing. Teacher tenure is also being tied to increased test scores.

Joel Klein has also been criticized for implementing what was originally called the 37 and 1/2 minute program. Parents of New York City schoolchildren report the new program has impacted life outside the classroom and that parents were provided initially with little to no information about the program[9]. The origin of this program was a renegotiated contract with the United Federation of Teachers, in which the teachers agreed to teach longer into the day for students who need special instruction the most.