By MICHAEL WINERIP | NY Times
Published: August 14, 2011
In December, the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, announced a new program: 13 research fellows would be selected to advise the education commissioner and the 17-member board. The fellows would be paid as much as $189,000 each, in private money; to date, $4.5 million has been raised, including $1 million donated by Dr. Tisch, a member of one of New York’s wealthiest families.
The chancellor sees the program as a way to add resources and expertise at a time of severe budget cutting (state financing of the Education Department is down 35 percent since 2009). She said the fellows would help ensure that the $700 million federal Race to the Top grant New York was awarded last year was properly spent.
“People in the department were burning out,” Dr. Tisch said. “This was a great way to enhance our capacity.”
As Dr. Tisch put it, what’s not to like about free fellows?
Plenty, according to several current and former board members.
Public education has never been so divided, between those like Dr. Tisch, Commissioner John B. King Jr. and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who support the Obama administration’s signature Race to the Top initiative and its emphasis on standardized tests and charter schools; and dissenters on the board, who call it a Race to the Bottom and put their faith in teachers as well as traditional public schools. The Race to the Bottom folks warn that the supposedly free fellows come at a stiff political price.
The Bottoms: “Private people give money to support things they’re interested in,” said Roger B. Tilles, a lawyer and longtime education administrator who has been a regent for six years.
Those donors include Bill Gates ($892,000), who is leading the charge to evaluate teachers, principals and schools using students’ test scores; the National Association of Charter School Administrators ($50,000) and the Robbins Foundation ($500,000), which finance charter expansion; and the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation ($500,000), whose mission statement includes advancing “Mayor Bloomberg’s school reform agenda.”
Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Gates are expert at using philanthropy in a way that pressures government to follow their public policy agendas.
The Tops: Dr. Tisch and Dr. King emphasize the fellows’ education credentials and administrative experience. Three of the 11 named so far have doctorates; four are Ivy League graduates; two have law degrees. One worked for New York City’s Education Department overseeing the development of the 32-variable mathematical formula used to evaluate teachers. Five have worked for charters, like the commissioner.
The Bottoms: Betty A. Rosa, who spent 23 years as a teacher and principal before becoming a New York City regional superintendent and a regent, said it was “absolutely wrong” that the fellows had spent what she considered to be so little time working in schools. Six of the 11 have never taught. The five others have a total of 10 years in the classroom and one as a principal.
The Bottoms: Saul B. Cohen, a former president of Queens College who retired in December after 18 years as a regent, is angry that the board was not consulted about selecting the fellows. “They’re supposed to be advising us, but we had no role,” he said.
Dr. Cohen was also upset that the state’s Race to the Top application — which included major policy decisions like using student test results to evaluate teachers and principals — was not shown to the Regents before it was submitted to Washington. “The board had to rubber-stamp it after the fact,” he said.
Dr. Rosa said the Regents saw only “bits and pieces” of the application beforehand.
Several board members said they had been marginalized under Dr. Tisch, who took over in 2009 and is widely considered to be the most powerful, controlling chancellor in memory.
The Tops: Dr. King said that picking the fellows was the commissioner’s decision and that there was no legal requirement to consult the Regents. He said that the Race to the Top application was completed right at the deadline and that there was no time to show the Regents. At previous meetings they had been consulted on the main policy issues, he said.
The Bottoms: After 10 months of meetings in Albany, a task force of 63 educators from all over the state concluded in April that students’ scores on state tests should count for no more than 20 percent of an evaluation of teachers and principals. Instead, the commissioner adopted the position favored by the fellows: that up to 40 percent of an evaluation could be based on state tests.
John E. Bierwirth, superintendent of the Herricks School District on Long Island, said he believed the decision was preordained. At task force meetings, he said, he tried to get fellows to reveal their thinking. “I said tell us your conclusions and give us a chance to react; they wouldn’t,” he recalled.
After putting in so many hours, Dr. Bierwirth said, “some of us felt used; I felt irrelevant.”
The Tops: Dr. King said that people understood from the beginning that the task force was advisory, and that 80 to 90 percent of its recommendations were adopted. “Their work was of great value,” he said. He pointed out that only 20 percent of the evaluation was required to be based on state tests; each district, subject to agreement with the local union, will decide whether to use them for the other 20 percent.
The Bottoms: Several regents complained that it had been hard to prepare for board meetings because in recent years, agenda items had been posted on the Internet so late. Dr. Cohen called this a bureaucratic strategy to weaken the board’s role.
The Tops: Dr. Tisch said the only reason the postings had been late was a lack of staff.
The Bottoms: Race to the Top requires states to develop student-data collection systems. Recently the Education Department awarded a $27 million no-bid contract to Wireless Generation, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch and overseen by a former New York City chancellor, Joel I. Klein. Mr. Klein is a good friend of Dr. Tisch.
Mr. Tilles said that at a closed executive session of the Regents, he and several others told Dr. Tisch and Dr. King that they were concerned about the appearance of favoritism.
“We raised it and were dismissed,” he said. Mr. Tilles and Dr. Rosa said the contract should be put out for bid.
The Tops: State officials said discussions with Wireless Generation had begun long before Mr. Klein joined the company.
Dr. King said the contract was not put out for bid because the state was under pressure to meet a Race to the Top deadline and the Wireless Generation system was already compatible with New York City’s data system.
“At the executive session a lot of people asked a lot of detailed questions,” Dr. King said, but no action was taken.
“The board doesn’t participate in the selection of vendors,” he added.
The state comptroller’s office is investigating whether it was proper to award the contract without bidding.
Showing posts with label NY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NY. Show all posts
Friday, October 14, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Preparing for State Tests, to a Hip-Hop Beat
By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: August 11, 2011
The team of six high school girls new to America sat frozen waiting for the next missing lyric, whiteboard and marker at the ready. They glanced toward their classmates, who sat nearby, in two competing teams.
One of their instructors, Sam Sellers, otherwise known as Rabbi Darkside, started a beat. Then Jamel Mims, otherwise known as M.C. Tingbudong, began rapping the lyrics of a song whose rhymes did not contain the familiar curses or boasts, but the vocabulary that New York high school students need to pass their Regents test in American history.
“Follow along closely so it won’t get convoluted,” Mr. Mims, 25, rapped, flicking his wrist to the beat. “The supreme law of the land is called the ...”
He paused. The girls conferred in their native language, Spanish, scrambled for the marker, and hoisted their whiteboard into the air. “The Constitution!” they shouted in English, reading off their answer.
“Righteous,” M.C. Tingbudong said.
In the realm of dry high school material in New York City, perhaps nothing is drier than Regents exams. The multiple-choice questions often read as if they are straight out of a 1950s textbook — and in fact, the language, showcased in the state’s extensive test archives, has remained essentially the same for decades. If there was an opposite of contemporary urban street culture, it might go a little something like this Regents classic:
“Which idea did the founding fathers include in the Constitution that allows Congress to meet the needs of a changing society? 1) federalism 2) separation of powers 3) the elastic clause 4) states’ rights.” (The answer can be found below.)
But instead of treating street culture as something that has no place in a classroom, it is being used as a vehicle to deliver instruction. That is the idea behind Fresh Prep, a program run by the Urban Arts Partnership that is trying to help hard-to-reach students pass the history Regents tests, which they must do to graduate.
“Linguistically, as far as the communities I work in, there is certainly bias toward them in these tests,” Mr. Mims said after a review class recently. A native of Washington, he also teaches Mandarin and got his rap name while studying rap culture in China. “It’s an effort to bridge the engagement gap,” Mr. Mims said.
Rap is also lyric-intensive, and its rhymes can be used as a device to help with memorizing facts. So the organization, which has attracted $400,000 in donations to develop and implement an arts-based Regents review curriculum, reached out to Mr. Sellers (whose rap name comes from being “the Jewish kid in our group of friends” growing up in Buffalo) and Tracee Worley, a history teacher, performance artist and curriculum designer.
Mr. Sellers, 33, had also taught history, so he was on familiar turf when coming up with two dozen rap songs with rapid-fire lyrics to review global history and American history. Students are given a 250-page workbook in which to fill in the blanks and write answers, and they are supposed to download the songs onto their MP3 players and memorize them at home.
So far, Fresh Prep has shown strong results in the high school where it started with 30 students in 2009 — significantly more students passed that year — and promising results in some classrooms at seven high-poverty high schools where it was used last year, the organization said. But there are still some problems, in part because hip-hop as a review method is hard to teach to a neophyte teacher. Now Urban Arts is revising its strategy to make sure a Fresh Prep artist instructor is always in the room.
“What we found is that when we had instructors who come from a hip-hop pedagogical foundation, the program is implemented with more fidelity,” said Tauheedah Baker-Jones, 33, the manager of the program.
This year, Mr. Sellers and Mr. Mims are teaching a summer class at Gregorio Luperon High School for Science and Mathematics in Washington Heights, a school for Spanish-speaking immigrants who are so new that they learn history in Spanish, not English, and take a Spanish-language version of the exams.
It is their first time trying Fresh Prep in a classroom of students who are still learning English, and on a recent visit, the energy in the 90-minute class was high, but the vocabulary was tough, and the songs moved quickly:
“First Amendment, that’s freedom of speech, needed that desperately
Freedom of expression, plus church and state separately
Right to bear arms the deuce, Third the quartering of troops
Four: protection from search and seizure unless a warrant is used.”
Too fast for some, even though they were given the written lyrics.
“It’s difficult,” said Yurinda Acevedo, 16, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic in May 2010 and looked slightly embarrassed as she tried to follow along. “The English is not a piece of cake.” She also did not like the music, and had a suggestion: why not set the history to meringue, or perico ripiao, a Dominican form of that art?
But Wilny Estrella, 17, who has been in the United States for two years and, like most of the students in the class, failed her Regents in June, stood up at the end of class to offer a shout-out of recognition to the teachers. “I wasn’t good at history, but in the days I have been here I have learned a lot,” she said.
Saulio M. Tuero, a bilingual social studies teacher, kept score in the fill-in-the-blank lyrics game — which ended in a three-way tie — and helped out in Spanish, translating the concepts for the students. (The answer to the Regents question above is No. 3.)
Normally, Mr. Tuero said, he reviews material in Spanish, and focuses on teaching test-taking strategies. Because the Regents are so predictable over time, “I know every single question on this test,” he said.
It is an experiment for him to try out Fresh Prep and its curriculum, in part because as the Department of Education teacher in the room, he is the one who will be held responsible if the students fail when the history Regents is given again next week.
But half of the 20 students in the class also have yet to pass their English Regents, which includes an essay. And in that sense, he said, the hip-hop history review was playing a double role. “I’m not that worried about getting them to pass this test eventually, but the one thing they don’t get enough of is English,” he said. For his students to even read along with the intricate lyrics, he said, “just doing that is like a major advancement.”
Published: August 11, 2011
The team of six high school girls new to America sat frozen waiting for the next missing lyric, whiteboard and marker at the ready. They glanced toward their classmates, who sat nearby, in two competing teams.
One of their instructors, Sam Sellers, otherwise known as Rabbi Darkside, started a beat. Then Jamel Mims, otherwise known as M.C. Tingbudong, began rapping the lyrics of a song whose rhymes did not contain the familiar curses or boasts, but the vocabulary that New York high school students need to pass their Regents test in American history.
“Follow along closely so it won’t get convoluted,” Mr. Mims, 25, rapped, flicking his wrist to the beat. “The supreme law of the land is called the ...”
He paused. The girls conferred in their native language, Spanish, scrambled for the marker, and hoisted their whiteboard into the air. “The Constitution!” they shouted in English, reading off their answer.
“Righteous,” M.C. Tingbudong said.
In the realm of dry high school material in New York City, perhaps nothing is drier than Regents exams. The multiple-choice questions often read as if they are straight out of a 1950s textbook — and in fact, the language, showcased in the state’s extensive test archives, has remained essentially the same for decades. If there was an opposite of contemporary urban street culture, it might go a little something like this Regents classic:
“Which idea did the founding fathers include in the Constitution that allows Congress to meet the needs of a changing society? 1) federalism 2) separation of powers 3) the elastic clause 4) states’ rights.” (The answer can be found below.)
But instead of treating street culture as something that has no place in a classroom, it is being used as a vehicle to deliver instruction. That is the idea behind Fresh Prep, a program run by the Urban Arts Partnership that is trying to help hard-to-reach students pass the history Regents tests, which they must do to graduate.
“Linguistically, as far as the communities I work in, there is certainly bias toward them in these tests,” Mr. Mims said after a review class recently. A native of Washington, he also teaches Mandarin and got his rap name while studying rap culture in China. “It’s an effort to bridge the engagement gap,” Mr. Mims said.
Rap is also lyric-intensive, and its rhymes can be used as a device to help with memorizing facts. So the organization, which has attracted $400,000 in donations to develop and implement an arts-based Regents review curriculum, reached out to Mr. Sellers (whose rap name comes from being “the Jewish kid in our group of friends” growing up in Buffalo) and Tracee Worley, a history teacher, performance artist and curriculum designer.
Mr. Sellers, 33, had also taught history, so he was on familiar turf when coming up with two dozen rap songs with rapid-fire lyrics to review global history and American history. Students are given a 250-page workbook in which to fill in the blanks and write answers, and they are supposed to download the songs onto their MP3 players and memorize them at home.
So far, Fresh Prep has shown strong results in the high school where it started with 30 students in 2009 — significantly more students passed that year — and promising results in some classrooms at seven high-poverty high schools where it was used last year, the organization said. But there are still some problems, in part because hip-hop as a review method is hard to teach to a neophyte teacher. Now Urban Arts is revising its strategy to make sure a Fresh Prep artist instructor is always in the room.
“What we found is that when we had instructors who come from a hip-hop pedagogical foundation, the program is implemented with more fidelity,” said Tauheedah Baker-Jones, 33, the manager of the program.
This year, Mr. Sellers and Mr. Mims are teaching a summer class at Gregorio Luperon High School for Science and Mathematics in Washington Heights, a school for Spanish-speaking immigrants who are so new that they learn history in Spanish, not English, and take a Spanish-language version of the exams.
It is their first time trying Fresh Prep in a classroom of students who are still learning English, and on a recent visit, the energy in the 90-minute class was high, but the vocabulary was tough, and the songs moved quickly:
“First Amendment, that’s freedom of speech, needed that desperately
Freedom of expression, plus church and state separately
Right to bear arms the deuce, Third the quartering of troops
Four: protection from search and seizure unless a warrant is used.”
Too fast for some, even though they were given the written lyrics.
“It’s difficult,” said Yurinda Acevedo, 16, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic in May 2010 and looked slightly embarrassed as she tried to follow along. “The English is not a piece of cake.” She also did not like the music, and had a suggestion: why not set the history to meringue, or perico ripiao, a Dominican form of that art?
But Wilny Estrella, 17, who has been in the United States for two years and, like most of the students in the class, failed her Regents in June, stood up at the end of class to offer a shout-out of recognition to the teachers. “I wasn’t good at history, but in the days I have been here I have learned a lot,” she said.
Saulio M. Tuero, a bilingual social studies teacher, kept score in the fill-in-the-blank lyrics game — which ended in a three-way tie — and helped out in Spanish, translating the concepts for the students. (The answer to the Regents question above is No. 3.)
Normally, Mr. Tuero said, he reviews material in Spanish, and focuses on teaching test-taking strategies. Because the Regents are so predictable over time, “I know every single question on this test,” he said.
It is an experiment for him to try out Fresh Prep and its curriculum, in part because as the Department of Education teacher in the room, he is the one who will be held responsible if the students fail when the history Regents is given again next week.
But half of the 20 students in the class also have yet to pass their English Regents, which includes an essay. And in that sense, he said, the hip-hop history review was playing a double role. “I’m not that worried about getting them to pass this test eventually, but the one thing they don’t get enough of is English,” he said. For his students to even read along with the intricate lyrics, he said, “just doing that is like a major advancement.”
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Why we shouldn't close failing schools: Vulnerable young men of color stand to lose
Pedro Noguera | New York Daily News Opinion Guest Contributor
March 31, 2011
For the last five years, a coalition of corporations, philanthropies and educators such as myself, called Winning Strategies/Black Male Donor Collaborative, has been working to call attention to the enormous challenges facing black and Latino men in New York City.
Our concern is that too little has been done by city leaders to reverse the disastrous trends facing this segment of the population. Mayor Bloomberg used his last State of the City speech to announce that he would launch an initiative to address the needs of black and Latino males, but so far there has been scant evidence of such a push from either him or his new schools chancellor, Cathie Black.
New York cannot afford to wait any longer. A 2010 report by the Community Service Society found that only one out of four young black men in the city is employed, and that this group had been the hardest hit of all demographics by the recession. "Black men ages 16-24 without a high school diploma or equivalent were almost completely pushed out of the labor market during the recession," the study noted. A 2009 report by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that in the poorest neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the Bronx, the unemployment rate may be as high as 46%.
It should surprise no one that the neighborhoods with the highest unemployment also have schools with the poorest performance indicators. The two problems feed into each other. Many of these schools have been identified for closure by the Education Department: A total of 13 schools will be phased out by June 2011, with about 20 more to close in the following school year.
Something must be done about failing schools, but is closing them the best strategy? A 2009 study conducted by the University of Chicago found that when schools in that city were closed, "Most students who transferred out of closing schools reenrolled in schools that were academically weak."
A similar study conducted in the same year by the Center for New York City Affairs found that small high schools replacing bigger ones - the infamous "dropout factories" of urban lore - "are no panacea," with high teacher turnover and spotty records on attendance and graduation.
As my NYU colleague Diane Ravitch has written, "It is easy to close schools, disperse the students and claim victory. But no school is improved and no student is helped by closing schools." There is evidence that school choice policies have made it possible for many schools to avoid serving the most challenging students.
of the schools targeted for closure is the Urban Assembly Academy for History and Citizenship for Young Men in the South Bronx. The Education Department cited its graduation rate (which has hovered above or near 50%) as the primary reason for this decision. Yes, schools should be held to a higher standard, but when the rate for black and Latino males citywide is lower than the academy's, it's hard to see the wisdom of this strategy.
Urban Assembly was created for the explicit purpose of educating young men of color. Before shutting the school down, the Education Department must examine why it failed and devise new ways to support its students.
Last year, Ronald Mincy of Columbia University and I released a study titled "Understanding the Education Trajectories of Young Black Men in New York City: Elementary and Middle-School Years." What we found was disturbing: Less than 30% of black and Latino males are graduating with Regents diplomas from city high schools.
Instead of shuffling underperforming students from one failing school to another, we must buckle down and apply interventions - high-quality preschool, extended class time, accelerated summer school, access to mentors and social workers, etc. - that have worked in other districts.
This is not merely a black or Latino problem. Our city cannot afford to bear the economic and social costs of continued failure. Every dollar we spend to incarcerate a young person is a dollar we don't have available for education.
The current situation also places a tremendous social burden on families and communities that have grown weary from seeing countless young men of promise become trapped in a cycle of failure.
We stand ready to assist Chancellor Black and Mayor Bloomberg. But are they ready to lead? There is a broad array of individuals and
organizations ready to take concrete actions on strategies that have proven effective elsewhere. We need our policymakers to work with us.
We can and must do better at serving the needs of this population than we have done in the past. It's time for all New Yorkers to insist that we do.
Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University.
March 31, 2011
For the last five years, a coalition of corporations, philanthropies and educators such as myself, called Winning Strategies/Black Male Donor Collaborative, has been working to call attention to the enormous challenges facing black and Latino men in New York City.
Our concern is that too little has been done by city leaders to reverse the disastrous trends facing this segment of the population. Mayor Bloomberg used his last State of the City speech to announce that he would launch an initiative to address the needs of black and Latino males, but so far there has been scant evidence of such a push from either him or his new schools chancellor, Cathie Black.
New York cannot afford to wait any longer. A 2010 report by the Community Service Society found that only one out of four young black men in the city is employed, and that this group had been the hardest hit of all demographics by the recession. "Black men ages 16-24 without a high school diploma or equivalent were almost completely pushed out of the labor market during the recession," the study noted. A 2009 report by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that in the poorest neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the Bronx, the unemployment rate may be as high as 46%.
It should surprise no one that the neighborhoods with the highest unemployment also have schools with the poorest performance indicators. The two problems feed into each other. Many of these schools have been identified for closure by the Education Department: A total of 13 schools will be phased out by June 2011, with about 20 more to close in the following school year.
Something must be done about failing schools, but is closing them the best strategy? A 2009 study conducted by the University of Chicago found that when schools in that city were closed, "Most students who transferred out of closing schools reenrolled in schools that were academically weak."
A similar study conducted in the same year by the Center for New York City Affairs found that small high schools replacing bigger ones - the infamous "dropout factories" of urban lore - "are no panacea," with high teacher turnover and spotty records on attendance and graduation.
As my NYU colleague Diane Ravitch has written, "It is easy to close schools, disperse the students and claim victory. But no school is improved and no student is helped by closing schools." There is evidence that school choice policies have made it possible for many schools to avoid serving the most challenging students.
of the schools targeted for closure is the Urban Assembly Academy for History and Citizenship for Young Men in the South Bronx. The Education Department cited its graduation rate (which has hovered above or near 50%) as the primary reason for this decision. Yes, schools should be held to a higher standard, but when the rate for black and Latino males citywide is lower than the academy's, it's hard to see the wisdom of this strategy.
Urban Assembly was created for the explicit purpose of educating young men of color. Before shutting the school down, the Education Department must examine why it failed and devise new ways to support its students.
Last year, Ronald Mincy of Columbia University and I released a study titled "Understanding the Education Trajectories of Young Black Men in New York City: Elementary and Middle-School Years." What we found was disturbing: Less than 30% of black and Latino males are graduating with Regents diplomas from city high schools.
Instead of shuffling underperforming students from one failing school to another, we must buckle down and apply interventions - high-quality preschool, extended class time, accelerated summer school, access to mentors and social workers, etc. - that have worked in other districts.
This is not merely a black or Latino problem. Our city cannot afford to bear the economic and social costs of continued failure. Every dollar we spend to incarcerate a young person is a dollar we don't have available for education.
The current situation also places a tremendous social burden on families and communities that have grown weary from seeing countless young men of promise become trapped in a cycle of failure.
We stand ready to assist Chancellor Black and Mayor Bloomberg. But are they ready to lead? There is a broad array of individuals and
organizations ready to take concrete actions on strategies that have proven effective elsewhere. We need our policymakers to work with us.
We can and must do better at serving the needs of this population than we have done in the past. It's time for all New Yorkers to insist that we do.
Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Can a Publisher Run Schools? The Experts Debate
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN | NY Times
November 24, 2010
Michael R. Bloomberg, in his successful bid to become mayor, sold himself as an expert manager, a businessman who had made a fortune in private industry. He has now named Cathleen P. Black, a magazine executive, to be the next chancellor of New York City’s public schools. Why?
“Cathie Black is a superstar manager who has succeeded spectacularly in the private sector,” Mayor Bloomberg said this month. “She is brilliant, she is innovative, she is driven — and there is virtually nobody who knows more about the needs of the 21st-century work force for which we need to prepare our kids.”
Ms. Black also has virtually no professional experience in education — not at the head of a classroom, not in charge of a school district, certainly not responsible for 1.1 million children.
Is it, then, a sure thing that an expert manager in one field can succeed in another? The New York Times asked four prominent experts in business management what they made of the mayor’s choice, and his confidence in her transferable skills. As a group, they were not put off by the idea. They held up several examples of corporate chieftains who hopscotched successfully from industry to industry, people like Louis V. Gerstner Jr., who went from RJR Nabisco, a maker of food and cigarettes, to I.B.M, a maker of computer equipment.
But the management gurus stopped short of echoing Mr. Bloomberg’s view that Ms. Black was indeed the perfect choice.
•
Warren G. Bennis, a distinguished professor of business at the University of Southern California who has written about management for half a century.
Professor Bennis said he had concerns about the process by which Mr. Bloomberg made his pick, given how few people at the upper echelons of the school system appear to have been consulted before the public announcement. But he thought Ms. Black could still succeed.
“It was an unusual way of handling a major appointment,” said Professor Bennis, who has served as provost of the State University of New York in Buffalo and as president of the University of Cincinnati. “It does not mean she won’t be successful. But my point is, it’s not the way it usually is done and it will create some handicaps for her. The groups that she will be working most closely with have not been consulted about the appointment, and that, in my experience, is not an effective way to make a top appointment.”
Still, he was careful to say: “Based on what I know of her background and experience, chances are she has the stuff. She’ll get to know the territory. I think she has the emotional intelligence, and she’s had the habit of success in her career. That’s very important. But the process is highly unusual and is a handicap to anyone who takes the position under those conditions.”
•
Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at Yale University’s School of Management.
Professor Sonnenfeld said he appreciated the debate over Ms. Black’s prior credentials, but said it was not fair.
“I don’t know if it’s a gender issue,” he said. “That she’s not an educator is obvious. Skills and temperament, that should be the debate, not the résumé issues.”
From what he has seen of Ms. Black over the years, he said, she has done well managing across difficult constituencies and in times of scarce resources.
“She’s also had to deal with strong and difficult personalities. She’s the one who said quite proudly before other newspapers woke up to this, ‘We’re going to have women on the front page, not just in the style section, and we’re going to have African-Americans on our front, not ghettoized in the sports pages.’ It’s that same kind of inspirational entrepreneurial thinking that can make a difference here.
“The truth is, I’ve often been skeptical about general managers being interchangeable regardless of the industry, but it’s possible to overcome that. But it’s not beyond her skill set. She listens well and intelligently and does find common ground, but she will have to assiduously build the case for why she has something to add here and a different way to get the job done.”
•
Michael Useem, director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Gifted managers from outside an industry,” Professor Useem said, “can indeed come in and perform extremely well if they bring an underlying skill set that the enterprise needs at the moment.”
As for Ms. Black, he said, her “history at Hearst was extraordinary in terms of making difficult decisions, building the enterprise up and keeping costs down.”
“She was put in charge of various magazines that by my recollection, under her leadership did indeed prosper,” he added. “Keep in mind, these were well within her comfort zone. So it was a natural fit. School superintendent is a big stretch, of course.”
He ticked off several wrinkles that might pose fresh challenges for her: “For starters, the number of stakeholders is much greater in public education than in the private sector: regulators, the city, the union, teachers, parents. So you’ve got to be a very fast study in who the major stakeholders are and what they want.
“She is walking into an extremely difficult crucible — maybe fishbowl is a better way to put it — where these forces that are putting demands on you and resistance against what you’d like to achieve are probably as big as she’s ever experienced in her career. In the private sector, investors want total shareholder return and employees want higher pay and pensions and customers want the cheapest products, and her track record in adjudicating between these extremely conflicting pressures is very good.”
•
Todd Jick, professor of management at Columbia Business School, who has written a book, “Managing Change.”
“The question always comes up,” Professor Jick said. “Are leaders who come from inside more likely to succeed and more effective at making change than people brought in from outside? That’s the question and there is usually a split opinion. Insiders better understand the culture. Outsiders are dispassionate, objective and less indebted to people.”
In general, he said, outsiders who have some familiarity with the industry they are entering fare better, but that is not a prerequisite.
“By choosing an outsider, the likelihood is there’s some expectation for new thinking and new approaches.”
Examining a two-page job description of the chancellor’s role that the school system has made available, Professor Jick said he was struck by the use of verbs like “ensure,” “control” and “promulgate.”
The verbs do not evoke big change. “It sounds,” he said, “more like continuous improvement. But she will have to determine if that is sufficient.”
“She needs to make her agenda and assessment process transparent to the organization. This can’t be enshrouded in secrecy as she takes on the job. She can set out to do a listening tour that can be made transparent. She can talk about how no major decisions will be made in the first three months. She can set out the main areas she wants to learn about and examine. She can set out her own ambitions and aspirations for the school system. She can take some of the mystery out of her being unknown to most people in the school system.”
November 24, 2010
Michael R. Bloomberg, in his successful bid to become mayor, sold himself as an expert manager, a businessman who had made a fortune in private industry. He has now named Cathleen P. Black, a magazine executive, to be the next chancellor of New York City’s public schools. Why?
“Cathie Black is a superstar manager who has succeeded spectacularly in the private sector,” Mayor Bloomberg said this month. “She is brilliant, she is innovative, she is driven — and there is virtually nobody who knows more about the needs of the 21st-century work force for which we need to prepare our kids.”
Ms. Black also has virtually no professional experience in education — not at the head of a classroom, not in charge of a school district, certainly not responsible for 1.1 million children.
Is it, then, a sure thing that an expert manager in one field can succeed in another? The New York Times asked four prominent experts in business management what they made of the mayor’s choice, and his confidence in her transferable skills. As a group, they were not put off by the idea. They held up several examples of corporate chieftains who hopscotched successfully from industry to industry, people like Louis V. Gerstner Jr., who went from RJR Nabisco, a maker of food and cigarettes, to I.B.M, a maker of computer equipment.
But the management gurus stopped short of echoing Mr. Bloomberg’s view that Ms. Black was indeed the perfect choice.
•
Warren G. Bennis, a distinguished professor of business at the University of Southern California who has written about management for half a century.
Professor Bennis said he had concerns about the process by which Mr. Bloomberg made his pick, given how few people at the upper echelons of the school system appear to have been consulted before the public announcement. But he thought Ms. Black could still succeed.
“It was an unusual way of handling a major appointment,” said Professor Bennis, who has served as provost of the State University of New York in Buffalo and as president of the University of Cincinnati. “It does not mean she won’t be successful. But my point is, it’s not the way it usually is done and it will create some handicaps for her. The groups that she will be working most closely with have not been consulted about the appointment, and that, in my experience, is not an effective way to make a top appointment.”
Still, he was careful to say: “Based on what I know of her background and experience, chances are she has the stuff. She’ll get to know the territory. I think she has the emotional intelligence, and she’s had the habit of success in her career. That’s very important. But the process is highly unusual and is a handicap to anyone who takes the position under those conditions.”
•
Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at Yale University’s School of Management.
Professor Sonnenfeld said he appreciated the debate over Ms. Black’s prior credentials, but said it was not fair.
“I don’t know if it’s a gender issue,” he said. “That she’s not an educator is obvious. Skills and temperament, that should be the debate, not the résumé issues.”
From what he has seen of Ms. Black over the years, he said, she has done well managing across difficult constituencies and in times of scarce resources.
“She’s also had to deal with strong and difficult personalities. She’s the one who said quite proudly before other newspapers woke up to this, ‘We’re going to have women on the front page, not just in the style section, and we’re going to have African-Americans on our front, not ghettoized in the sports pages.’ It’s that same kind of inspirational entrepreneurial thinking that can make a difference here.
“The truth is, I’ve often been skeptical about general managers being interchangeable regardless of the industry, but it’s possible to overcome that. But it’s not beyond her skill set. She listens well and intelligently and does find common ground, but she will have to assiduously build the case for why she has something to add here and a different way to get the job done.”
•
Michael Useem, director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Gifted managers from outside an industry,” Professor Useem said, “can indeed come in and perform extremely well if they bring an underlying skill set that the enterprise needs at the moment.”
As for Ms. Black, he said, her “history at Hearst was extraordinary in terms of making difficult decisions, building the enterprise up and keeping costs down.”
“She was put in charge of various magazines that by my recollection, under her leadership did indeed prosper,” he added. “Keep in mind, these were well within her comfort zone. So it was a natural fit. School superintendent is a big stretch, of course.”
He ticked off several wrinkles that might pose fresh challenges for her: “For starters, the number of stakeholders is much greater in public education than in the private sector: regulators, the city, the union, teachers, parents. So you’ve got to be a very fast study in who the major stakeholders are and what they want.
“She is walking into an extremely difficult crucible — maybe fishbowl is a better way to put it — where these forces that are putting demands on you and resistance against what you’d like to achieve are probably as big as she’s ever experienced in her career. In the private sector, investors want total shareholder return and employees want higher pay and pensions and customers want the cheapest products, and her track record in adjudicating between these extremely conflicting pressures is very good.”
•
Todd Jick, professor of management at Columbia Business School, who has written a book, “Managing Change.”
“The question always comes up,” Professor Jick said. “Are leaders who come from inside more likely to succeed and more effective at making change than people brought in from outside? That’s the question and there is usually a split opinion. Insiders better understand the culture. Outsiders are dispassionate, objective and less indebted to people.”
In general, he said, outsiders who have some familiarity with the industry they are entering fare better, but that is not a prerequisite.
“By choosing an outsider, the likelihood is there’s some expectation for new thinking and new approaches.”
Examining a two-page job description of the chancellor’s role that the school system has made available, Professor Jick said he was struck by the use of verbs like “ensure,” “control” and “promulgate.”
The verbs do not evoke big change. “It sounds,” he said, “more like continuous improvement. But she will have to determine if that is sufficient.”
“She needs to make her agenda and assessment process transparent to the organization. This can’t be enshrouded in secrecy as she takes on the job. She can set out to do a listening tour that can be made transparent. She can talk about how no major decisions will be made in the first three months. She can set out the main areas she wants to learn about and examine. She can set out her own ambitions and aspirations for the school system. She can take some of the mystery out of her being unknown to most people in the school system.”
Saturday, November 20, 2010
NYC Mayor Seeks Waiver for His Chancellor Choice
By Christina A. Samuels | Ed Week
November 19, 2010
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has formally requested a state waiver to make publishing executive Cathleen P. Black the city’s schools chief, even as opposition to her selection has become more vocal this week.
Ms. Black is a person of “extraordinary skills and accomplishments” with firsthand knowledge of the demands and challenges of today’s workplace, the mayor wrote in a six-page appeal to state Commissioner of Education David M. Steiner. The letter dated Nov. 17, was posted on the website of The New York Times.
Under state law, district leaders in New York are required to have at least three years of teaching experience, a master’s degree or higher, and successful completion of a professional certificate in educational leadership. The commissioner is allowed to grant a waiver, however, for “exceptionally qualified” people.
Read on...
November 19, 2010
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has formally requested a state waiver to make publishing executive Cathleen P. Black the city’s schools chief, even as opposition to her selection has become more vocal this week.
Ms. Black is a person of “extraordinary skills and accomplishments” with firsthand knowledge of the demands and challenges of today’s workplace, the mayor wrote in a six-page appeal to state Commissioner of Education David M. Steiner. The letter dated Nov. 17, was posted on the website of The New York Times.
Under state law, district leaders in New York are required to have at least three years of teaching experience, a master’s degree or higher, and successful completion of a professional certificate in educational leadership. The commissioner is allowed to grant a waiver, however, for “exceptionally qualified” people.
Read on...
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