Bloomberg, Klein and Kopp listed among America's Best Leaders

Kudos to Joel Klein, Michael Bloomberg and Wendy Kopp, who were listed in the latest issue of US News & World report as among America's Best Leaders in a study done by the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  The entire report is at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/leaders. 

 

a) Here's an excerpt from the part about Bloomberg and Klein:

"Bureaucracies always assume that elected officials who want to change everything will quickly forget about it and get on to helping their own political careers."

But Bloomberg, who has consistently touted school reform as his top priority, didn't forget. Since the takeover, the city has instituted a controversial uniform reading program, cut administrative costs, and partnered with private groups in everything from facilities management to school construction. The on-time graduation rate has climbed to the highest in nearly 20 years, the achievement gap between minority students and their white counterparts

A great quote -- I didn't know this about Klein's childhood:

A product of the New York City schools himself, Klein is a veteran litigator who successfully pursued federal anti-trust claims against Microsoft for the Clinton Justice Department. He made the radical career switch because he was passionate about the issue, he says, and anxious to stop a cycle of mediocrity. "Public education transformed my life. My father had to quit high school, and we grew up in public housing, and the teachers in Queens really gave me a worldview and a sense of opportunity and purpose," he says. "Second, God has been good to me. And ... I feel like if we don't figure out how to educate all our kids-we've got so many kids in this city who leave the school system unprepared for anything."

b) A well-deserved honor for Wendy and TFA as well!

Teach for America, as Kopp's program came to be known, is now one of the most respected initiatives in American education. This June, 10 percent of the graduating class of Yale University applied to the program, which accepts only about 1 of every 8 applicants. According to a 2005 survey by an independent research firm, 75 percent of principals who were surveyed consider TFA members more effective than other beginning teachers, and a 2004 study of test scores found that TFA teachers' students showed higher math score gains than their peers.

 

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JOEL KLEIN, MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG & PAUL VALLAS

Fixing a public school system is one of a city's most challenging chores. To do it, New York City and Philadelphia have turned to three unlikely reformers: media mogul turned Mayor Michael Bloomberg, antitrust lawyer Joel Klein, and self-confessed terrible student Paul Vallas.

Curing What Ails the Classroom

By Alex Kingsbury

Posted Sunday, October 22, 2006

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061022/30bloomberg.htm

 

As icons of bureaucracy go, 110 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, was among the most powerful in the country. The labyrinthine building housed the New York City Board of Education for so long that the address itself became synonymous with cronyism and entrenched interests. So when the state granted the mayor direct control over New York City's more than 1.1 million students and 1,450-plus schools in 2002, the Livingston Street building was among the first to go.

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WENDY KOPP

Before she built Teach For America into one of the biggest brands in education reform–it is now among the top 10 largest employers of college graduates–Wendy Kopp faced a difficult choice: make severe cutbacks, or let the whole project crumble. To no one's surprise, she chose to persist.

Heeding a Teaching Moment

By Elizabeth Weiss Green

Posted Sunday, October 22, 2006

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061022/30kopp.htm

Wendy Kopp is not one to be deterred by a little word like "No." Not even by the reaction she got from one of her Princeton University professors in 1989 when she proposed starting a sort of Peace Corps for teachers-a program that would recruit fellow Ivy Leaguers to teach for two years in the nation's toughest schools. "My dear Ms. Kopp," responded Marvin Bressler, by his own account, "you are quite evidently deranged."

 

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