Political "Odd Couple" Claims Education "Reform" Label

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

EDUCATION'S ODD COUPLE DO THEIR ACT, AND PROVOKE CONTROVERSY
New York Times -- April 3, 2009
By Jennifer Medina

They take great pride in introducing themselves as the “odd couple,” 
leading an unlikely bipartisan alliance of politicians under the banner 
of school reform.

This week brought their latest display of strange bedfellows, as the 
couple, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton, 
co-sponsored a conference of the Education Equality Project, at which 
the audience included the left-leaning mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio R. 
Villaraigosa and Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker.

The pair is not lacking for shtick — rarely do they conclude a public 
performance without referring to themselves as looking something akin to 
a before-and-after advertisement for hair transplants. (Mr. Klein has a 
rather sparse scalp next to Mr. Sharpton’s signature bouffant.)

Since forming the alliance nearly a year ago, Mr. Klein and Mr. Sharpton 
have raised more than $1 million to promote school improvement across 
the country.

With a coalition that includes several black and Hispanic elected 
Democratic officials at all levels, the group has embraced many policies 
once anathema to the Democratic Party — including increasing the number 
of charter schools, providing performance pay for teachers and expanding 
the use of data to measure performance at every level of the schools.

That the particulars remain very much up for debate was evident as the 
group’s biggest conference yet convened Thursday in Manhattan. After 
Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke enthusiastically about giving 
mayors of large cities control over their schools, saying that “we need 
the collective weight of the entire city behind us,” many in the 
audience responded with skeptical boos.

There was quiet skepticism on stage, too. After decades of backing the 
broad idea of New York’s mayor being in charge of its school system, Mr. 
Sharpton said in an interview on Thursday that he would not support the 
extension of mayoral control in its current form, suggesting that he 
agreed with criticism from some corners that the Bloomberg 
administration has marginalized parents in the last several years.

“We feel there needs to be more of a role for parental involvement,” Mr. 
Sharpton said. “We have to find a way to address that. We would not 
support the legislation as it is now.”

Mr. Sharpton said that he would wait until he had considered 
alternatives before suggesting what, precisely, should change as the 
State Legislature deals with renewing the 2002 mayoral-control law, 
which expires in June.

He said that he intended to campaign hard for Comptroller William C. 
Thompson Jr, who is challenging Mayor Bloomberg's bid for a third term 
and has proposed reconstructing the Panel for Educational Policy to 
serve as a check on the mayor’s power.

The mayor and the chancellor have staked their reputations on improving 
education in the city and are now fighting to convince state lawmakers 
to allow them to retain total control over city schools.

At the same time, Mr. Klein has devoted increasing hours in recent 
months to building a national movement with Mr. Sharpton. When the 
organization began last summer, many in the education world speculated 
that Mr. Klein was trying to position himself as the obvious choice for 
education secretary; when Mr. Duncan was chosen instead, some wondered 
if Mr. Klein was creating a way to exit gracefully if Mr. Bloomberg 
asked him to step aside.

Last fall, the city’s Conflict of Interest Board ruled that it was 
permissible for Mr. Klein to devote his time and staff to raise money 
for the project. The group has been carefully quiet about where it 
received the money, about $1 million, it has raised so far, but — as The 
Daily News reported this week — $500,000 came from the hedge fund 
Plainfield Asset Management, courtesy of its managing director, Harold 
O. Levy, who preceded Mr. Klein as chancellor.

“I thought it was a clever way to get a lot of attention to an important 
issue,” Mr. Levy said in an interview. “I think they’ve been enormously 
successful at it.”

The news of Mr. Levy’s donation sparked criticism from others in the 
education world.

“Chancellor Joel Klein has branded himself as the defender of black and 
Latino children — and created a nice national perch for himself in the 
process,” Maise McAdoo, who oversees research for the United Federation 
of Teachers, wrote on the organization’s blog, EdWize.org., expressing 
her own opinions.

Now Mr. Klein and Mr. Sharpton “have rounded up Education Secretary Arne 
Duncan, several big-city mayors and former Clinton nemesis Newt Gingrich 
to appear with them at a convention this week,” Ms. McAdoo said, “where 
they will surely move to create a national presence for themselves as 
the defenders of children against, oh, say, the teachers’ unions.”

Back to strange bedfellows: Ms. McAdoo’s criticism notwithstanding, the 
teachers’ union president, Randi Weingarten, was on stage with Mr. 
Duncan, Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Klein at Thursday’s conference, which the 
union had helped to sponsor.

“Nobody is supporting us more financially than Randi Weingarten,” Mr. 
Sharpton said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/education/03eep.html