Tough job for Detroit's academic czar detnews.com The Detroit News:
"It's 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and Barbara Byrd-Bennett is e-mailing Detroit Public Schools' Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb one more thing to add to their to-do list.
She e-mails him at 4 a.m., when she cannot sleep. She e-mails him at 11 p.m., before she goes to bed. She e-mails him at 8:30 a.m. on Sundays from Cleveland, where she lives some weekends with her husband, Bruce, before returning to Detroit to do one of America's toughest big city jobs.
Byrd-Bennett is Bobb's academic czar and more: She is his co-chief."
When Byrd-Bennett told Bobb he was proposing budget cuts that would hurt children's learning, he backed off. When she recommended they negotiate a dramatically different teachers' contract, he followed. When she said Detroit had to radically change to compete with charter schools, Bobb agreed.
While Bobb is the school district's showman who woos the public with his no-nonsense message and anti-corruption results, Byrd-Bennett is the behind-the-scenes policy strategist charged with the arguably tougher job: dramatically improving student achievement in the country's most troubled urban school district.
"What is important to her is not the glory; it's the students and what's best for them," says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of Michigan State University's Education Policy Center, who worked with Byrd-Bennett in Washington, D.C.
"It's 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and Barbara Byrd-Bennett is e-mailing Detroit Public Schools' Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb one more thing to add to their to-do list.
She e-mails him at 4 a.m., when she cannot sleep. She e-mails him at 11 p.m., before she goes to bed. She e-mails him at 8:30 a.m. on Sundays from Cleveland, where she lives some weekends with her husband, Bruce, before returning to Detroit to do one of America's toughest big city jobs.
Byrd-Bennett is Bobb's academic czar and more: She is his co-chief."
When Byrd-Bennett told Bobb he was proposing budget cuts that would hurt children's learning, he backed off. When she recommended they negotiate a dramatically different teachers' contract, he followed. When she said Detroit had to radically change to compete with charter schools, Bobb agreed.
While Bobb is the school district's showman who woos the public with his no-nonsense message and anti-corruption results, Byrd-Bennett is the behind-the-scenes policy strategist charged with the arguably tougher job: dramatically improving student achievement in the country's most troubled urban school district.
"What is important to her is not the glory; it's the students and what's best for them," says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of Michigan State University's Education Policy Center, who worked with Byrd-Bennett in Washington, D.C.