The Legacy of Joel Klein: Part Three
Public Participation
“I probably could have spent more time, or should have spent more time really engaging people so they really understand the things that drive me.” (Joel Klein, interview with New York Times reporter Javier Hernandez, December 24, 2010.)
In the many interviews he’s conducted since he announced his resignation, Joel Klein has given himself high marks for his eight-year reign as the city’s Schools Chancellor. One of the few performance areas Klein has criticized is his ability to effectively communicate with the city’s public schooling’s constituencies. But as the above quote indicates, Klein seems to think communication is the same as one-way transmission, and that efforts at persuasion are the same as dialogue. Klein and his patron, Mayor Bloomberg, seemed so committed