Joel Klein Claims "K-12 Isn't Working" -- But the Facts Prove Him Dead Wrong
Photo Credit: Rubenstein via Wikimedia Commons
September 27, 2013 |
I don’t mean to pick on Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, but he has made himself such a caricature of self-styled school reformers who are undermining American public education that it would be a mistake not to respond to the claims on which he bases his efforts.
Last year, I addressed Mr. Klein’s conclusion that public education must be failing because he himself grew up in public housing as a “kid of the streets,” yet owed his success to great public schools; and if only children from public housing projects today had schools as good as his, they too would be successful.
The analysis, it turned out, was misleading. The New York City public housing in which the Klein family lived in the 1950s was segregated, constructed for white middle class two-parent households where the husband had a stable employment history and where market rents were charged with no public subsidy. Such housing projects no longer exist, and the conditions in which Joel Klein grew up bear no resemblance to those from which minority children in impoverished families come to school today.
Now, Joel Klein heads a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, whose purpose is not only to sell internet-connected tablets to schools but to sell an