Klein's progress in a chronically poor system has been so remarkable that two years ago his department won the Broad Prize for Urban Education, America's top education award. When Arne Duncan was confirmed as the new U.S. education secretary earlier this year, his first visit was to Klein.
Klein is a product of the schools he now runs. He attended New York City public schools for 12 years, then went to Columbia University and Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and eventually became the Justice Department's antitrust chief under President Clinton. In that role Klein launched a major antitrust suit against Microsoft -- yet founder Bill Gates' foundation has since given millions to Klein's school system. Klein was the CEO of Bertelsmann's U.S. operations when New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg asked him to become school chancellor in 2002.
Fortune's Geoff Colvin talked with Klein recently about why U.S. education is falling behind globally, how to bring business leadership training to public schools, ways New York City schools transformed Klein's own life, and much else. Here's what Klein had to say about how business leaders have helped him transform the school system:
'Another big change you made was bringing in figures from the corporate world, such as Jack Welch and others, to help train school principals in leadership. Why did you do that?
From the beginning we said there's no such thing as a great school system; there are only systems comprising great schools. The unit that matters is the school, and no unit is going to succeed without great leadership. That's an important concept. In education the principal is the weakest link in the chain. Bureaucracy has a lot of power; politics has control of money; the teachers have power because they have a very strong union. But the principals are in a union with the assistant principals, and there are more assistant principals than principals.
So the leader, in a weird way, is the weakest link. We really started to focus on leadership training, and we have a program now that was built on the Crotonville model [from General Electric] where we have boot camp for principals and aspiring principals over the summer, and then they mentor and intern with one of our more successful principals. It is amazing to me that the same school with two different principals can get entirely -- entirely -- different outcomes.
Jack [Welch] did something that was great: He challenged all my senior leaders. We had a retreat, and he said, "You guys keep talking about 'instructional leaders.' That's because you're uncomfortable talking about leadership. In the phrase 'instructional leader,' the more important word is 'leader.'"
Don't you have to change the system for any of this to work?
If you want great leadership, you've got to empower your leaders. When I started, superintendents used to pick the principals and then pick the assistant principals. I said, "If the principal can't put together his management team, it's not going to work." And they said, "Well, Chancellor, you shouldn't do that because our principals can't pick assistant principals." I said, "If they can't pick assistant principals, we've got to get new principals."
Isn't that ridiculous? Shouldn't principals be deciding which administrators they need, which guidance counselors they need, what community programs they want to bring in, whether they want to have extended day, extended week, extended year, and start to differentiate based on their challenges and also maybe take some risks in this game?
To what extent are they allowed to do those things today?
Much, much more now. Principals in New York City have significantly greater discretion on issues like extending the day, having Saturday programs, hiring a teacher, hiring another assistant principal. By the same token, there's far more accountability, and that's a big change. I think people would be surprised by this: Every principal in New York City signs an agreement saying what their prerogatives are, what discretion they have, and also what their accountabilities are. And if they don't meet their accountabilities, we can terminate them or close their schools. We do that. And that's a very different way of doing business.
Most people who came to public education think that if you show up on day one and just stay out of trouble, you can be there forever. We're trying to develop a performance-based, accountability-driven culture, and we've had quite a bit of success with our principals.'
For the full text of this fascinating and highly instructive interview, see - http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/30/news/economy/joel_klein_nyc_schools.fortune/index.htm
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