One introduction was in person, made to parents, teachers and the press at a Bronx elementary school. The other came in the form of an e-mail sent to Department of Education staffers this afternoon.

“You might have heard or read a little about me in the past few weeks,” Black writes in the message. “But I would like the opportunity to tell you in my own words who I am and why I am excited about this job.”

She continues:

For four decades I devoted my professional life to blazing trails in the magazine and publishing industry. I got where I am today by working hard, making bold decisions, and listening closely to the strong teams I’ve had around me. I intend to proceed in the same way during my upcoming tenure at the DOE.

Black also gives a hint about the working relationship she could develop with new Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky and Chief Operating Officer Sharon Greenberger.

Steiner made Suransky’s appointment a condition of the waiver Black needed to become chancellor, prompting speculation that lines of command in the DOE might become confused. Mayor Michael Bloomberg brushed aside that criticism yesterday, saying “there will be one person in charge.”

In her e-mail, Black writes that Suransky will counsel her “on all matters relating to teaching and learning.” Greenberger will serve as her “key advisor on critical policy, governance, strategy, and communications issues.”

And Black suggests that while her main goal is to continue the agenda started under the mayor by outgoing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, some changes may also be on the way.

“I am especially excited about getting involved in the innovative work happening throughout the Department and beginning to identify areas for improvement and new opportunities,” she writes.

Read Black’s full e-mail below:

—–Original Message—–
From: Black Cathie
Sent: Tue 11/30/2010 5:46 PM
Subject: Hello from Cathie Black

Dear Colleagues,

I am reaching out to you to introduce myself and thank you for welcoming me to the Department of Education. Now that the State has officially approved the waiver, I am eager to become fully immersed in the exciting work ahead.

The past few weeks have been nothing short of a whirlwind for all of us, but like you, I am fully committed to our mission to provide every child in New York City with a high-quality education. That’s why I took this job — to build on the unprecedented progress that our public schools have made under the watch of Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Klein, and all of you.

You might have heard or read a little about me in the past few weeks, but I would like the opportunity to tell you in my own words who I am and why I am excited about this job.

For four decades I devoted my professional life to blazing trails in the magazine and publishing industry. I got where I am today by working hard, making bold decisions, and listening closely to the strong teams I’ve had around me. I intend to proceed in the same way during my upcoming tenure at the DOE. I know that this is my most important mission yet, which is why I will need all of you with me over the next three years as we continue to transform the system to put children first.

As you know, I will appoint Shael Polakow-Suransky as Senior Deputy Chancellor and Chief Academic Achievement Officer. In this new role, Shael will be responsible for the administration and supervision of all instructional initiatives and will serve as my counselor on all matters related to teaching and learning. Shael has more than fifteen years of experience in New York City’s public schools in nearly every capacity. I am thrilled that he has agreed to take on this critical position. I also look forward to working closely with Sharon Greenberger as my Chief Operating Officer. Sharon will continue to be responsible for managing operations and will also serve as my key advisor on critical policy, governance, strategy, and communications issues.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working with Joel, the Deputy Chancellors, and all of you to make sure this is a seamless transition. I am especially excited about getting involved in the innovative work happening throughout the Department and beginning to identify areas for improvement and new opportunities. I know that I have a lot to learn about the inner workings of the system, but I am also confident that my fresh perspective, combined with your deep experience, will help us rise to the challenge of preparing all NYC public school students for college and careers.

Thank you for your support. I look forward to getting to know you.

Sincerely,
Cathie Black

Publishing executive Cathleen Black, who yesterday was granted the waiver she needs to become schools chancellor, greets students outside of P.S. 109 this morning.

At her first public visit to a city school today, newly green-lighted chancellor-to-be Cathleen Black met a handful of students and teachers, praised the student’s artwork on the walls, and was deemed a “natural teacher” by the school’s principal.

Black visited the Bronx’s P.S. 109 this morning, the day after State Education Commissioner David Steiner formally gave her the go-ahead to become chancellor. She was met by a gaggle of reporters and some parents who have waited three weeks to speak to her.

“It’s the beginning of a whole new era and I’m really excited,” Black said as she stopped briefly for questions before entering the school for a tour.

Black, along with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Deputy Chancellor Dennis Walcott, greeted students and parents as they arrived. Black then toured classes, stopping to read the book “Caps for Sale” to a class of first-graders.

Black admitted that she is approaching her school visits as a learning experience. The new chancellor officially takes office on January 3 but said she plans to continue to visit schools before then.

“I’m very much of an outreach person, historically,” she said. “I look forward to it because that’s where I’m going to learn more, and I want to be in the schools and listen to the children, and get a feel for the schools and a feel for their leadership.”

P.S. 109′s principal, Amanda Blatter, said after the tour that Black charmed the students and gave the impression that she was ready for the position.  And Black praised the school for displaying artwork on its walls.

“It’s a very well run school, and that’s about the leadership,” Black said.

Nicole Bush, the mother of a second-grader at nearby P.S. 204, came to the school when she heard that the new chancellor would be making an appearance, hoping to talk to Black about how she’d like to change the schools.

“It really feels like they’re locking the parents out,” Bush said. “In a few months’ time it seems like all you’re going to be able to do is drop your kid off in the morning, in and out.”

Bush joined the scrum of reporters questioning Black after her tour, asking Black about her position on the city’s plans to close possibly more than 50 schools this year. The chancellor’s cabinet is meeting this week to make final decisions about which schools it will try to close.

Black demurred, saying that she wanted to avoid specific policy questions on her first day on the job. ”All of these things are very important and challenging questions,” Black said. “We’ll come up with what we believe are the right answers.”

Bush was unconvinced. “She’s going to do exactly what Bloomberg wants,” she said later. “She’s going to chop down and crunch schools and I don’t think that’s the answer.”

But Albertina Rivas, a member of the P.S. 109 parent-teacher association, said Black deserved the benefit of the doubt.

“Let’s get her to work first before we give an opinion,” she said. “Everyone deserves an opportunity.”

Questioned on the controversy, Black deflected worries that her lack of experience in schools will impede her performance as chancellor. Black’s lack of credentials prompted outcry from around the city and Steiner made the installation of a Chief Academic Officer a condition of her appointment.

“That was yesterday, today is today, and I’m the new chancellor,” Black said.

How is this possible? How did all of us manage to become such avid and proficient readers, without explicitly learning about author’s purpose? As a kid I don’t remember learning about author’s purpose, and I don’t remember learning about main idea and details, sequence, or any of the other soundbite strategies I teach my students. What I do remember is reading, writing, and talking about books.

So how and when did this change happen? It feels to me like the way we’re teaching the students, they lose the forest through the trees, or rather they’re losing a love of reading through the reading strategies.

Perhaps I’m wrong to dismiss the changes. Aren’t these changes in instruction progress? After all, I may not have learned to read via strategies, but I also wasn’t able to use the internet for research projects. In theory, literacy instruction has evolved over time to incorporate the latest and best research.

However, I’m not sure that strategy-based reading instruction is a methodology resulting from recent research. More likely, it’s a byproduct of standards-based instruction. The state standards are a worthwhile effort to give educators a clear idea of what their students need to learn. Unfortunately, I think in an effort to tie instruction to standards, schools have used the standards as a laundry list of learning, rather than the components of a cohesive view of literacy.

Under this thinking, first students will learn about main idea, then students will learn about sequence, after that students will learn about making predictions, and so on, and so on, until the students have “met the standards.” It’s possible that students can become proficient readers through this process. I know I’ve been teaching this way, and my students have certainly made progress. But even if proficiency is possible, I’m still unsure that students can develop an authentic, meaningful understanding of what reading really means by learning about strategies.

Once again, I have to think about myself as a reader to question this current approach. I may not have learned about the many strategies good readers use, but I know I could tell the difference between non-fiction and fiction, and identify the different purposes for those books. I may not have learned about identifying the main idea and details, but I could summarize a text with clarity. And so could readers for decades (centuries?) before me. So, is strategy-based literacy instruction the way to go? Or are we creating more confusion than clarity?

Students from the Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School paid a visit to the GothamSchools team this morning to talk about journalism and the stories they’re writing about their own school. When they’re done, we’ll hopefully be able to share them with you in the community section.

If you’ve got a journalism class or after-school club and want to stop by, let us know.

The morning after receiving permission from the state to make Black the city’s new schools chief, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking her to meet some of the students and teachers who will soon be in her charge. Bloomberg and Black, along with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, will greet parents and students as they arrive at PS 109 in the Bronx.

Home to a gifted program, PS 109 is one of the top-performing elementary schools in District 9, scoring an A on its most recent progress report and getting extra credit for boosting its weakest students’ test scores. Principal Amanda Blatter brought a focus on accountability to the school, according to Insideschools, which also reports that 16 teachers left the school during Blatter’s first two years at PS 109.

Black’s visit marks the first time she has appeared in public since Bloomberg surprised the city earlier this month by picking her to replace outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein. Black lives on Park Avenue, attended parochial school, and sent her children to boarding school, but today won’t be her first time in a Bronx public school — she was an honorary principal of IS 125 for a day in April 2000.

Conspicuously missing from the city’s press release about today’s school visit: Shael Polakow-Suransky, who is set to become Black’s chief academic officer. His promotion was key to Black’s waiver, but Bloomberg swore yesterday that Black alone would run the school system.

At a meeting with parents earlier this month, Principal Lisa Fuentes asked for their votes to convert the district school into a charter school.

Teachers and administrators at a Bronx high school are making a second attempt to fight the school’s possible closure by converting it into a charter school, something that is rarely done in New York.

One of the 19 schools the city’s Department of Education tried and failed to close last year, Christopher Columbus High School is again in danger of being closed this year. Unwilling to wait and hope that the city will grant it a reprieve, the school’s staff is trying convert Columbus into a charter school.

State officials turned down Columbus principal Lisa Fuentes’ first application in September, saying that the school didn’t follow the protocol for conversion. Now Fuentes is trying again. At a meeting with parents earlier this month where city officials explained that they are considering phasing out Columbus, Fuentes told parents they could save the school by voting for its conversion.

“We have seen lots of results from the programs we have started here,” she said. “We have so many good things that are happening that we don’t want to lose any of that.”

According to New York State law, for a district school to convert to a charter school, more than half of the parents with children in the school need to vote in favor of it.

That will be a challenge for Columbus, which was over 1,200 students but had about 25 parents turn up at a meeting about the school’s future. If more than half of parents approve the plan, the school will have to get the support of the chancellor before its application goes before the Board of Regents.

That may be difficult, as Fuentes is proposing to turn Columbus into a charter school, but keep the same staff and the same students. In order to convert the school, she’ll have to convince city officials that Columbus is improving and has concrete plans to change for the better.

City officials have long been skeptical that schools can improve with the same teaching staff in place. If the city decides to phase out Columbus, it will allow the new school that opens to hire only a fraction of Columbus’s teachers. And in an editorial last summer, the Daily News called her plan a “job protection gambit.”

It’s rare for schools to make the switch. During the eleven years New York State has been opening charter schools, nine district schools have converted to charter schools. Two of them gave up their charters and reverted to being district schools and one had its charter taken away. Today, six remain: five in New York City and one in Buffalo.

“The common denominators that I’ve seen are: staff buy-in, dynamic leadership, and a great school culture,” said New York Charter Schools Association policy director Peter Murphy.

“It’s been better schools that have done this as opposed to troubled ones.”

Steiner’s decision follows a deal struck between city and state officials, the details of which emerged late last week. The agreement called for Black to promote Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky to a new position of Chief Academic Officer and was designed to ameliorate Steiner’s concerns about Black’s lack of experience in the education field.

Under state law, the commissioner is allow to waive the requirements for education experience and certification if the chancellor candidate’s experience is “substantially equivalent.”

In his letter today, Steiner cites the waiver that his predecessor, Richard Mills, gave former Chancellor Harold Levy 2000. In that case, Mills wrote that the chancellor’s experience did not need to mirror the required credentials, but rather that the candidate’s experience has prepared her for the chancellor’s job.

“After careful review of the record before me it is my judgment that, when viewed in its entirety, Ms. Black’s training, background and experience are substantially equivalent to the certification requirements set forth in law,” Steiner writes.

Steiner’s decision may be the final step in what has been a bruising appointment process for Black.

Her next challenge will be to win the confidence of parents and teachers who worry that her lack of education credentials will hinder her performance. Last week, a poll reported that 62 percent of parents with children in city public schools disapprove of the chancellor appointee.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised Steiner’s decision and pointed towards the preparation that Black will need before she assumes the chancellor position in January. When Bloomberg announced her appointment, Black asked for patience as she got “up to speed” on the school system.

“Over the next weeks and months, [Black] will be meeting with parents, teachers, elected officials and community leaders to listen and hear from them,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “She knows, as I do, that nothing is more important than providing a world class education for our kids.”

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who has been one of the most outspoken opponents of Black’s appointment, said that he intends to sue to block the appointment.

“Our schools deserve a qualified chancellor, not someone who requires a private tutor on the public payroll to make up for her deficient resume,” Jeffries said in a statement. ”Commissioner Steiner has violated the law and we are prepared to challenge this ill-advised decision in court.”

The assemblyman is among several opponents to Black’s appointment who have been preparing to sue if the appointment goes through.

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew said that he hoped Black and Suransky would change course from some of the policies introduced by outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein.

“For the last eight years the system has been obsessed with a test preparation regimen that has narrowed the curriculum and led to the decline of many subjects and programs in our schools,” Mulgrew said. “Now that Ms. Black and Mr. Polakow-Suransky have been approved by State Education Commissioner Steiner, I hope we can move forward on the many challenges the system faces, including creating a curriculum that will give students a well-rounded education, new and better interventions for struggling students, and  early action to turn around failing schools.”

But it seems unlikely that Black will diverge significantly from the policies of her predecessor. In a statement today, Black said that she intends to follow Klein’s path of reforms.

“It’s vitally important that we continue building on the progress that Joel Klein and the Mayor have made over the last 8 years, and I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get going,” she said.

Black’s appointment was thrown into uncertainty last week when the panel of education experts Steiner convened to advise on the waiver request recommended that he deny it. Half of the members of the panel voted to deny it unconditionally. Two members supported Black’s appointment, and the remaining two voted to wait and reconsider the request under different circumstances.

After last week’s deal to promote Suransky to act as educational expert alongside Black, Steiner took the new proposal back to his panel members, he writes.

“Those that were previously supportive, in whole or in part, viewed the new submission positively,” Steiner writes, suggesting that the four panel members who opposed Black’s appointment remain troubled by the compromise deal.

The state of New York has a different conception of the expertise needed to be a school district superintendent. State law specifies that to obtain a professional school district leader certification, school district leaders (i.e., superintendents) must have completed a School District Leader program authorized by the state; accumulated a minimum of 60 semester hours in graduate courses approved by the state commissioner of education; and have at least three years of teaching experience. The certification also includes a full-time, 15-week clinical component of school-building leadership experience or its equivalent, and requires passing two written School District Leader assessments.

The content of the School District Leader assessments provides some purchase on the kinds of expertise that the state views as necessary to successful practice. The standards expressed in these assessments include applying knowledge of skills for engaging building leaders, board members, community members, parents/guardians, students and school staff in an ongoing dialogue regarding core values, goals, policies, practices and achievements; demonstrating knowledge of the New York State Code of Ethics for Educators and the role of values and ethics in district leadership; demonstrating knowledge of factors to consider in comprehensive, long-range planning, including the importance of involving all key stakeholders in planning processes; analyzing concepts, principles and best-practice applications of developmental and learning theories, curriculum development, instructional delivery, and classroom organization and practices with regard to the diverse needs of all students (e.g., special-education students, English-language learners, gifted and talented students); analyzing strategies for developing staff capability through the supervision and evaluation of teachers and building leaders, effective staff assignments, and systems of mentoring, support, and development; and demonstrating knowledge of processes of collective bargaining and contract management that support and extend the educational vision, to name just a few.

If the various requirements of the School District Leader certification are indicators of the expertise that New York state requires of school superintendents, and Cathie Black has not met those requirements, how are we to judge if she has the requisite expertise? Mayor Bloomberg sought a waiver to the requirements, which provides an alternative route to the credential. State regulations allow the state commissioner of education to issue a professional certification to exceptionally qualified individuals “whose exceptional training and experience are the substantial equivalent of such requirements and qualify such persons for duties of a superintendent of schools.” State Commissioner David Steiner convened a screening committee of eight education professionals to advise him on whether to grant the waiver. To the surprise of many, the screening committee did not recommend granting a waiver to Black. Four of the eight members voted no; two voted yes; and two voted “not now.”

In inviting the screening committee to consider the option “not now,” Commissioner Steiner paved the way for the education version of “jury nullification.” Jury nullification is the term used to describe when a jury reaches a verdict that is contrary to the facts in evidence, typically because of a belief that the law is immoral or improperly applied to a defendant. Cathie Black is not, of course, on trial, although many may feel that she is, by virtue of the high-handed way in which she was selected from Mayor Bloomberg’s mental Rolodex to be chancellor without any signs of a search. Steiner has now brokered a compromise in which an insider to the New York City public school system, Shael Suransky-Polakow, will be appointed Senior Deputy Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer. Press reports indicate that with this proviso, Steiner is now prepared to grant the waiver to Black.

I describe this as a form of jury nullification because Commissioner Steiner’s willingness to grant Cathie Black the professional certification needed to be appointed school superintendent is based on criteria other than those specified by the state’s education code. Steiner has already determined that, on the merits of her application, Black was not qualified for the position. In suggesting that Black would be acceptable if accompanied by a chief academic officer, he is saying, as have Mayor Bloomberg, Chester E. Finn, Jr., and others, that the rules should be ignored, mainly because New York City is a special case.

In my view, Commissioner Steiner’s decision should be independent of the context of New York City. The state’s requirements for school district leaders do not state that there’s one set of rules for New York City, because it’s so big and complicated, and another set of rules for the 700 other districts in the state. If the state wanted to create a different set of qualifications for the New York City schools chancellor, it could have done so.

It has not.

Therefore, it’s hard to see how Steiner should take account of the exceptionality of New York City’s educational system. He has found a political solution that further undermines the view held by most professional educators — and, I dare say, the overwhelming majority of school superintendents in New York state — that there is a body of expertise they apply to their daily work that cannot be picked up overnight.

In the long run, trying to assess the expertise necessary to be a school district leader without taking local context into account may be shortsighted. The compromise brokered by Steiner proposes that Black’s lack of experience in public schooling can be offset by the fact that she will be joined by a chief academic officer, and there will be others in the new chancellor’s “cabinet” who have specialized knowledge of educational issues in general and the New York City school system in particular. And if we take seriously the shift in leadership studies from “great man” theories that emphasize the distinctive charisma and personality traits of individuals in positions of formal authority to a view that focuses on the interactions among leaders, followers, resources and context, we’d want to pay close attention to these features in assessing the qualifications of Cathie Black to lead the New York City schools.

But doing so raises some tough questions. Once we acknowledge the notion that expertise is distributed among individuals in a setting, why would we rely on credentials that emphasize individual accomplishment? Why would we seek to isolate the contributions of individual teachers to students’ learning when teaching is an activity distributed among the educators in a particular school? Why would we even assess students’ learning via methods that preclude students from using tools in concert with other students? If, as Mayor Bloomberg has asserted, Cathie Black’s appointment is justified because she’ll be learning in concert with others, why don’t schools assess students’ preparedness to do just this? In the spirit of the season, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

This post also appears at Eye on Education, Aaron Pallas’s Hechinger Report column.

• State Education Commissioner David Steiner could approve Black’s waiver today. (Post, Daily News)
• In exchange, the city will name a chief academic officer. (GS, WSJ, Times, NY1, WNYC, Post, Daily News)
• Some critics are threatening to sue to stop Black’s appointment. (Post, Daily News, NY1)
• Parents and activists also rallied yesterday against the appointment. (NY1)
• The first CAO is Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city’s current accountability chief. (GothamSchools, Times)
• Polakow-Suransky’s wife died of cancer at age 37 last year. (Daily News)
• Many cities with CEO-type principals have CAO’s working by their sides. (GothamSchools, WNYC)
• Polakow-Suransky’s job description covers pretty much anything that happens in schools. (Times)
• Eric Nadelstern, a top Klein deputy, had been an obvious choice for the job. (Daily News)
• The pressure of the waiver decision rattled David Steiner, a classicist without ties to Bloomberg. (Times)
• The city and state tried to hash out a deal before the advisory panel vote but failed. (Times)
• Black’s ties to a Harlem charter school, and the school’s results, are scrutinized. (Daily News)
• The backlash against Cathie Black reflected deep anger at Mayor Bloomberg. (Times)
• Chicago’s principals union head said New York should stick with a single chief. (Daily News)

Chiming in:

• The Post said Steiner shouldn’t have questioned Black’s qualifications since he isn’t certified either.
• The Daily News says the DOE’s leadership team appears strong, no thanks to Bloomberg or Steiner.
• The Post says the appointment process has compromised mayoral control.
• Joshua Greenman wonders whether the compromise was authentic or just for show. (Daily News)
• Black might not be ready for the big problems city schools face, says Pedro Noguera. (Daily News)
• Mike Lupica: The Black pick was all about Bloomberg, who could have picked Joe Torre. (Daily News)

In other news:

• After a court ruling, the UFT will no longer sue to get the names of charter school teachers. (Post)
• Student grades at Eximius College Prep in the Bronx appear to be a total mess. (Daily News)
• A new study says punishing families when children are absent from school doesn’t work. (AP)
• Any purchase at Borders on Dec. 4 or 5 will give the buyer $15 to use on DonorsChoose. (AP)
• IS 119 in Glendale, Queens, wants to become a K-8 school. (Daily News)
• The chair of Common Good says the key to good teaching is freedom to inspire. (Daily News)
• Jonathan Kozol: Mott Haven’s schools are just as troubled now as they were 15 years ago. (Daily News)
• Some schools are moving to give grades based on students’ mastery, not effort. (Times)
• Rahm Emanuel said he would bring a Common Core-based curriculum to Chicago as mayor. (Times)
• Penn. and N.J. were both denied a grant to start new charter schools. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
• Los Angeles schools could start two weeks earlier next year, in the dog days of August. (L.A. Times)

Polakow-Suransky, who has worked in the city schools for 16 years, will be responsible for the administration of the city’s education policies and serve as Black’s chief advisor, according to a letter Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent Steiner today.

Here are four things to know about the city’s new educator-in-chief, who will serve as second-in-command to Black’s manager-in-chief:

1. His theory of change revolves around improving “instruction,” which is a different way of thinking than that o many people at Tweed.

Many officials in Joel Klein’s administration, including Klein himself, emphasize structural changes to improve the New York City schools. They favor policies such as closing down struggling schools, offering pay bonuses to educators whose students improve their performance on tests, and giving more power to principals to determine their own curricula and tests.

Polakow-Suransky approaches improving education policy from the opposite direction. He looks through the lens of instruction — that is, the relationships between teachers and students — rather than starting with incentives or organizational structures.

“What [Polakow-Suransky] is particularly strong at is at taking [classroom] experience and translating it into useful information for decision-making at a policy level,” said Garth Harries, who oversaw Polakow-Suransky in the city’s New Schools Office and then worked as a colleague as Suransky advanced in the department.

When Harries — a lawyer by training who was charged with determining how New York City uses its school building space — began making policy, he turned to Polakow-Suransky to figure out how dividing large school buildings into multiple small schools would affect the classroom.

“[Suransky] was someone I could sit down with and have a very deep conversation about the instructional needs that students and teachers have and how that translated into space needs,” said Harries, who now works in the New Haven public school system. ”It ended up being used on the operational side of the house, but it was designed with instructional needs in mind.”

Another case in point is the “data inquiry team,” an innovation school officials credit Polakow-Suransky with creating. Inquiry teams ask groups of teachers to meet and use evidence of student learning – everything from test scores to student work — to determine how they should improve their instruction. Polakow-Suransky spoke at length about the idea and its importance to him in a sit-down interview with two GothamSchools reporters last month.

The main purpose of the interview was to talk about his plans to improve the city’s online data warehouse system, ARIS. But in the free-flowing conversation, Polakow-Suransky repeatedly emphasized that all of his policy work aims at improving the way teachers teach their students — which he called “instruction.”

He also emphasized his insistence on making policies such as data inquiry teams voluntary for teachers, rather than mandatory. He argued that change is more likely to occur if teachers choose to make it, rather than being forced. In a 2009 interview with GothamSchools, Polakow-Suransky said:

My job is not to intervene at an individual school level and suggest a change, but to provide rich, data-based portraits and qualitative portraits using the quality review so that the folks that are supporting schools can help the school go to its next step.

2. His own education was at progressive public schools and at Brown.

Polakow-Suransky is a graduate of Community High School in Ann Arbor, Mich., a small progressive school founded in 1972. The small public magnet school is designed as an “open campus” where students design their own courses of study, and sometimes design their own courses.

From there, Polakow-Suransky moved to Brown University, where he finished with a degree in education and urban studies.

Polakow-Suransky also possesses all of the credentials that state law requires to lead a school district without the waiver that his soon-to-be boss will receive. He earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from the Bank Street School of Education, and he received a New York State District Administrator Certificate in 2006. He is also a 2008 graduate of the Broad Superintendent’s Academy, a leadership program designed to train a new breed of management-minded education officials.

3. He taught math and history for six years before founding one of the first small Bronx high schools.

Polakow-Suransky’s career in the New York City public schools began in 1994, as a history and mathematics teacher at Crossroads Middle School in Manhattan. After teaching there for three years, he moved to Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School, where he continued to teach math for another three years.

He then spent one school year as the assistant principal at Bread and Roses, and then left to found the Bronx International High School in 2001. The school, which was designed specifically to serve students learning English, was one of the first small schools to be opened in the city. The movement to open small high schools has since become one of the hallmarks of the Bloomberg administration.

“He was really on the cutting edge of the small school movement in the city and really helped shape what happened in the Bronx and then throughout the whole city,” said Robert Hughes, the head of New Visions for Public Schools, the organization dedicated to launching and supporting small schools in the city.

“He’s a little like a really skilled surfer who rode the wave of small schools as it moved through the Bronx and then the city,” Hughes said.

After leaving the Bronx International High School in 2004, Polakow-Suransky has held a variety of positions within the Department of Education, first in the Office of New Schools, which oversaw the opening of more than 200 new small schools during his time there.

He then oversaw academic support services for the city’s networks of schools. And when the city’s accountability czar James Liebman left the DOE in 2009, Polakow-Suransky took his position. He was named Deputy Chancellor of Performance and Accountability earlier this year.

4. He is obsessed with making better tests and is working on the national effort to build them.

In addition to his duties overseeing the city’s school accountability policies, Polakow-Suransky has been tasked with helping schools introduce the Common Core standards into their classrooms. Under Polakow-Suransky, city schools began that effort even before New York State officially adopted the standards.

Polakow-Suransky is also part of the leadership team of the group of 26 states that won a federal grant this year to build new assessments based around the Common Core standards. Those tests, which New York State has committed to using by 2014, will overhaul both what kinds of state exams students sit for and when they sit for them, Polakow-Suransky has said.

As part of that work, Polakow-Suransky has worked closely with state officials, particularly Deputy Education Commissioner John King. The strong impression Polakow-Suransky left on state officials was part of the reason he got the nod today to ascend to the city’s number two position in the school system, said a person familiar with the negotiations.

At a recent panel on how federal education policy is affecting local school districts, Polakow-Suransky described his interest in standardized tests as being rooted in everyday teaching:

[U]ltimately the reason for assessment is to motivate what happens in the classroom. If it doesn’t actually lead to good practice in the classroom then it’s undermining practice in the classroom. And so this is an opportunity. This is a moment where there’s an opportunity to shift the direction of practice in the classroom and to push on the level of rigor and to actually figure out what is it that kids and teachers need in order to engage in that type of practice.

Shael Polakow-Suransky, the man whose promotion allowed Cathie Black to become chancellor

The deal calls for Black to give a major promotion to Shael Polakow-Suransky, an education official who has sparred with Chancellor Joel Klein’s top deputies, even while working alongside them. Suransky, currently deputy chancellor for “performance and accountability,” will now hold two titles: senior deputy chancellor and chief academic officer.

Suransky engaged in especially vigorous debates with James Leibman, the official who created Klein’s controversial school report cards, according to department officials. He successfully lobbied to give schools the opportunity to create their own assessments rather than follow state tests.

The disagreements didn’t stop the two men from respecting each other. When Leibman left the Department of Education to return to Columbia University, Klein promoted Suransky to succeed him as head of the accountability office. An official said that Leibman promoted Suransky to the position.

Suransky is also one of a small number of top Department of Education officials who regularly refers to “instruction” as the part of education he would like to change — a trait he holds in common with Steiner and his top deputy, John King. Like King, Suransky is also a former teacher and principal. He has worked closely with state education officials on their main project, the reforms they are creating with their federal Race to the Top funding. Suransky has taken an especially prominent role in creating new assessments designed to make it harder for teachers to “teach to the test.”

State education officials had been wary to offer Black, Mayor Bloomberg’s surprise choice to succeed Klein, the necessary waiver she needs to become chancellor given that she has no background in education. Black was formerly the chairman of Hearst Magazines and had a long career in newspaper and magazine publishing.

Earlier this week, State Education Commissioner David Steiner made clear that his preference was to grant Black a waiver on the condition that Bloomberg appoint a top official with educational background to a number-two position in the Department of Education. And a panel of advisers voted not to grant the waiver, with some voting to support Steiner’s proposed compromise.

In talks that happened over Thanksgiving and continued through today, Bloomberg agreed to give that designation to Suransky.

The chancellor-plus-educator arrangement is common in other cities. But whether the two-person leadership team will allow for better management — the trait Bloomberg repeatedly cited as his reason for selecting Black — is not clear.

Today, the teachers union president, Michael Mulgrew, reacted positively to the deal. “We’ve worked well with Mr. Polakow-Suransky in the past, and we look forward to working with him and Ms. Black in the future on the critical issues the school system faces — including reducing the focus on test prep and on better academic intervention for students who are falling behind,” Mulgrew said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Harold Levy, Klein’s predecessor as chancellor, outlined the challenges of having essentially two people in charge. “Does the chancellor have authority to overrule the deputy?” Levy asked. “Does the chancellor, if she fires the deputy, have to get approval again for the new deputy? It gives the deputy extraordinary authority and leverage and I think potentially handcuffs her as a manager – precisely her strength.”

In a letter outlining the deal, Mayor Bloomberg writes that Black has vowed to keep a person in Suransky’s position “throughout her tenure.” He writes:

Ms. Black has told me that she intends to have a Senior Deputy Chancellor/Chief Academic OFficer throughout her tenure as Chancellor, because she has decided that as a management matter there should be a single Deputy, reporting directly to her as Chancellor, overseeing all pedagogic matters, including overseeing all deputy chancellors with pedagogical responsibilities

Suransky’s promotion comes as a blow to several other top Klein deputies, including Eric Nadelstern, whose title is currently “chief schools officer.” Nadelstern, a lifelong educator, was a mentor to Suransky. He created the chain of international high schools in which Suransky eventually became a principal. When Nadelstern went to work for Klein at the Department of Education, Suransky quickly followed, becoming his deputy in creating a section of schools called “empowerment” schools and, in 2009, serving as Deputy Chief Schools Officer.

Other internal candidates for the position include John White, a former teacher and Teach for America official who oversees labor relations and the city’s “innovation zone” project; Marc Sternberg, another former principal who steers the process of creating new schools and closing down poor-performing ones; Santiago Taveras, an educator and former head of the now-defunct teaching and learning department; and Laura Rodriguez, who oversees special education.

Reached for comment today, Nadelstern and White both declined to comment about the deal.

The deal was first reported by The New York Times this afternoon. Shortly after the report, the city released a letter from Mayor Bloomberg to the state announcing that he would agree to promote Suransky. Here is the letter:
Supplemental SED Letter 11-26-10

Steiner’s suggestion has met with mixed reviews, but a look at other cities with non-educator school leaders shows that the arrangement is not uncommon.

Chicago

In Chicago, whether the schools Chief Executive Officer has a Chief Academic Officer is not up to the mayor or the schools CEO — it’s in the law.

In 1995, when the Illinois state legislature gave Chicago mayoral control of schools, the law also created the position of chief education officer. Styled after corporate boards, the school system’s administration was to be led by a chief executive officer, who did not have to have a background and education, and four other officers, one of whom would be an education expert. The law says:

The chief executive officer shall appoint, with the approval of the Trustees, a chief operating officer, a chief fiscal officer, a chief educational officer, and a chief purchasing officer to serve until June 30, 1999. These officers shall be assigned duties and responsibilities by the chief executive officer.

Unlike in New York, where the chancellor can decide the titles and job descriptions of his (it’s always been a “he”) deputies, these positions are cemented in the law in Chicago. Chicago’s CEO can change the responsibilities that fall under each officer, but the city is legally required to have an educational expert. Since 2001, the city has had two CEOs without much teaching experience and one chief education officer: Barbara Eason-Watkins. She resigned in April and without her in place, some principals say they feel directionless.

San Diego

Members of San Diego’s school board did not making hiring a chief academic officer the condition for bringing in Superintendent Bill Kowba, but they did make it clear that they wanted him to hire one. A piece in Voice of San Diego about the appointment of Nellie Meyer, deputy superintendent for academics, states:

Board members have repeatedly said he would need a strong deputy superintendent to offset his lack of school experience.

San Diego was the first city to have a non-educator superintendent, setting a precedent for the current arrangement. Former Superintendent Alan Bersin, who had worked the local U.S. Attorney, took charge of the schools in 1998 and appointed Tony Alvarado to oversee academics. Looking back, Bersin has said that he needed a co-leader with experience in education. Alvarado made his reputation by improving schools in New York City’s District 2. From an interview with PBS:

Smith: Not being an educator, did you need an educational partner?

Bersin: No question about that. I understood that I wasn’t about to teach teachers about reading and I needed to connect with an educational leader and someone who could educate our system as well as educate me. There was a period of three to four months beginning in March of 1998 when I was both U.S. Attorney and the superintendent designate. I used that opportunity to speak with many people around the country, get suggestions, and met with a couple of perspective candidates, and then found Tony Alvarado.

Detroit

The leadership structure in Detroit is an example of how appointing a chief academic officer as the number two to a schools leader can lead to turf wars with other education officials.

In 2009, Michigan’s governor brought in Robert Bobb, a former city manager, as the Emergency Financial Manager of Detroit’s public schools. A month after his appointment, Bobb, who has no experience in education, named Barbara Byrd-Bennett to be his chief academic and accountability auditor. He put her in charge of revamping the schools’ curriculum and overseeing the hiring and firing of principals while he dealt with the deficit.

Yet Byrd-Bennett’s authority has been challenged by Detroit’s Board of Education, which appointed its own schools superintendent and insists that the board, not Bobb, controls academics. Bobb says that because he controls the schools’ finances, it’s his decision which academic programs get funding.

The turf war is even playing out on the district’s website, which highlights the names of the academic officers appointed by Bobb. The names of the Board of Education-appointed academic leaders are next to them in plain font.

Upper West Success Academy reports that 357 families have filed applications since the school was approved last month. Two-thirds live in District 3, the diverse and relatively wealthy district stretching from 59th Street to 122nd Street on the West Side of Manhattan where the school will be located.

“Given that every great elementary school on the Upper West Side is overcrowded and the terrific private schools cost more than $30,000 a year, it’s hardly surprising that Upper West Side parents are lining up for a high performing charter school,” Moskowitz said in a statement. Her organization is also touting the results of a phone poll that found 70 percent of neighborhood parents would support the school opening in the area. When told that the school would share space with another public school, support dropped to 59 percent.

But applications from 269 district families and a poll of 300 households does not “demand” make, according to parent leaders who are pushing back against the school. They say the city would do better to invest in existing schools rather than to carve out space for a charter school.

Resistance from local parents is one reason why Upper West Success is still without a site. The city tried to place the school inside PS 145 on West 105th Street but backed down after the community protested. Now city officials say the school, which will start with a kindergarten and first grade, will likely open in the Brandeis High School building.

At the crux of the debate is the question of whether District 3 needs charter schools, which are meant to serve needy students and so far are mostly located in low-income neighborhoods. The district contains some of the highest-performing schools in the city and includes some of the most affluent zip codes. Moskowitz is billing Upper West Success as an alternative to tony private schools and arguing that middle-class parents need school choice just as much as poor families, a case she will press at a series of apartment parties starting next week.

“They want upper-middle-class white kids who, because the DOE is not paying attention to those schools, are going to be attracted to a school the DOE favors heavily,” said Noah Gotbaum, president of the district’s elected parent council.

But District 3 also serves many poor students and has some schools that enroll black and Hispanic students almost exclusively. It is home to a dozen elementary schools that scored a D or F on their most recent progress reports. Upper West Success plans to offer preference to children zoned for those schools, along with students with disabilities and those classified as English language learners.

Gotbaum said the numbers sound like the school’s aggressive marketing — he said he has received 18 pieces of mail from Upper West Success — isn’t paying off.

“If she doesn’t get thousands of applications, it will be shocking because of the millions of dollars she’s spending in saying there are no good options in the district,” he said.

But Upper West Success has more than four months to collect applications. Charter schools are required by law to accept applications at least until April 1, when they are first permitted to hold admissions lotteries.

Of the 357 current applicants, 14 percent live in Harlem, home to the first three Success Network schools. Another 10 percent live in the Bronx, where the network just opened a school this year.

Gotbaum said he plans to conduct his own survey of parents in the district.

Every year in New York State, there’s an entire week in January devoted to giving Regents exams. Kids can study, prepare, and take tests, or if they’re really lucky, get a week off. Meanwhile, their teachers proctor, grade exams, and take care of whatever has to be done before the kids return.

This year things are different. One reason is that there’s a new English Regents exam. It’s been streamlined and there’s less writing. It only takes one day instead of two. And it appears to be largely regulated by a private company called Pearson, contracted for “performance standards revisitation.” I’m not entirely certain what that means, but perhaps how kids perform on the test will determine which standards need to be applied. Will the test be easier? More difficult?

No one knows for sure, and that worries those of us who constantly have Adequate Yearly Progress hanging over our heads. In fact, the conversion chart that will allow teachers to turn raw scores into actual grades won’t be available for two weeks after the tests are scored.

This brings me to another point — this test will not be given during Regents week, which begins Jan. 25. Instead, it will be administered Jan. 11. This means New York high school kids will lose, besides Regents week, an additional full day of school. But that’s not all. The geniuses at Pearson have decreed that all test papers be scored, recorded, photocopied, and prepared for UPS delivery by 2 p.m. on Jan. 12.

Perhaps Pearson is unaware that ESL and special education students require extra time to take these exams. Thus, they will be around for hours after the native-English-speaking kids finish. It’s unlikely their teachers will be around long enough to grade all their papers (and I can tell you from experience it’s more time-consuming to read ESL papers than native papers).

What will happen? Likely teachers will need to come back very early the next morning to grade, and English language learners will lose yet another day of instruction.

But that’s not all. Kids in classes that focus on the Regents exam will have two weeks of classes that lead nowhere. Not knowing whether they passed or not, will kids be motivated to study for a test they just took?  Will they simply assume they passed and tune out? If a teacher chooses to do something wild, say, teach a book without simply focusing on terms mandated by the Regents exam, perhaps she’ll get written up by some overzealous supervisor.

It seems obvious the sensible thing to do is give the test after the class ends. Shouldn’t we give kids more, not less prep time? And doesn’t it make sense to give them additional instruction when it’s so easy to do? This is particularly true of an exam no one’s ever seen, and giving kids every opportunity to excel seems more important than making things convenient for the folks at Pearson.

I’ve been saying for years that it’s absurd to administer the English Regents exam to my ESL students; they require a very different kind of instruction and examination than those of us born here. Preparing them for this exam deprives them of instruction they will likely need to revisit in college remedial courses — courses they’d need not pay for if we were free to give them what they need in high school.

The nonsensical manner in which this test will be administered exacerbates an already absurd situation. And it’s just one more thing that happens when educational decisions get made without educators’ input.

• A state panel voted not to endorse Black for chancellor. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1, WNYC)
• Education Commissioner David Steiner, who will decide, also has “serious concerns.” (Times)
• Black could still get the job if she takes on a buddy who has education experience. (WSJ)
• UFT chief Michael Mulgrew came out against Black more strongly than before. (Post)
• The Daily News says Steiner should still appoint Black because he shouldn’t make schools policy.
• The Post says the panel’s vote wasn’t about qualifications, but about union influence.
• Adam Lisberg says trying to appoint Black wasn’t worth the hit for Bloomberg. (Daily News)

In other news:

• Conflict of interest rules could make News Corp’s Wireless Generation buy tricky for Joel Klein. (Times)
• PS 9 in Prospect Heights has a newly renovated library but can’t pay a librarian. (Brooklyn Paper)
• A parent says the dean at Achievement First Crown Heights pushed her around. (Daily News)
• In some places, students transferring from failing schools are burdening other schools. (Washington Post)
• Disgraced football player Michael Vick is touring schools to campaign against dogfighting. (Times)