GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

State Education Commissioner David Steiner is the person who has the final word over whether Cathie Black is permitted as Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s successor. But the group of people who effectively oversee Steiner are trying to have their say, too.

A number of lawmakers — including Assembly members Marcos Crespo and Deborah Glick, as well as State Senator-elect Tony Avella — have already sent Steiner letters urging him to block Black’s appointment. Others have not gone that far, but are expressing deep misgivings both about Black’s lack of education credentials and the mayor’s abrupt and secretive selection process.

In making their stance, state lawmakers walk a fine line.

On the one hand, the legislature appoints the Board of Regents, who in turn appoint Steiner. And Steiner frequently needs to negotiate with lawmakers, as he has done this year over the charter cap and state budget. Lawmakers’ stances on Black’s appointment therefore matter.

“I think it should [matter],” said Queens Assemblyman David Weprin. “[Steiner is] going to have to deal with the legislature on a myriad of issues, as he has already.”

But at the same time, these are the same lawmakers who extended sole authority over the city schools to Bloomberg last year. (more…)

The steady stream of resignations and new appointments at the Department of Education continues today with citywide school board chairman David Chang, who is stepping down.

Chang resigned from the Panel for Educational Policy last Friday, November 5, and Mayor Bloomberg is replacing him with Robert Reffkin, a vice president at Goldman Sachs. He is also the former board chairman of Bronx Success Academy I, the newest school in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Charter Network.

A spokeswoman for Success Charter Network said Reffkin resigned from his post on Tuesday.

The panel is dominated by the mayor — he appoints eight of its 13 members — and has never voted against any of his policies. Its members have the final say on which schools the city will close, which ones it will put in the same buildings, and whether contracts over $1 million are approved. This year, the board will have to vote on as many as 60 school closure proposals.

As a member of the panel, Reffkin will be in the position of having to vote on important space-sharing proposals between charter and district schools. While these plans are often controversial — district school parents and teachers often argue that their schools can’t spare space for the charters — they could become especially complicated for Reffkin because of his ties to a charter school network. (more…)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg fought against growing opposition to his selection of magazine publisher Cathie Black this morning, saying that he and Chancellor Joel Klein had “spent a lot of time finding the right person.” Bloomberg said he had been discussing Klein’s departure with him “for months” and only began to search for a successor in earnest once he “slowly…became convinced” that Klein truly intended to leave.

His remarks, on the John Gambling radio show this morning, described the search process:

Anybody that comes in wants to have a chance to really get up to speed and make a difference and stick with that difference and implement it and show that it works earlier rather than later. And we’d been talking about it for months, and I’ve been looking — at the beginning I wasn’t sure he [Klein] was serious, but slowly as I became convinced he was, I started looking — and he and I together spent a lot of time finding the right person.

The description follows a report in the New York Times that Klein himself only learned who his successor would be on Monday.

Black told the New York Post this week that the mayor offered her the job after approaching her a “couple of weeks ago on a Monday.” Black’s account, as reported in the Post, suggested that the mayor offered her the job at their first meeting:

“Monday the mayor called,” she told me. “We know each other a long time. I didn’t know what he wanted. He only told me this was a personal call and he wanted to meet. I couldn’t exactly say, ‘Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I’m busy,’ but the fact is I had back-to-back meetings at Hearst, so I said I couldn’t today but could tomorrow.’

“He said, ‘How’s 7 a.m. tomorrow?’ I said, ‘Fine.’ We met in his foundation offices. The offer came out of left field, and my stomach did a flip-flop. The opportunity made me feel fantastic.”

In her Post interview, Black described meeting with Klein for an hour and a half. (more…)

• Cathie Black’s appointment as chancellor is all up to Education Commissioner David Steiner. (Times)
• If installed, Black will face tough problems, both in school performance and politics. (Times)
• Some critics of Joel Klein are backing Black’s appointment, but many others are not. (WSJ)
• Two top administrators have already left the Department of Education this week. (Daily News)
• And insiders say more high-level departures are likely to happen soon. (NY1)
• Back in August, Black made a “hooker” joke while speaking on NPR. (NY1)
• Al Sharpton says politicians have to work together to close the achievement gap. (Daily News)

• With both Rhee and Klein gone, experts debate the fate of urban education reform. (Hechinger Report)
• Our Elizabeth Green and the Daily News’ Juan Gonzalez discuss Klein’s legacy. (Democracy Now)
• Does a schools chancellor need education experience? Ten experts weigh in. (Room for Debate)
• Diane Ravitch gives a history lesson in how city schools chancellors have been selected. (NYRB)
• New chancellor Cathleen Black’s political donations are largely to out-of-state politicians. (City Room)
• Charles and Inez Barron spoke out against Black’s appointment at City Hall today. (Observer)
• An education professor wants State Ed to investigate city schools’ performance under Klein. (HuffPo)
• Fieldston’s search for a headmaster was far more public than the city’s chancellor search. (City Room)
• Producers of the TV show “Glee” will pay for a “job readiness” counselor at Harvey Milk HS. (NYMag)
• New York City has set up a feedback loop of school “reform, research, and renewal.” (EdWeek)
• Albany’s school board chief got 1,400 texts after a charter network handed out his cell number. (WTEN)
• And GothamSchools needs your help! We’re looking for volunteers to help at our party next week.

Cathleen Black has almost six weeks to get up-to-speed on public education in New York City before she becomes the new schools chancellor.

She appears to have gotten started on her prep work: Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, was spotted on Monday with a “thick stack of materials concerning public education,” according to The New York Times. She’s also made phone calls to the presidents of the teachers and principals unions, as well as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

When Chancellor Joel Klein was tapped for the job more than eight years ago, he told reporters that he planned to meet with 5,000 people — consultants, educators, parents, and community groups — in his first two months.

We don’t know what’s in Black’s stack of reading material, but we put this question to education experts: what should she be reading? (more…)

The Department of Education isn’t granting any interviews with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chancellor appointee Cathie Black until she assumes office next month. But Black has given one short interview — to New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams.

Black told Adams that Bloomberg called a “couple of weeks ago” and wanted to meet the next morning. When Black arrived at the mayor’s foundation offices the next day, she said, Bloomberg offered her the chancellor job on the spot:

The offer came out of left field, and my stomach did a flip-flop.

That Bloomberg offered Black the job without any sort of screening process seems to give credence to the theory that Black was the only candidate he considered seriously.

Although the mayor said on Tuesday that he “considered many different people,” thus far it’s not clear that he talked to anyone else about the job, or who he consulted besides Chancellor Joel Klein as he was making up his mind. The Times has decided to crowd-source the question, asking its readers to contact them if anyone at City Hall spoke to them about the position. (Note to our readers: if you were contacted, don’t e-mail the Times. E-mail us.)

Black also gives a hint to her motivations for taking the position. After having been replaced as president of Hearst Magazines in June, Black told Adams that she appreciated the opportunity to advance:

It’s a great thing when, at a certain stage in life, you can be able to deal up . . . not down.

Adams’ brief interview also reveals Black’s mindset as she prepares to take what she acknowledges will be a tremendously challenging new gig. Black told Adams that she is “not nervous at all” and that she believes that with the help of Klein’s eight (now seven) deputy chancellors she will “get up to speed quickly.”

Last week’s teacher workday, held on Election Day, marked a first for my school: We participated in a campus-wide professional development program. The day underscored how difficult – and how important – teaching and learning about about teaching and learning can be.

My school is one of three schools now occupying a single building. Our students wear different uniforms, our hallways are painted different colors, and because of staggered start and dismissal times, I rarely run into my colleagues who work in the rooms above and below me. And yet our schools also have a great deal in common: We serve similar populations of students and are experiencing the unique growing pains of being new schools. It follows then that we have a great deal to learn from one another.

This is the spirit that infused last week’s professional development: learning from each other and making connections with teachers from other schools in the building. Each school hosted and facilitated a 90-minute workshop. The workshops varied in content and facilitation-style, echoing the different cultures of our schools. For example, a few of the students from my school hosted a presentation about our student-led conferences, and then another school offered a seminar on integrating literacy into all subjects through deliberate curriculum planning. In the afternoon I watched as colleagues, some I’ve worked with for years and some I had just met that morning, did jumping jacks and labeled body parts with Post-it notes as part of a workshop on engaging kinesthetic learners. (more…)

We have the most devoted, party-happy readers. All the slots for our party next Wednesday have been filled!

So we’re no longer selling tickets, but you can still get involved. We’re looking for a small team of volunteers to help out with logistics like greeting guests, taking coats, and accepting donations. We’ll cycle you between tasks so that you also get a chance to mingle, eat, and visit the bar.

If you can’t come but would like to make a donation, please do so here. Don’t forget that, thanks to a challenge grant from a generous donor, every dollar we raise right now will be fully matched.

To sign up to volunteer, please e-mail our intern extraordinaire Kate Schimel at kschimel@gothamschools.org.

• Mayor Bloomberg surprised almost everyone with his choice of Cathie Black for chancellor. (Times)
• There are a lot of management types with education experience, but Black isn’t one of them. (Times)
• Black’s challenges include budget woes, a union contract, the ATR pool, and test scores. (Daily News)
• The Times says the state should thoroughly vet Black to make sure she’s up for the big job.
• State Sen.-elect Tony Avella says Black lacks the credentials for the job. (Post)
• Black has started introducing herself to very important people in the city’s ed world. (Daily News)
• Five prominent figures in city education give Black their advice on what to do first. (Daily News)
• The department’s top finance official, Photeine Anagnastopoulos, has also resigned. (GothamSchools)
• Black’s experience closing struggling magazines could translate to closing struggling schools. (WSJ)
• Klein said he’s happy with what he did as chancellor, even when it was controversial. (Post)
• He also said the decision to leave was all his, no matter the rumors. (GothamSchools)
• Academics say it’s hard to tell which of Klein’s reforms worked and which didn’t. (NY1, WNYC)
• Michael Daly says Joel Klein’s News Corp. job shows his true ed policy feelings. (Daily News)
• DFER’s Joe Williams says Cathie Black can be successful only if she gets parent buy-in. (Post)
• After Cuomo family advocacy, Advanced Placement Italian tests will be given again. (Times, WSJ)
• Protests about education budget cuts turned violent in London yesterday. (Times)