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Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, and others in an East Harlem classroom yesterday. (Anna Phillips/GothamSchools)

I didn’t post all day yesterday because I was on the move, following Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty on a school visit in East Harlem in the morning, checking in on Vice President Joe Biden’s speech in Midtown in the afternoon, and chatting with charter school operators from New Jersey at a bar late into the evening.

I’ll have plenty of reports next week, but for now I want to share one exchange I observed during the morning school visit that’s missing from Javier Hernandez’s account in today’s Times. In the same class where Fenty described eating hot dogs with President Obama, Klein asked the children to name their favorite thing about their school. Their answers: Gym, art, music, assembly, “choice time” when they play games every Friday, and “cook shop,” where the class simulates a restaurant. 

Klein then revealed his own favorite thing about the school: ”You have great teachers, a great principal, and great students, and that really matters.” Then the two school leaders and their retinue moved on.

Michelle Rhee touted her red-track/green-track teacher pay proposal last night at Pace University, saying it’s made such a splash that Mayor Bloomberg asked Chancellor Joel Klein if they could bring a similar model to New York. The proposal, which is being negotiated with the D.C. teachers union right now, would award some first-year teachers nearly $40,000 raises in exchange for giving up their tenure rights — while others could choose a “red” path where they retain tenure but are paid less.

Rhee said the model came up in a recent chat with Klein, who she said she speaks to regularly to share “best practices” and to commiserate. Klein told her that Mayor Bloomberg had asked if they could bring the red/green plan to New York. “Apparently Klein said to him, ‘Not even you have enough money to do all of that in New York City,’” she said. Rhee’s plan, if passed, will be financed by private philanthropy for the first five years, she said.

A spokesman for the Department of Education, David Cantor, said the story is true.

Rhee spent part of her talk referencing the divide within the Democratic Party, where some education experts argue focus should be on improving schools and schools alone and others push for a broader focus. Rhee, who is firmly in the first camp, along with Klein, explained her objections to the second group by describing her experience as a second-year teacher. (more…)