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At least half a dozen major city school districts are combing the country for new superintendents — and they’re frequently looking to administrators who cut their teeth working under former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Boston, Newark, Chicago, New Orleans, and Atlanta are all looking for new superintendents, and Providence, R.I., just lost its leader. Deputy Chancellor John White was floated as a candidate in Chicago and is under consideration in other districts, including New Orleans, according to sources familiar with the searches. Districts have also eyed Jean-Claude Brizard, the Rochester, N.Y., superintendent who once worked for Klein, and Andres Alonso, another Klein deputy who now runs the Baltimore public schools.

“As far as I know, they’re all being recruited in multiple venues right now,” Klein said today in a phone interview. “Who knows where the music will all stop.”

The hunts for talent have high stakes for the community of education entrepreneurs that we’ve called “idealocrats.” On one hand, these reformers argue that the next frontier in their battle is to transform not just a school or a set of schools but an entire school district. Yet the same people regularly point out that there is a limited pool of people who are both ready and willing to take on this challenge.

“People are looking for people who have the credibility to speak to the classroom question but also have the leadership capacity that too often isn’t really sought in the education space,” said one person familiar with the searches. “Cities are not willing to compromise on a kind of institutional person. And yet you’re talking about paying people … to go out and take a beating every night.”

A screenshot from DFER's web site advertises four new branches. (The Florida branch is yet to be official, according to executive director Joe Williams.)

The lobbying group whose H.R. recommendations virtually staffed President Obama’s Education Department is spreading its “reform” tentacles.

Democrats for Education Reform now has branches in Missouri, Colorado, and Wisconsin, in addition to its hometown, New York, and the organization plans to be in 10 states by 2011, executive director Joe Williams told me earlier this week.

“We have very good conditions at the federal level right now for at least talking about reform, but we’re really talking about what at the end of the day is a local issue,” Williams said. “So the strength of any national organization like ours is really going to come down to how strong its local units are.”

The new branches are mostly self-sustaining, relying on leadership from volunteer boards and local residents already active in education. “It’s a lot of people who were doing a lot of work on reform, but there was no political arm to engage at the political level,” Williams said.

What Williams calls DFER’s “outpost” in Colorado is a case study for its plans elsewhere. Rather than generate policy ideas, the organization focuses on raising money for candidates who support its favored brand of changes to education — policies like charter schools, merit pay, and higher teaching standards. Among the Colorado officials DFER supports is Mike Johnston, who advised candidate Obama’s presidential campaign and replaced the president of Colorado’s state senate, Peter Groff, after he joined President Obama’s education department. (more…)

[This post has been updated to include a comment from Jon Schnur.]

WASHINGTON, D.C. —  Jon Schnur, the education policy expert who has been working as an advisor to President Barack Obama and played a pivotal role in writing the federal stimulus plan for schools, will not serve in the Obama administration. He will instead return to running the nonprofit principal-training program New Leaders for New Schools group that he co-founded, according to an e-mail he sent recently to members of New Leaders.

Schnur is one of the most high-profile members of the next-generation “reform” camp of Democrats, who push for dramatic changes in public schools, including strong accountability measures. He had been named as a likely chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and was serving as a senior adviser to Duncan, helping him craft the education part of the stimulus bill.

Schnur’s close role in the administration had been seen as a signal of its direction on education, suggesting that the president was siding with the camp of education advocates that includes Schnur (and for which we singled Schnur out as a spokesman), rather than with the camp that is more skeptical of recent accountability efforts.

As word of Schnur’s plans spread around Washington, D.C., the major question I’m hearing people ask is why he is not entering the administration — and what that says about the administration’s direction. (I am in D.C. for the annual meeting of the Education Writers Association, where I am becoming a board member.) (more…)

Has President Obama finally picked a side in the education wars? Three prominent New Yorkers are worrying that he is at least leaning — and that it’s not in the right direction.

Deborah Meier, the respected small schools pioneer, said President Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as education secretary “leaves me sad.” Today, Diane Ravitch, the NYU historian and Meier’s blogging partner, described Duncan as “Margaret Spellings in drag.” “This is not change I can believe in,” she wrote in Politico. And on Saturday, Ann Cook, another small-school movement doyenne, said she is also concerned about  Obama’s choice of Duncan.

All three women sympathize with the “Broader, Bolder” manifesto, which argues that schools alone cannot be expected to close the achievement gap and whose members are more suspicious of popular innovations such as charter schools and test-driven accountability systems. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein leads another camp, which strongly supports test-based accountability, the No Child Left Behind law, and charter schools. Klein’s Education Equality Project circulated a rival petition.

Obama made a point of not selecting a side in the debate. He chose two top education advisers, one from each camp. And he touted his chosen education secretary, Duncan, who had signed both petitions, as a pragmatist. But in the last few weeks, concerns about Duncan have begun to surface. (more…)

Alexander Russo smartly picks up this screen shot from the C-SPAN video of Arne Duncan’s confirmation hearing. That’s Jon Schnur right behind him, on our left of the screen. (He’s the smiling gray-haired guy.)

Schnur, you remember, is our poster boy for the next-generation reform movement of which Joel Klein is one important part. For a long time we couldn’t come up with a name for them, but then we landed on idealocrats, which, the more I think about it, the more I decide is so perfect. Another unclear thing was whether President Obama sided with this crowd or not. Sitting within whisper-distance of Obama’s chosen education secretary is strong evidence in the “yes” direction.

A screenshot from video of Arne Duncan's confirmation hearing. (Via Russo)