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Joseph Almeida, a sixth grade math teacher at KIPP Infinity, taught a lesson to adults at Rockefeller Center.

Among the mix of pages, chancellors, and mayors at NBC’s “Education Nation” outdoor museum at Rockefeller Center this week were a cadre of teachers from around the country who taught live “lessons” to the general public.

The exercise was remarkable for its lack of actual students. The lessons occurred inside one of several mini-tents on the plaza, starting at irregular hours, and the only officially invited guests were teachers, not children.

But the one teacher whose lesson I saw — Joseph Almeida, who teaches sixth grade math at KIPP Academy in the Bronx — did not let that deter him. He tailored his lesson, about place value, to the collection of adult tourists and passersby who gathered around him.

The principal training nonprofit New Leaders for New Schools gathered Almeida and the other roughly 50 teachers who taught public lessons through what New Leaders founder Jon Schnur described as a rigorous process. After recruiting nominations of teachers from around the country, New Leaders reviewed information ranging from the teachers’ students’ performance results to videotapes of their teaching. (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)

President-elect Obama just announced Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools chief, as his secretary of education. In doing so he suggested that pragmatism, not ideology, will be his guiding principle in navigating the wars inside the Democratic Party over how to improve schools. “Let’s not be clouded by ideology,” he said, praising Duncan’s “deep pragmatism.”

Obama reiterated his support for innovations like merit pay for teachers and charter schools, yet also indicated he may sympathize with the incrementalists in the disrupter-versus-incrementalist debate that George Miller, the chair of the House’s education committee, laid out recently. “We’re not going to transform the schools overnight,” he said.

As Elizabeth wrote yesterday, the next place to watch is the sub-cabinet positions. (more…)

A principal e-mailed me this idea for what to call the nameless reformers:

Idealocrats
(Idealistic Bureaucrats)

Idealistic:

• All schools, all children, all communities are salvagable by me (and my organization)
• I (we) can change the world

Bureaucrats:

• There needs to have a large, politically connected organization that I run
• Expansion and replication forever!

The Wall Street Journal reported last night that a Stanford professor, Linda Darling-Hammond, will chair Obama’s transition team studying education policy. This sounds unremarkable, but just like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein are lightning rods, so is Darling-Hammond.

The main reason is that Darling-Hammond has been consistently skeptical of the nameless movement‘s efforts to shake up public schools. She has criticized Teach For America, the alternative certification program for teachers; criticized high-stakes testing, and criticized No Child Left Behind for narrowing the curriculum. The passions these criticisms elicit is sometimes unbelievable. About a year and a half ago, I watched a grown man clasp a grown woman by the shoulders, look her in the eye, and vow to work together to prevent Darling-Hammond from being named U.S. Education Secretary. You can find vitriol pretty easily on the Internet, too.

The vitriol accelerated to another level altogether when Darling-Hammond’s was the first name to emerge as education adviser to the Obama campaign. “Reformers” were placated when it turned out that Jon Schnur, the founder of an alternative principal-training program and one of their own, was Darling-Hammond’s co-chair on that advisory board. It’s possible that right now, the WSJ story is repeating that pattern: Maybe Obama has abandoned his Team of Rivals approach and tossed Schnur to the sidelines, but equally possible is that Schnur will once again turn up as Darling-Hammond’s co-chair.

Whether Schnur joins her or not, Darling-Hammond will stir up emotions. The best evidence is her Wikipedia page. (more…)

Wendy Kopp, the hard-driving founder of Teach For America, and Arne Duncan, the superintendent of schools in Chicago, are being touted as top candidates for U.S. Education Secretary by an influential  lobbying group that pushes for aggressive changes in American schools. Their names are included in a 34-page transition memo to President-elect Barack Obama prepared by the group, Democrats for Education Reform, and obtained by GothamSchools.

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has received support from DFER, which is based in Manhattan, but the group’s memo specifically rules him out as a possible Education Secretary. The memo says Klein’s aggressive efforts to improve public schools are admirable, but that they make him and the like-minded D.C. school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, a poor choice for Barack Obama’s White House. “The need for them to occasionally ‘break some china’ in order to affect much-needed change puts them and other hard-charging reforms like them in an unlikely spot to be selected for a role like Secretary of Education (a role for which either would be well suited),” the memo says. (more…)

Not to keep beating the same drum, but where now-President-elect Barack Obama will land in the education wars is still a mystery.

Today’s Washington Post suggests he could bypass the peacemaker, middle-ground approach by choosing as his Secretary of Education one of the fiercest warriors in the education battle: Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. That would be a bombshell decision to side decisively with that nameless movement that includes Klein, Obama adviser Jon Schnur, and D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. On the other hand, Obama has also been seeking advice from representatives on the other side of the education wars, including Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who was still stumping for him at Teachers College just days ago.

Highlighting the coming crossroads are two statements that came out late last night and early this morning, reacting to Obama’s election.

The money manager and philanthropist Whitney Tilson, who was an early Teach For America staffer and who serves on the board of Democrats for Education Reform, says Obama will have to fight power to transform education. I assume this means longtime power brokers such as the teachers union. Tilson’s e-mail:

The single most important decision President-elect Obama will make in this area is picking his Secretary of Education because — let’s be honest — with so many urgent priorities (the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, healthcare, etc.), Obama himself isn’t going to have the time or political capital to spend on education reform in the early part of his first term, so the Secretary of Education is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting.

But he/she won’t be able to do it alone.  Reforming our schools will also depend on all of us continuing to be involved to keep PUSHING.  As Obama has said many times, “power does not concede easily”, so take a day to relax and then let’s get back to work!

On the other hand, teachers union president Randi Weingarten emphasizes that Obama will have to work together with the union:

At a time when the focus on strengthening public education has been all but eclipsed by other issues, Sen. Obama has shown both deep understanding of, and real interest in, the need to ensure every child receives a world-class education. The members and leaders of the American Federation of Teachers welcome President-elect Obama’s commitment to working together to strengthen public education. We look forward to partnering with him and with members of both parties to fulfill this promise.

Maybe the choice is not which side to take, but whether to take a side at all.

I’ve been getting a lot of ideas for what to call the nameless movement personified by Jon Schnur. The good news is that I think the descriptions are getting a lot more precise. The consensus points I see emerging: This set of reformers puts a primacy on data; is obsessive about getting rid of bad teachers, and views the democratic political process as a barrier. They are also young and bratty.

We are getting closer, but I do not think we are there yet. I define “there” as the moment at which you the readers have delivered me a single adjective that I can slap before “reformer” without feeling a twinge of remorse.

So, please send more entries! As you brainstorm adjectives, the best of the suggestions so far, which I’ve compiled below and which include superstar entrants including Joel Klein and Diane Ravitch, may help. (more…)