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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…)

Schnur is the gray-haired man on the right (via Flickr)

Jason Horowitz has a story in the Observer this week wondering which New Yorkers could be going to Washington if Barack Obama wins the presidency, as it looks like he might.

Here’s a name I didn’t see on Horowitz’s list: Jon Schnur, the cofounder and CEO of the Manhattan-based nonprofit New Leaders for New Schools. Schnur has been taking time off lately to campaign for Obama, work that has included guest-blogging, debating, and meeting with like-minded, education-inclined fundraisers in fancy Manhattan apartments. (I don’t have a link for that last one but can testify it did happen at least once; I was there.)

Schnur is one of the main players in the quiet battle among Obama’s education advisers which I am told is still raging even this close to the election. Schnur is the leader of the mostly younger “entrepreneurial” set who sympathize with the efforts of Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein — and who likely were not too pleased when the leader of the other group, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, criticized Teach For America at a recent Teachers College debate where she was speaking on behalf of Obama. (more…)