What Joel Klein’s “life story” tells us about about Education Reform, Inc.
Low Expectations High School, which Joel Klein attended. Physics teacher Sidney Harris rescued Klein from near certain mediocrity and launched him on his life-long crusade—against teachers.
So Joel Klein’s father was not an illiterate turd farmer who once tore up the pages of young Joel’s only book and smoked them in his corn cob pipe—what’s the big deal??? When you are literally trying to close the achievement gap with your own bare hands, facts have a tendency to stray. The important thing is that Mr. Sidney Harris, the teacher whom Joel Klein credits with rescuing him from a low-expectations hell, inspired Klein to launch his life-long crusade against teachers.
If you’ve missed the latest scandal to rock the hallways of Education Reform, Inc, allow me to break it down for you. It turns out that Klein wasn’t adopted by African American sharecroppers, and that little flourish he throws in on the edu-stump about having dyslexia and being locked in the closet at school only to be freed by a sassy barkeep, midriff barely covered by her parent-trooper t-shirt? That’s fiction too. But the ending, where Klein is hired by Rupert Murdoch, to peddle edu-products to the public schools while playing the part of a high-minded innovator, that alas is all too true. Continue reading →
It’s a conundrum faced by nearly every public school parent. You run an organization that puts students first, but sending your own personal student to an elite private school costs a flippin’ fortune. Twenty two thousand large to be exact. And that’s just the start of it. As any public school parent who also sends her child to an elite private school with an annual tuition bill of $22,000 knows all too well, the annual tuition bill of $22,000 is just the beginning. Continue reading 
