Freakonomics Radio - 16. Exit Interview: Schools Chancellor, NYC

Episode Date: January 5, 2011

Having already amassed an eventful resume -- the Clinton White House, the Department of Justice, and Bertelsmann -- Joel I. Klein spent the past eight years at chancellor of the biggest school system in the country. So what'd he learn?

I have been told that really this whole leaving the job is just really all about spending more time with the dog. From American Public Media and WNYC, this is the Freakonomics Radio Exit Interview. Have a seat. Here's your host, Stephen Duffner. Joel Klein spent the last eight plus years running the New York City public school system. It's the largest system in the country, 1.1 million students, 1,600 schools, a $23 billion budget. He spent much of his career as a high voltage Washington lawyer, arguing cases before the Supreme Court, fighting antitrust battles for the Department of Justice and serving as deputy counsel to President Bill Clinton. He also had a brief stint in the media business, heading up U.S. operations for Bertelsmann. And now he's heading back to the media business as executive vice president in charge of

educational ventures for News Corp. Klein's tenure as school's chancellor was very eventful. So what did he learn? Chancellor Klein, welcome to our exit interview. As you surely know, many firms conduct an exit interview when an employee is leaving to find out their experiences. So I just want to stress that you're here of your own accord. This is not mandatory. You should feel free to be candid.

Nothing you say here will be used against you, will be forwarded to future employers unless, of course, they're listening to this program. So you're okay with that? You're ready to proceed then? I'm ready. All right. So after eight years as chancellor of the New York City school system, you are resigning. You're leaving us. Why?

You know, I think I had planned to do it for eight years when I started. That's sort of what I talked to the mayor about. I faced the decision really before the mayor's reelection whether I want to stick around for the full term or not. He asked me to stay through the election. We kind of agreed on that. But I'm ready. And, you know, it's hard to say exactly what that means. I feel like I've done the things I should. I think the city would benefit from bringing in a new chancellor who will have three years working with the mayor on this. And as far as I'm concerned, I've always wanted

to have a career after this, and I've found a job I'm very excited about. Now, you came to the job as chancellor of education in New York City schools with a great interest in education, K-12 education, with a robust set of beliefs in what was right and what was wrong, but not as a veteran educator. So what was that like for you coming in to take a professional job running schools, 1.1 million kids, a massive, massive job in something that you had not worked in before. How did that experience unfurl? I think it had its complications as well as its benefits and I think that's inevitable what's going to happen. I was able to see this in a way that I think people who grew up inside the system were unlikely to see it. I mean before there was Freakonomics, I actually believed in incentives and thought that they affect the way organizations work and it just seemed to me everything in K-12 education

was misaligned. We incentivize all the wrong things and so that was something I think coming from the outside you could see. On the other hand, I didn't pretend to be some great expert on learning theory or development of the brain or certainly what it was like day to day in the trenches. I taught for a short period of time. I taught a lot actually in law school, but I had taught sixth grade math way, way back when, but didn't pretend to be a veteran teacher in any way. It seemed to me the greatest disadvantage was it enabled critics to say he's not an educator.

That I think is a mistake. I think because somebody has taught for a few years or five years or ten years, I don't think it qualifies them to run a huge complex organization. In fact, I always used to say I didn't think that the managing partner of a law firm necessarily should be a lawyer. Lawyers are not steeped in management and human capital and creating incentives and creating an organization that's a problem-solving organization. Those are not the things that people are trained to do. You can be a great teacher and actually a poor principal.

I mean one of the things that always struck me is we thought people had to be a teacher first before you become a principal. It seemed to me to make no sense. Why shouldn't there be people who can come in who have the management skills, appoint a strong deputy, put together a team and get the work done? A couple people who've worked for you discussed the fact that a lot of management positions at the Department of Ed were filled by people from a corporate or consulting background as opposed to typically typical schools and typical in New York City education veterans. Why? Why did you do that? How did it work?

So I did it because I wanted a mix of skills. I mean I hired a lot of people from business schools. I mean it's a $23 billion organization. Why would we think that a social studies teacher would be the primary person to do budgets? Why would we think social studies teacher would be the primary person to do budgets? Why would we think the social studies teacher would be the primary person to do human resources? You need human resource policies, recruitment policies. So I wanted people who came from different backgrounds. Second of all, I wanted people who really were part of a performance culture, who really thought that excellence and driving themselves and pushing forward. And I wanted them to come from whatever background.

I've got more, in my current cabinet now, I've got more senior educators than anybody else ever had. I've got probably four people that have got, oh, maybe 150, 180 years among them in the system. But I've also got some people who come from a very different background. That's the way you assemble a team. But where I could find talent, whether it was from the business schools or the law schools or the Kennedy School or even occasionally School of Economics, you know, I would go for these people and bring them in. You sound as if you feel that you've accomplished an awful lot. There are a lot of people who would second that, that you've accomplished an awful lot? There are a lot of people who would second that, that you've accomplished an awful lot,

tried a lot of things, failed at some, but kept trying others and so on. But how does your feeling now about your accomplishment compare with your expectation of that accomplishment? I feel good about it, but I think if you ask me, there's still some of these arcane rules that make no sense. We're looking throughout America at layoffs. State and municipal government,

they're in trouble economically. They're looking at layoffs. State and municipal government, they're in trouble economically. They're looking at layoffs. It's hard to look you in the eye and say we're going to do layoffs last in, first out. I mean, that is by definition not going to get us the right teachers. Nobody thinks that,

and I'm not saying, we've got some veteran teachers who are terrific and we should keep them around. They might be our first priority to mentor others. But only group think says all veteran teachers are better than all the new teachers, the recent teachers that you've recruited. So that kind of rule drives me nuts. I spend over

$100 million right now as we're talking on a group of people who can't get hired as full-time teachers in the system. And they do basically substitute teaching. But I don't need substitute teachers that I pay for full-time teachers. So there are rules like that. Rules in terms of some of the technology and the other things you talked about with the school of one where they got all these arcane regulations that I wish didn't exist. And I still wish every single family in this city had at least one choice, that nobody had to take whatever the school system served up. Middle class people,

friends of yours, would never agree to a school system in which they automatically went to the neighborhood school, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. And yet poor people who don't have the options, can't move, can't afford private school, poor people, we say to them, just take one and you're done, whether it's good or bad. And it seems to me competition even in an incomplete fashion will help drive forward the system. We made a lot of progress in that regard, but I think there's more we could have made. All right. Let's dial it back then. Pretend you're walking in.

It's eight years ago, eight and a half years ago, and you know then what you know now, and you're driven by this desire to be bolder. Tell me a couple of things you'd do off the bat if you were starting over. Well, one of the things now I would do off the bat, I would be much more heavily invested in these technology and learning platforms. You know, a simple little thing. I've now seen a whole bunch of students working with a tutor online, right, and they're texting away, and it's working. I mean, I talk to the kids. I see the results. So that's something we should have done more.

Were you reluctant to believe in that kind of use of technology coming out of the game? I wasn't, but there were rules when you started. Basically, you had one teacher, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you could make the argument that using those tutors is violation of the contract or something like that. But I would have pushed those things a lot harder. I would have spoken out even more than I did on some of these arcane rules that make no sense. If there's been a bête noire in your administration, in your term, probably most people would say it's the teachers' union. There's all kinds of competing issues. How did you do then in your view with the teachers' union? How did you

do? Peter Van Doren I think we did okay. We got some important things done. We eliminated forced placements so that schools could hire people. We didn't dramatically change the tenure rules which I think need dramatically being changed both in terms of who gets tenure and what tenure means in this system. I think we've got to professionalize teaching. And it's still too much of a trade union assembly line Detroit model. And we've got to move that. And I always like to say about the teachers union in my relationship, it's like that old song, you know, the glory of love. You give a little, you take a little, and you let your poor heart break a little. That's the story of,

that's the glory of love. That's the story of and glory of labor management relations in the public sector. Coming up, we ask the chancellor to grade himself on how he ran New York City schools. We're back with the Freakonomics Radio exit interview. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. We're talking to Joel Klein, who last week ended his eight-year run as New York City Schools Chancellor. You oversaw or undertook directly a lot of change. You know, there was eliminating community districts, there was putting your weight behind charter schools and all kinds of programs, pilot programs like School of One that we've talked to you about before, closing

low-performing schools, opening up a lot of new schools, and especially changing really the shape of the relationship between the Department of Ed with teachers and the relationship with parents and the relationship with students. So I'd like you to give yourself a couple grades for me. I'll let you break it down how you want. There are administrative tasks. There are public relations. There are in-the-classroom tasks.

There are financial tasks. So tell me how you think you did in the different major departments that you were responsible for. So I think administratively we ran the department well, made some errors in that, some serious administrative errors. But I think overall I'd give ourselves a good grade on that. A good grade being what, a B plus? A B plus, A minus. Well, I think on leadership, which is really the overall realm, there I think we get an A. I mean I think it's the most comprehensive, most integrated education reform in the country.

I don't think there's any doubt about that. There are pieces throughout the country, some of them going on right now, others. But in terms of an eight-year run at restructuring the culture, restructuring the components. That's what I thought the most important piece. We did that. In the public relations, I would have to mark us down some. It's not about public relations. I mean people say you don't listen. But that's not true.

I listened. I disagreed with a lot of people. I didn't do as good enough job explaining to people why I thought, for example, closing a school that was persistently failing children was something we needed to do. You've had some interesting jobs in the past. You've worked in the White House, the Department of Justice, Bertelsmann. How does this compare? This is the best. This was my passion. It was my thing and I wanted to do it. I've had great jobs. I mean, I love the Clinton White House. Running the antitrust division was terrific. I practiced law before the United States Supreme

Court as an appellate advocate. I tried a lot of cases in my time. This thing was my thing. And, you know, I believed I trained all my life for it. And I believe it was as rewarding as anything I could have done. All right. Very good. And final question. I understand that you have a dog that you love very much, a Shih Tzu, yes? Yes, I do. What is this Shih Tzu's name? The Shih Tzu's name is Roger.

Roger. It's a male? It's a male. And I have been told by people with whom you work quite closely that really this whole thing, this whole leaving the job as chancellor of New York City Public Schools is just really all about spending more time with the dog. Well, the truth is it's really about spending more time with the dog's mother, my wife, who is the person that I really want to spend more time. So basically – and the two of us will spend more time with Roger. But Roger is moving into his adolescence now.

And as you probably know, dogs in their adolescence need a lot of time. So we're going to give him the appropriate focus he needs. I wish you the best of luck and thanks for stopping by. Thank you. Pleasure, Steve. You've got to give a little, take a little. Freakonomics Radio is a co-production of WNYC, American Public Media, and Dubner Productions. Our producers include Colin Campbell, Susie Lechtenberg, Jeff Masenkis, and Chris Neary.

David Herman is our engineer. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and you'll get the next episode in your sleep. You can find more audio at FreakonomicsRadio.com. And as always, if you want to check out the blog, the books, and more Freakonomics, go to Freakonomics.com. And let the clouds roll by That's the story of

That's the glory of love As long as there's the two of us