I knew where I was as soon as the Ukranian cabbie pronounced the city a dictatorship and a teachers union leader told a room full of education reformers how good it was to be back in a town ?where you can use your hands when you talk?and swear.?
?Bulls?t!? someone shouted.
Welcome to what used to be called The Big Apple?an odd but popular term that seems to have gone the way of the West Side Highway and 110 Livingston Street?and a fundraiser for Gotham Schools, the two-year-old web-based education news journal whose staff of four has made lots of waves keeping an eye on the country's largest public school system.
A couple of days before the event (last Wednesday evening), which was sold out even?before Joel Klein resigned, we received word that there would be a ?surprise guest? for the lower Manhattan affair (in a relatively low-rent office district, ?a no-man's land on Lafayette Street between Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown).? Rumors circulated that it would be Eli Manning* or Cathie Black.? But?Surprise! Surprise!?it was Randi Weingarten.
In fact, Weingarten, a native New Yorker, could be the only teacher union official in America brave enough to speak to a room full of ed reformers and ed-centrics (see below)?and enjoy it. The former boss of the city's powerful United Federation of Teachers, Weingarten now leads the American Federation of Teachers (headquartered in the city where you can't talk with your hands or swear) and seems to have the inclination, and perhaps soul, of an Albert Shanker, whose mantle she wears. ??It's great to be here,? Weingarten told the crowd of of hungry reformers,?casting aside her notes and her glasses, ?and not have to talk about what I know is on everyone's mind?because it's a local issue!?
Hoots and hollers!
Like her audience, Weingarten was in full sail, congratulating Doug Lemov, who had just spoken, ?for having the courage to do a PowerPoint at a fundraiser.?? In fact, the author of the surprise education best-seller, Teach Like a Champion, had been introduced as the education world's Bono (who, for the record, was not there) and not only had the courage to do a PowerPoint,?but actually pull it off.? This in a room packed with large education egos very busy noshing vegetable hors d'oeuvres, slurping (and sipping) wine and beer and energetically talking big education issues.
Lemov, like?the champion teachers he writes about, managed to rein in the rowdy crowd (you have to read the book) and tell?his story?picture of a wrecked car (his book was an ?accident?)?and that of the people?who made it possible: great teachers.?He even projected on to the screen?a chart (don't try this at home, let alone a cocktail party) showing teacher Patrick Pastore's 2010 8th grade test scores in Monroe County (upstate New York), which?Lemov labeled ?a culture of hope.? That meant, as?he explained,?it was possible for ?teachers to make a difference.?
Lemov's brief video clips of champion teachers in action were spellbinding?especially if one is used to seeing less-than-stellar teachers in nonaction. ?(If you can't hear Lemov in person, at least call him up on the Internet: a Google search for ?Teach Like a Champion video? will yield a small treasure-trove of classroom practice goodies.) My favorite slide of the evening? A picture of the world's most famous soccer player (whose name I?can't recall),? ?practicing.?? Yes, said Lemov, ?even the best teachers practice.?? ?When you listen to Lemov, you realize you don't have to wait for Superman.??The point of all this education frivolity was, as Elizabeth Green, founding editor of Gotham Schools, said, ?to support robust news coverage of public education.?? Yes, a fundraiser.
An important one. Green, a young and talented reporter who had covered education for U.S. News and the New York Sun, broke on the national scene with a cover story about Lemov for the New York Times Magazine last spring?and, of course, launched Lemov at the same time. She and her small Gotham Schools team have managed to cover the city's schools with enough sense and sensibility?including a break-out report exposing a grade-changing scheme at a South Bronx high school?to attract over three million hits in just two years; their stories have been picked up by many mainstream news organizations, including the Times, the Washington Post and The New Republic.
But as Green reminded her guests the other night, a 2009 Brookings report had concluded that only 1.4 percent of all national news stories were about education, and ?those that were tended to be about school lunch wars.?
Work to be done, folks.
Educators of all stripes recognize the need to get the word out about the need to get the word out?and this explains the sold-out crowd at ?The Penthouse? (sorry, another NYC conceit) last week. There was Jonas Chartock, executive director of the State's ?Charter Schools Institute,?who is heading to New Orleans to run a new teacher training program called Leading Educators.? Peter Murphy, a former budget guru in the New York State legislature who stumbled into education reform in the late 1990s and never looked back (he's currently communications director for the New York Charter Schools Association) had come down from Albany.? (I am sorry, but you'll have to Google these folks on your own.)? David Cantor, who headed up the infamous NYC school district (Diane Ravitch and Sol Stern were not there) press office for much of Joel Klein's tenure and is now a Senior VP at Widmeyer Communications, was discussing school budget minutiae with Jan Atwel, on the staff of the city council's education committee, and Leonie Hanison?one of the nation's most indefatigable parent lobbyists (see Class Size Matters).? On the other side of the room, Mike Duffy, a founding board member of Match charter public school in Boston, was chatting with Ken Hirsh, who describes himself as ?an education reform student, philanthropist and advocate? and was a member of the evening's ?host committee.? As was my buddy from Time Inc. days, Robert Pondiscio, who fell out of the corporate media nest into a South Bronx classroom a few years ago?and also never looked back.? (He learned to teach, then flew off to the Core Knowledge Foundation, from where he writes one of the smartest blogs around.)? I also spotted a nice-looking fellow taking pictures and asked if he were the official photographer for the event. He smiled. ?Well, not exactly.? Turns out that the photog was Robert Hughes, President of New Visions for Public Schools, which has created ninety-six public schools in the city.? (My apologies to the dozens of folks I did not mention; party reporting is not my forte.)
But the turnout helps explain why New York City ranked in the top ten on Fordham's list of reform-friendly cities. (See ?America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform.?) Whatever else you might think about the place, the city is an ?entrepreneurial hotspot,? as the America's Best researchers concluded, ?a thriving environment for education reform.?
And so it?it was a great evening?and provided a needed reminder of the shared mission of the schools and the press:? to inform, to educate.
But no mention of the press in Gotham would be complete without quoting the wonderful New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling, who famously said, ?freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.?
Holy-Moly, Batman.? Quick, send a check to Gotham Schools.
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
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*This could be the first mention of the New York Giants quarterback on Flypaper.
