The New York City school system is about to get a new chancellor: Joel Klein.
Yes, that Joel Klein. The one who (successfully, so far) represented the U.S. government in its antitrust case against Microsoft. The one who was, until today, the U.S. head of Bertelsmann. (What this means for Bertelsmann, one of the world’s five largest meda companies and the CEO of which was pushed out yesterday, is fodder for another article.)
Here’s what the NYTimes says about it.
Interesting. Klein is the second chancellor in a row to come from the business community rather than the education industry. Klein is also very much the choice of Mayor Bloomberg, himself a successful businessman. (For those of you who don’t follow city educational politics, Bloomberg recently got control of what used to be called the Board of Education — which has eluded mayors for decades — and appears hell-bent on implementing some serious systemic reform.)