Earlier this week, Peter Gorman, Superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system abruptly resigned his post effective August 15th.
But the real story is why. He is taking a job with News Corp as their Senior Vice President of their Education Division.
From Michael Gordon of the Charlotte Observer:
Peter Gorman's new gig?
He's going to work for Rupert Murdoch. He gets to stay in Charlotte. But then the details get a little vague.
Here's what we do know: Gorman will become senior vice president of News Corp.'s new education division. News Corp., owned by Murdoch, is a global media company with assets of $60 billion in everything from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal, films, cable and on and on.
As spelled out in a News Corp news release that came out within minutes of Gorman's resignation announcement, the soon-to-be-former Charlotte superintendent will work with school districts across the country to put News Corp. learning programs in place.
Those are based "on individualized, technology-based, content and learning opportunities that support world class student and teacher performance."
For details, we can turn to a Murdoch speech at the G8 summit last month. In it, Murdoch asserted that education has dozed through much of the digital revolution.
"In my industry," he said, "editors who put out newspapers the night before now marvel at the sight of readers getting news delivered to cellphones and tablets.
"But not in education. Our schools remain the last holdout from the digital revolution. The person who woke up from that fifty-year nap would find that today's classroom looks almost exactly the same as it did in the Victorian age: a teacher standing in front of a roomful of kids with only a textbook, a blackboard, and a piece of chalk.
"My friends, what we have here is a colossal failure of imagination. Worse, it is an abdication of our responsibility to our children and grandchildren - and a limitation on our future."
Among Murdoch's solutions: software in classrooms and on home computers that makes teaching and learning a more intimate, individualized and "sticky" experience.
Gorman will work with Kristen Kane, the former chief operating officer of the New York City Department of Education under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Kane becomes the COO of the education group, charged with "driving operations and strategy." Both she and Gorman will work for the division's CEO, Joel Klein, a former chancellor of the New York City schools.
Said Klein about Gorman: "Pete's success running one of the largest school systems in the United States, combined with his commitment to educational innovation are the perfect complement to our mission."
Then from Fanny Flono, Associate Editor at the Observer.
I was almost as startled Wednesday to realize that Rupert Murdoch had set up an "Education Division" as a new staple in his News Corporation as I was that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman had resigned to become its new senior vice president. Murdoch, tabloid king and the money bags behind the conservative Fox News network, is seriously interested in education?
Then I remembered that Murdoch had showed his hand on his education interest last November when he hired former New York City Education Chancellor Joel Klein as executive vice president. In January, Klein became chief executive of the media company's new education unit. His base salary? About $2 million a year, plus he got a $1 million signing bonus and is set to get more than $1.5 million in bonuses annually if he meets certain performance targets.
Gorman will probably get a good chunk of change too.
But I'm sure as important, Gorman gets to work with someone he's told me before he admires and views as a sort of mentor, Joel Klein. In CMS, you can clearly see the imprint of some of Klein's policies - school closings, pay for performance, achievement zones, Teach for America; all were programs that Klein pushed during his tenure as head of New York City schools. He was at the forefront of the push for standardized testing as a gauge for student academic success, and has been credited with more influence on education policies and strategies than anyone living, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Klein's success in New York, though, has been questioned. The percentage of students passing state tests dropped below 50 percent when the tests had to be recalibrated. Graduation rate increases were deemed irrelevant when community colleges said more students graduated vastly unprepared and needed lots of remediation.
We've been here before
Still, when I read that Gorman said he couldn't resist the chance to be part of Klein's new venture, developing digital and other educational technology for individualized student learning, it made sense. Gorman and Klein share many education views. In fact, in an "education manifesto" Gorman wrote for the New York Times with several other "reformist" educators across the nation, including Klein, that kind of strategy was urged as part of reforming education.
And Gorman has had unquestioned successes with some of his efforts. His strategies, especially moving more highly effective teachers to low-performing schools, have boosted academic performance in CMS, even during a time of big budget cuts. And he has narrowed the achievement gap and boosted the graduation rate. Those gains are not smoke and mirrors.
Still, Gorman's departure reminds me of that of another CMS superintendent, one Gorman once worked with in Florida - Eric Smith. Smith left CMS after making great academic strides, and gaining national accolades as a visionary superintendent. He led CMS to become a finalist for the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education. (Under Gorman, CMS was a finalist last year and is again this year.) But he left while implementing a controversial student assignment plan that led to resegregation as the system moved to a neighborhood schools based system.
Can we avoid another rocky road?
Gorman leaves after closing a number of schools in inner-city neighborhoods and moving many of the students to campuses that will become overcrowded and require mobiles. He also established K-8 schools in inner-city neighborhoods, a strategy that hasn't worked in other parts of the country. Additionally, he has launched a teacher pay-for-performance plan that has angered teachers. Such plans haven't worked very well elsewhere either.
After Smith left, CMS and this community had several rocky years as it dealt with the fallout from its assignment changes and public displeasure with its fractious school board. It was Gorman's arrival that changed that. Now with Gorman's departure, the road might get rocky again.
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