The Outsiders Take Over

By Roy Romer; Harold Levy

Last week Roy Romer, 71, former Governor of Colorado, was appointed to what might be the second most difficult job in America: superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Only a month ago, another educational outsider, Wall Street lawyer Harold Levy, 47, was officially named New York City schools chancellor, No. 1 on the mission-impossible list (he had been serving as interim chancellor since January). The two had never met, so last week TIME introduced them through an early-morning conference call. Excerpts:

ROMER: How long have you been on this job?

LEVY: Almost 140 days.

ROMER: I've been on the job here 18 hours. You and I have a similar problem. We might have management experience, but we're not professional educators. How do you structure your relationships from your office to your 32 superintendencies?

LEVY: When I got here, there were 16 people reporting to the chancellor. There are now six. It's better to identify half a dozen people who are responsible than to leave it go, shall we say, in somewhat "collegial" a fashion. Another thing that I found invaluable is to come in with not a big team but two or three people who you could turn to. I know your reputation within your state is such that you will attract a lot of people willing to do that with you. That is a powerful place you should pivot on.

ROMER: I'm interested in how you focus on long-term professional development.

LEVY: Let me be blunt: I think you need ruthless leadership that is prepared to tackle really ancient problems of management in order to get the best teachers teaching those who are less able to get performance out of students. I have intentionally used the language of management for the reason that I think it evokes a whole different response. If you've got branches or distant offices that don't work well, you put your strongest managers there. In this industry--if I can call it that--we do the opposite. We take our youngest teachers, our weakest managers, and we put them into the weakest schools. Our weakest schools here in New York City are the schools with the most uncertified teachers, with the least experienced principals.

If you believe the data that certified teachers do better at getting children up past these objective exams than people who are perhaps not as well qualified, then you've got to put a whole bunch of money into professional development. It is also a question of salaries. We're going to need to pay the prevailing wage so that we make teaching a valued profession again. Twenty-five years ago, the difference between the starting salary for young lawyers going into the big firms and the starting salary for teachers going into the New York school system was $2,000. Today the incoming class of lawyers is getting $156,000, and our beginning salary is $31,000. It should surprise no one that we're not going to get the best people.

ROMER: Let me turn to the issue of social promotion.

LEVY: Last year the Board of Education voted to do away with social promotion on the theory that children were not being helped by simply being passed along. Starting in third grade, children can be held back. We now have almost a quarter of the system going to summer school. Unfortunately it's only four or five weeks. I wish that it were longer so that those children who need it could get year-round help.

ROMER: Here in L.A. I've got a pretty steep mountain to climb in terms of space limitations, leaving little flexibility for summer.

LEVY: What are you going to do with that building [a new school built atop a toxic-waste dump]--your $150 million white elephant?

ROMER: Chancellor, that is an answer I don't have yet. It needs to be removed from the scene.

LEVY: We've spent $165 million to get rid of asbestos in this city.

ROMER: Part of my effort is trying to explain to my family that I'm not certifiably crazy. People say, "Why are you doing this?" The simple answer is: 712,000 students.

LEVY: The language of altruism is absolutely gone from the political debate. It is astounding to me. If you have to talk other than money, if you say, "I'm doing it because it's the right thing, because it's important," people look at you like you're nuts. How did you answer that when you were in government? You could have done other things.

ROMER: Yes, I know. But nobody believes you when you use that--so you don't get into it.