At 36, Dr. King, who previously served as deputy commissioner, will be among the nation?s youngest educational leaders, though he had been the clear front-runner since the current commissioner, David M. Steiner, announced in April that he would resign.
After losing both of his parents to illness by age 12, Dr. King earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale and a doctorate in education from Columbia. In between, he co-founded Roxbury Prep, a top charter middle school in Massachusetts; led Uncommon Schools, a network of charters based in New York; and married and had two daughters.
His drive, he said in an interview on Sunday, comes from a sense of urgency to create for other children the? refuge he? found as a fourth grader at Public School 276 in Canarsie, the year his mother died of heart failure. His teacher that year, Alan Osterweil, was dynamic and creative, encouraging him to read Shakespeare and memorize the leaders and capital of every country in the world. Later, Celestine DeSaussure, a social studies teacher whom the children called Miss D, made him the sportscaster in a fake Aztec newscast.
??Having gone to New York City public schools, that quite literally saved my life,? he said, ?I feel an incredible devotion to make that possible for more kids.?
Dr. King, who will be New York?s first African-American and first Puerto Rican education commissioner, was part of a circle of idealistic charter-school founders in Boston who experimented with longer school days, strict rules to guide student behavior and ways to hold teachers accountable for student performance. They raised expectations for poor students, and sought to form close relationships with children while reshaping teaching into a more quantifiable science.
Since joining the state Education Department in 2009, Dr. King worked with Dr. Steiner on an ambitious agenda that shares some of those goals, and he takes the helm at a critical moment. The state is on a tight timeline to implement data-driven teacher evaluations, create computer systems to track student progress, toughen curricular standards and open more charter schools. Dr. King helped broker a fragile peace with the state?s main teachers? union to begin those changes last year, but continuing disputes, particularly over the state?s proposed use of standardized tests to rate teachers, periodically disrupt it.
If Dr. Steiner, a mild-mannered classics professor who will be returning to his post as dean of the education school at Hunter College this summer, was the intellectual driver of the plan, Dr. King was the details person, preferring to sit in a room eating takeout and crunching numbers rather than dipping into Albany politics, which he found frustrating and divisive.
?There is a tremendous amount of work in turning the big ideas into real change,? he said in the interview.
Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of the statewide teachers? union, expressed some concern about Dr. King?s background and perspective on hot-button issues like school choice and teacher evaluation systems. ?My hope will be that he remembers that in his new role, he represents all of public education and not exclusively an interest that he?s been aligned to in the past,? Mr. Iannuzzi said.
Dr. King was born in 1975 in Flatlands, Brooklyn. His father,?John B. King Sr., was a 66-year-old retired public school teacher and administrator, who had been the first African-American principal in Brooklyn and later, the city?s executive deputy superintendent of schools. His mother, Adalinda King, was a guidance counselor born in Puerto Rico, who met her future spouse when he taught her in a graduate program.Dr. King?s mother was working at a middle school when she had a fatal heart attack at 48; Dr. King was 8. His father soon afterward began to show signs of advancing Alzheimer?s, leaving young John to cook, shop and more or less fend for himself until age 12, when Mr. King also died, at 79.
Dr. King went to live with his 24-year-old half brother on Long Island, then briefly attended Phillips Andover, an elite New England boarding school, where he rebelled against the strict curfews and cut class. He was expelled as a junior.
?I sort of resented adult authority,? he said. ?At the time I felt like adults had let me down in my life.?
An uncle and aunt in Cherry Hill, N.J., took him in. When it came time to apply to college, Dr. King poured his heart out explaining his circumstances in his Harvard essay, and was accepted.
?Hollywood used to make movies about people like John King,? said Wade S. Norwood, a Regents member, who formally nominated Dr. King for the new job on Monday.
One of Dr. King?s most vivid memories of Harvard is of standing on the bridge over the Charles River, surrounded by the glinting, reflecting spires of the college.
?I would go to the bridge and just think, how could they possibly let me in here,? he said. ?There must have been some kind of mistake.?
Dr. King decided he wanted to become a social studies teacher, and earned his master?s from Teachers College at Columbia University. After three years of teaching, two in a charter school in Boston, he was asked to help start?Roxbury Prep. ?Dr. King spent five years there as co-director, putting in 12-hour days designing the curriculum and the structure ? students may not talk in the hallways between classes, for example ? within which teachers and students can improvise. He then moved to New York to help startUncommon Schools, which now has 24 charters.He now lives in Slingerlands, outside of Albany, with his wife, Melissa, a researcher for Scholastic Inc., whom he met on a blind date while both were teachers in Boston. Their two children, Amina, 7, and Mareya, 4, attend a Montessori school.
Over the past two years, he has been courted for several prominent education leadership positions, including the superintendent?s seat in Newark, by Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook executive who has pledged $100 million to that city?s troubled schools.
But Dr. King said he wanted to stay in New York because of his personal ties and his desire to finish what he started with Dr. Steiner. His salary will be $212,500, up from the $186,500 he earned as deputy, but, at his request, less than the $250,000 given to Dr. Steiner.
Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting from Albany.
Source: http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-changeorg-petition-to-fire-nysed.html
Colorado Lottery Pa Lottery Ebates lotto Illinois Lottery texas lottery Dell
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন