Duncan's successor at CPS faces on the job lessons
The man who replaced U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan at the helm of the nation's third-largest school district has no previous education experience. But Ron Huberman hasn't had time for remedial lessons.
Just three months into his fourth high-profile job in Mayor Richard Daley's administration, Huberman, 37, has had to tackle many of the challenges facing large urban school districts nationwide, including a record number of student slayings.
Huberman, an openly gay Israeli-born son of immigrants, was raised in Chicago's suburbs. His academic turns of phrase speak to his three degrees: bachelors in psychology and English and a master's in business and social service administration.
Closely attentive to his Blackberry, Huberman doesn't have children and won't say if he plans to.
Huberman spent time as a Chicago police officer before earning a reputation as a favorite of Daley's. He has served as the mayor's chief of staff, director of the Office of Emergency Management, chief executive of the Chicago Transit Authority, and now CEO of Chicago Public Schools, which has been under mayoral control since Daley took the district over in 1995 in an attempt to address low test scores and high dropout rates.
Huberman recently sat down for an interview with The Associated Press. Here's some of what he discussed:
Q: Do you feel pressure because people are going to say this is "Duncan's district?"
A: It was Arne's district, but the mayor's been driving educational reform in Chicago since the last 13 years -- since mayoral control. And so I think Arne got a tremendous amount of good things done at the district. I think Arne's very grounded in the realities of the challenges of a large school district. And I think that's going to serve him well in his current role.
Q: Has Secretary Duncan given you any advice?
A: We've not discussed his national policy agenda but Arne's given me a tremendous amount of advice as the guy who's replacing him. We've talked on multiple occasions and I call him regularly to say "Hey Arne, what do you think about this?"
Q: Thirty-two students have been killed this year. What happens when a student's shot? What steps take place?
A: When it first happens I get a call. Then we immediately launch certain things in place. Obviously there's a whole concerted effort with the police department to share information. Certainly with gang-related crime it very often is a retaliatory shooting. We want to gather as much information as possible so we can intervene before another incident occurs. Then we want to do community outreach. I personally call the family to find out what we can do to support that family during an unbelievably painful time.
Q: How do you relate to the kids?
A: I relate to kids on a number of levels. Because I was a police officer, I have a good knowledge of what's going on the streets. So that gives me a certain amount of credibility with the kids. I can also talk their talk to a certain extent when it comes to technology. I have a good sense of what's going on with their MySpace pages. I can usually get them joking pretty quickly and then get them to open up.
Q: Do you worry that people won't think you're going to be at CPS for a long time because you've moved around so much?
A: No, this is different from a lot of those jobs I've come into. I know that the mayor has a commitment to see that I stay the course here. I have a commitment to stay the course here. The tenure of superintendents under the mayor has been a long time. I'm certainly committed to staying here as long as it takes to reach the goals I've laid out.
Q: What are your priorities as CEO?
A. Our bottom line is very clear: How do we improve student achievement? How do we create an environment and a system where that's the bottom line? One of the key levers we're looking at is ensuring we're a data-driven organization. We think there's real opportunity to leverage data to determine which programs are working best, and making sure those are the programs we support the most.
Q: Some people say, when they look at CPS, they see a pretty big layer of bureaucracy.
A: Part of how I see my role is reducing administration and bureaucracy that doesn't add value, right, so that we can free up our educators to focus on education. We absolutely are going to end up with fewer people at CPS central office. We're going to be talking about a system that's more streamlined, that's highly responsive to schools' needs.
Q: Secretary Duncan is a big proponent of charter schools. One recent study indicates charter school students don't do better on standardized tests than those in public schools. (CPS, which has 67 charter schools, disputes that study from the University of Illinois-Chicago.) Does that make you reassess the benefits of charters?
A: It's important to note that not all charter schools are the same. Much like our traditional district schools, you have some charter schools that are underperforming. What we're going to do is identify the charters that are low-performing charter schools and close them down, just like we're closing down low-performing district schools.
Q: A group of teachers at the charters recently unionized. Some have said that was something you've wanted to avoid.
A: We're not against unionization. What we are for, though, is contracts that enable us to expand the school day, that enable us to have flexibility in improving student outcomes. This is not a union, nonunion thing. In Chicago we have one of the shorter school years and shorter school days of any district. That is fundamentally problematic. We have to fix that.