At the
big media event held every year at Sun Valley, Joel Klein will be on a panel with
Michelle Rhee, the super in DC, Deborah Kenny, the head of a network of Harlem
charter schools, and Andre Cowling , identified as the principal of the
John Harvard school of excellence, a “turnaround” public
school in Chicago, started in the fall of 2007.
What all these people clearly excel in is getting
great PR. Their schools also brag about all the homework and the longer
day. Wonder what the attrition rates are.
Here is a
news
story about Kenny, which says she “developed a business plan devoid of bureaucracy and
heavily influenced by Jack Welch's notions of leadership analysis and
accountability.”
Here is a
news
story about Cowling, who is described as “a former captain in the Army, a
Desert Storm veteran – [who] left the corporate world to become a
principal. “ Here is another, which
reports that he fired all the teachers at the school and then rehired only
three.
Yet strangely, the school’s
website finds that Cowling is already gone and they have a new interim
principal, someone named David L.
Hannsberry.
Sun Valley Diary: A
Peek at the Agenda
July 9, 2008, 7:48 am
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/the-unofficial-sun-valley-schedule/
For
devotees of Allen & Company’s
annual confab who like to keep up with the official doings here in Sun Valley,
we’ve procured an official schedule — against the wishes of the
event’s organizers — for your information and
perhaps even your amusement.
The
action starts early Wednesday with breakfast at 6:30 a.m. — much earlier
than breakfast at Michael’s in
At 7:30
a.m. is a presentation by Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com. He’s likely to
trot out his Kindle e-book device and talk about the future of publishing and
electronic commerce.
After
than, Ken Auletta of The New Yorker leads a conversation called “Looking
Around the Corner to the Future” with Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Ning, the hot new social networking
site; Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp;
and Larry Page, a co-Founder of Google.
That’s
all for the panels today. Then the fun, and closed-door meetings, begin. If
you’re not hatching a project or calling your office, the whitewater
rafting trip leaves at 10:30 a.m. Golf is at 11 a.m.; there’s biking,
fly-fishing, hiking trail rides, yoga and bridge (paging Bill Gates and Warren
Buffett!) in the afternoon.
On Thursday, Joel I. Klein, New York City’s schools
chancellor, tries to open everyone’s mind with a conversation entitled
“The Education Crisis” with Andre Cowling, principal of the John
Harvard Elementary School of Excellence; Deborah Kenny, founder and chief
executive of the Village Academies; and Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor
in Washington, D.C.
After
that, Donald R. Keough of Allen & Company, the former No. 2 at Coca-Cola, leads a conversation
called “Global Perspectives” with Muhtar Kent, chief executive of
Coca-Cola; Niall FitzGerald, deputy chairman of Thomson Reuters; and Sir Howard
Stringer, chairman of Sony.
The last act for the day is Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of Dreamworks Animation. The afternoon
is filled with a tennis tournament, a trap-shooting tournament and yes, even
knitting.
Friday
begins with a panel of conference newbies: Gary Marino, chief executive of Bill Me Later; Max Levchin, chief
executive of Slide.com;
and David Friedberg, chief executive of WeatherBill.
(Expect lots of people to wake up early to check out their next potential
acquisition targets.) Then things get serious with a panel Charlie Rose is
moderating called “Where We Are – Where We Should Be” with
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sam Nunn, a former senator from
Georgia and co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
After
that comes the surprise guest. It says “TBA” on the schedule, but
we’ll announce it here: The mystery speaker is His Majesty King Abdullah
II of
For those
who stick it out until Saturday, Allen
& Company, the event’s organizers, have left what
may be the best for last. Bill Gates is on the hot-seat with Tom Friedman of
The New York Times in a conversation entitled “Creative
Capitalism.” And that’s just a warm-up act for Warren Buffett, who
is being interviewed by Donald Graham of The Washington Post. (Mr. Buffett is a
big shareholder and board member of the Washington
Post Company.)
A blowout
dinner ends the week before everyone packs up.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
212-674-7320
classsizematters@...
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
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