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Joel I. Klein is Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States with over 1.1 million students in over 1,420 schools.

Prior to his appointment to Chancellor in 2002[1] by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Klein was Counsel to Bertelsmann and served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States in charge of the Antitrust Division. Klein may be best remembered for prosecuting the United States Department of Justice antitrust case against Microsoft. Before heading up the Antitrust Division Klein was the deputy to Anne Bingaman, (the wife of Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico ) in that office, and worked in the White House Counsel's office. He was in private practice for many years, specializing in appellate cases. Klein received his B.A. from Columbia and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He served as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. Klein is married to Nicole Seligman, General Counsel to Howard Stringer of Sony Corp. Seligman represented former President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings in the United States Senate. Klein is rumored to aspire to succeed Mayor Bloomberg, who is term limited and cannot run in the 2009 election.^{[citation needed]}

The appointment of Klein as chancellor drew fire from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the labor union representing most New York City teachers, because he lacked education experience. Klein was also criticized by the UFT for micromanagement of teachers and installing a deficient literacy curriculum [2]. In 2006, a Klein-led effort to install a charter-school within a successful lower east side New York City public school, NEST+M, was successfully defeated by a PTA lawsuit. [3]Klein is also criticized by progressive educators--though not by the UFT--for buying into standardized tests as the exclusive means of determining the progress of schools and of students. A consequence of this is the depreciation of science, music, and art in the curriculum, in favor of the tested skills, literacy and social studies. In general, critics assert that a test-taking culture tends to dominate schools to the detriment of a more meaningful curriculum.

Klein has also been widely criticized by both parents and students for his enforcement of a ban on cell phones in all New York City public schools, which parents say their children need in case of another disaster similar to the September 11, 2001 attacks.[4]

• http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/Pre_96/February95/105.txt.html
• http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/urban/education/features/14869/index.html
• Antitrust for Fun and Profit by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, August 1998

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061022/30bloomberg.htm

• America's Best Leaders: Joe Klein