Deborah Kenny | |
|---|---|
 Kenny in 2012 | |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania Teachers College, Columbia University |
| Occupation(s) | Founder and CEO of the Harlem Village Academies; Author of Born to Rise [1] |
Deborah Kenny is an American educator, author of Born to Rise [1] and the founder and Chief Executive of Harlem Village Academies, [2] a network of charter schools in Harlem, New York.
Kenny started the Harlem Village Academies charter schools [3] shortly after her husband died of leukemia in 2001 [4] as the founding principal of the flagship Harlem Village Academy. Previously, Kenny served as Group President of Sesame Street Publishing, and as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development of Time Warner's Parenting Group. She is a former classroom teacher with expertise in youth leadership training and curriculum development. In starting the schools, Kenny was heavily influenced by Jack Welch's approach to leadership and accountability. [4]
Kenny holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University in comparative international education, and a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kenny is Chief Executive Officer Of Harlem Village Academies, a network of charter schools in Harlem. She has described an overemphasis on "The program elements…things like curriculum and class size and school size and longer day" and believes that none of these program elements are nearly as important as the quality of teaching in the schools. [5] "If you had an amazing teacher who was passionate and given the freedom and support to teach well that was just 100 times more important than anything else," she stated. [5]
Kenny believes that the emphasis on program elements is one of the main reasons it has been so hard to repeat the successes of good schools. "They were trying to replicate programs instead of trying to develop people." Instead, Kenny said, "I became obsessed with how to develop great teachers. You put all of your focus on finding great people, and you establish a culture that helps them constantly learn and grow and become better at what they do. You have to provide a community in the school that supports and respects teachers. And you have to give them the kind of freedom that allows their passion for teaching to flourish." [5]
Some of the country's most powerful leaders in business, finance, media, and entertainment have become close with Kenny and involved with her work in Harlem, including Hugh Jackman, [6] Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, [7] Dick Parsons, John Legend, [6] Jack Welch, Katie Couric, Leon Black, Steve Forbes, [8] Jonathan Gray, and Edward Lewis. President George W. Bush visited the flagship Harlem Village Academy in 2007 calling it "a model of excellence." [9]
Kenny's educational philosophy is built on her vision to create schools where she would be happy to send her own children. "I had five core things in mind for my kids, and that's what I want for our students. I wanted them to be wholesome in character. I wanted them to be compassionate and to see life as a responsibility to give something to the world. I wanted them to have a sophisticated intellect. I wanted them to be avid readers, the kind of person who always has trouble putting a book down. And I raised them to be independent thinkers, to lead reflective and meaningful lives". [5]
Her strategy for how to achieve this vision was presented in a Wall Street Journal article in 2010 called "A Teacher Quality Manifesto" in which she discusses workplace culture and how it impacts public education. In this, Kenny sets out her approach to creating workplace culture. She describes three components of culture: ownership, teamwork and learning that have been the key to elevating teacher quality at her schools, and she believes the only way to fundamentally change public education is to build a culture in schools that attracts talent, brings out passion and holds teachers accountable for results. [10]
She has spoken out against an overemphasis on teacher evaluation. "The government is building a bureaucracy that used to be around compliance, I fear that we're now building a bureaucracy around evaluation. Instead we need … to think deeply about human motivation. How do you bring out in someone the desire and drive to do their best, to hold themselves accountable." [11]
Kenny is a proponent of the charter model and has said in order to promote education reform we need to "charterize" the country: "What's really critical is the freedom that you get with the charter to do whatever it takes to make it work. The secret is not the processes or systems that come out of the freedom and accountability. So we truly need every school in the country to have those underlying conditions of freedom and accountability. And then you'll see people on fire in the classroom." [11]
She coined the phrase "authentic accountability" and she believes that authentic accountability can only happen in schools that have employment at will. "How do you provide all that trust and collaboration that all teachers need and deserve? The only way is authentic accountability. It's not a top down bureaucracy, it's not a checklist. It's restoring humanity to the classroom by restoring human judgment to schools." [11]
Kenny wrote the book Born to Rise [1] about her life and the founding of the schools.
Kenny was selected and profiled by Bill Cosby in Oprah Winfrey's 2010 power list. She was also featured in Esquire's annual Best & Brightest. She was honored as "Educator of the Year" at a presentation by New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, [12] and received the national "Educators who Perform" award at the Center for Education Reform gala in Washington, DC [13] gala in Washington, DC.
Kenny is a frequent contributor to education reform discussion on MSNBC's Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough. In 2008 she was a panelist at the Allen and Company Sun Valley Conference. [14]
Student Attrition
According to the Daily News, "An unusually high number of younger students either drop out or are held back. In school year 2003-04, the year the school opened, only 48 of 73 fifth graders made it to sixth grade. In school year 2006-07, 46 of 68 moved on; in 2007-08, just 40 of 76 fifth graders made it to sixth grade." [15] However, most recent publicly available data shows that Kenny's schools are now a model for exemplary student attrition with only 12% from 2009-10 to 2010-11, compared to a 22% average for traditional public schools in Harlem (District 5). [16]
The New York City Department of Education reported that in 2011, 100% of students at HVA Middle school passed the eighth grade math test. [17] While some columnists criticize the fact that the cohort started out with 75 students, and only 44 students took the test, this is consistent with the average student attrition of the school district. [18]
Teacher Attrition The issue of teacher attrition has been debated, with some pointing to exemplary teacher satisfaction and others claiming high rates. In a Huffington Post blog, Leonie Haimson wrote that "...Harlem Village Academy has some of the highest teacher turnover rates in the city, according to the NY State report cards. One of her charters had annual attrition rates of 60% and 53%, for the two most recent years for which data is available; the other had teacher attrition rates of 71% and 42%." The reason for the inconsistency, according to the New York Charter Center, is that the data do not capture many key factors including how many teachers "left the classroom because they were promoted within the same charter school or network." [19]
In 2008, Kenny was among the highest paid education executives in New York State. [20] Her salary of $442,807 was second only to Geoff Canada, CEO of Harlem Children's Zone. [21] According to Edward Lewis, HVA Board chair, founder of Essence Communications, Kenny's salary comes entirely from privately raised funds. It is not funded by government revenue. [22] By 2018, Kenny's salary had risen to $619,463 according to Harlem Village Academies' tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service. [23]
Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools". Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views since she began blogging in 2012. Ravitch writes for the New York Review of Books.
Alternative education encompasses many pedagogical approaches differing from mainstream pedagogy. Such alternative learning environments may be found within state, charter, and independent schools as well as home-based learning environments. Many educational alternatives emphasize small class sizes, close relationships between students and teachers and a sense of community.
Young Women's Leadership Charter School (YWLCS) was a grade 9-12 charter high school for girls in Douglas, Chicago, Illinois.
The Knowledge is Power Program, commonly known as KIPP, is a network of free open-enrollment college-preparatory public charter schools in low income communities throughout the United States. As of 2009, KIPP is America's largest network of public charter schools. The head offices are in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.
The French-American School of New York is an international and bilingual independent school located in suburban Westchester County, New York. Since its founding in 1980, FASNY has evolved from a three-teacher, 17-student nursery to a school on three campuses that educates more than 780 students per year. FASNY offers an international and bilingual education to a population of local American families, French expatriates, French-American families, and international families representing more than 50 nationalities. The school offers education from Nursery to 12th grade at three campuses in Larchmont and Mamaroneck, New York. FASNY is accredited by the New York State Association of Independent Schools, the International Baccalaureate Organization, and the French Ministry of Education. Sixty-nine percent of students are of French origin, 21% are American, and 10% hail from countries in the francophone world.
Ronald Lyle Clark, Jr. is an American educator and reality television personality. He has taught in North Carolina and New York City; later in life, he founded the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark is a New York Times bestselling author and motivational speaker on the topic of inspiring educators.
The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls – South Africa (OWLAG) is a boarding school for girls, grades 8–12, in Henley on Klip, Gauteng Province, South Africa. The school is a project begun by the American entrepreneur and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey in 2002, born out of a discussion she had with South African president Nelson Mandela in 2000. OWLAG opened in 2007 and its inaugural class of 72 girls graduated in 2011.
Michelle Ann Rhee is an American educator and advocate for education reform. She was Chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools from 2007 to 2010. In late 2010, she founded StudentsFirst, a non-profit organization that works on education reform.
Patricia Wasley, EdD, is the Chief Executive Officer at Teaching Channel and is responsible for setting the educational direction of the website. Prior to joining Teaching Channel, Dr. Wasley was dean of the College of Education at the University of Washington from 2000 to 2012. Wasley has conducted a variety of research on student voice, teacher education and whole-school reform. She is the author of several books on school reform, including Teachers Who Lead and Stirring the Chalkdust, and is the co-author of Kids and School Reform.
The Cartel is a 2009 American documentary film by New Jersey-based television producer, reporter and news anchor Bob Bowdon, that covers the failures of public education in the United States by focusing on New Jersey, which has the highest level of per-student education spending in the U.S. According to The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the film asks: "How has the richest and most innovative society on earth suddenly lost the ability to teach its children at a level that other modern countries consider 'basic'?" The film regards teachers' unions as the cause of the problems, due to, among other things, the obstacles they put in place to firing bad teachers, through tenure. It also makes the case for school vouchers and charter schools, suggesting that the increased competition will revitalize the school system, leading to improved efficiency and performance in all schools, both district and charter.
Waiting for "Superman" is a 2010 American documentary film written and directed by Davis Guggenheim and produced by Lesley Chilcott. The film criticizes the American public education system by following several students as they strive to be accepted into competitive charter schools such as KIPP LA Schools, Harlem Success Academy and Summit Preparatory Charter High School.
Charter schools in New York are independent, not-for-profit public schools operating under a different set of rules than the typical state-run schools, exempt from many requirements and regulations. Any student eligible for public schools can apply.
Education in and around the neighborhood of Harlem, in Manhattan, New York City, is provided in schools and institutions of higher education, both public and private. For many decades, Harlem has had a lower quality of public education than wealthier sections of the city. It is mostly lower-income.
Manhattan Village Academy (MVA) is a small, public high school located in the Flatiron District, New York City. It consists of grades 9–12 with an enrollment of 461 students. The school is part of the New York City Department of Education. The school was founded by veteran educator Mary Butz in 1993. The administration is currently headed by principal Christina White.
Harlem Village Academies (HVA) is a network of charter schools in Harlem, New York. Deborah Kenny is Chief Executive Officer.
New Heights Academy Charter School (M353) is a charter school in Harlem, New York City, New York for grades 5 - 12, located at 1818 Amsterdam Avenue. It is within the New York City Department of Education.
Abramson Sci Academy is a high school in the New Orleans East area of New Orleans, United States. The school has an open admission system.
Eva Sarah Moskowitz is an American politician and education reform leader, who is the founder and CEO of the Success Academy Charter Schools. A member of the Democratic Party, Moskowitz served on the New York City Council, representing the 4th district on the Upper East Side, from 1999 to 2005. Moskowitz interviewed to be Donald Trump's Secretary of Education, but decided not to pursue the position.
Success Academy Charter Schools, originally Harlem Success Academy, is a charter school operator in New York City. Eva Moskowitz, a former city council member for the Upper East Side, is its founder and CEO. It has 47 schools in the New York area and 17,000 students.
Michelle Soto is a poet, educator, and community organizer in New York City.
Media related to Deborah Kenny at Wikimedia Commons