EdVANTAGE Blog

On Monday, we reported that the Board of Regents had approved the selection of Dr. John B. King as Senior Deputy Commissioner to oversee the State Education Department’s pre-K through high school activities.

Here’s a 13-minute video clip of Dr. King accepting a “hero” award from the Robin Hood Foundation for his work as Managing Director for Uncommon Schools.  The Foundation says its mission is to fight poverty in New York City “by finding and funding the best and most effective programs and partnering with them to maximize results.”

Dr. King leads off saying, “I am convinced that schools can be the difference between hope and despair, because of the impact public education has had in my life.”

He explains that both his parents were New York City public school educators, but both passed away by the time he was 12.  He describes some harrowing childhood experiences — for example, living alone between ages 8 and 12 with his father who was then suffering from undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease.  He said that “School was my refuge.”

He also describes the successes of charter schools he has founded and led.

Also, here is a piece of testimony which Dr. King delivered last June to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor.

He begins, “I am here today to talk about my experiences as an educator and to ask the Committee to support initiatives to increase the number of high performing charter schools serving low-income students.”

He attributes his schools’ successes to “autonomy with respect to budget, staffing, curriculum and instruction, and school culture in combination with greater accountability for performance.”

He notes that Boston’s Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, which he founded in 1999, has been “the highest performing urban middle school in Massachusetts for five years running and a school that has closed the racial achievement gap on state exams.”