RyanBlitstein.com

This month, Chicago magazine publishes my profile of Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman (link).

The commentary thus far has been, as expected, pretty mixed, with more than a few personal attacks. (The best stuff, if you want to check it out, is here and here at Catalyst writer Alex Russo’s District 299 blog.) Many have quibbled with my being too negative or too positive about Huberman, Mayor Daley, or U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (who preceded Huberman).

A lot of people who are critical of CPS for one reason or another felt I was way too soft on Huberman. And there was another class of critics (esp this guy) who believe that, since Huberman is a Daley apparatchik with zero education experience, no matter what he does, he sucks. They just can’t believe Huberman has any chance of doing a good job. So to them, any story that is at least 50% positive is assumed by a certain group of people to be fatally flawed — no matter that he’s only been in office for several months, and most of what he’s done seems at least semi-reasonable. The situation is actually pretty similar to what happened with Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C.

One nice thing is that, while I had a lot of my claims and assertions questioned, no one has challenged the actual facts, and that’s what matters most to me (and Chicago‘s fact-checkers, who were good, but not as hardcore as I expected).

But I want to address some of the things people brought up. The big one is — how the hell could I say this guy has done a good job? He’s gone from position to position every year — there’s no way he could’ve succeeded in so many jobs so quickly. Right?

Well, actually… Look, I don’t want to paint this guy as the savior of Chicago government or even of CPS. He has made mistakes, and he has faults, which I feel like I called out in the piece. But meeting with him and talking with people who worked for him or watched him closely convinced me to tilt the story toward the positive.

The hype has been strong with this guy for years (check out this Wired piece from 2005, a gigantic wet kiss), so I went into the story fully expecting to find some brutal skeletons. That’s usually the case when stories about someone have been nothing but ultra-puff pieces for their entire career.

Here’s what I actually heard: You would not believe the number of people (I spoke with dozens) who talked about him like he was the most effective, most talented boss they’d ever worked for. I’m not talking about people like Lori Healey of Chicago 2016, who gave me the predictable “Ron is a great manager” mantra that you’d expect from another of Daley’s young turks. I am referring to the underlings, the interns, the middle managers, and all the other beneath-the-radar folks who keep the city running. When I asked these people to speak freely, totally off the record, and gave them license to lead me down the darkest corners of Huberman’s career, most of the time I heard: he is awesome, I wish more people in Chicago government were like him. Even a former employee that Huberman laid off for basically no reason, when granted the opportunity speak off the record, just gave him high praise. I was astounded.

Outsiders had similar opinions: Kevin O’Neil of CTA Tattler, a blog set up for the express purpose of criticizing the CTAthat has at times been very critical of the agency, does not have to talk about how great Huberman was for CTA. But he did. I’m sure L.A. police chief Bill Bratton has a pretty busy schedule and didn’t need to call me half a dozen times to speak on the record about Huberman. But he did.

When I watched Huberman speak and met him personally, I came away impressed. I wasn’t awed — I did not see him as a political or social or statistical genius the way many coworkers or teachers did. He was, at times, a little robotic, a little boring, sort of a nerdy quant in a triathlete’s body. But he had answers to my questions that were well-thought out, even when he obviously hadn’t expected them. He didn’t avoid anything I said, and he was honest about some of his own faults (impatience with red tape, for one).

There were a handful of people I spoke with who hated working for Huberman, and hated him personally, and claimed he was a total fraud. I wanted to get at least one of their stories into the piece to provide more balance, but none would talk on the record, so my editor and I had to settle for a few generalizations. Frankly, if I had a beef with Ron Huberman and I had a city pension coming my way, I probably wouldn’t talk to a reporter either. But because it was only a tiny minority who had these opinions, I had to assume it was personal (not that they didn’t have cause for not liking him, just that it was more interpersonal conflict and less some overarching problem with Huberman’s character). All that said, I have little doubt that working for Huberman kind of sucks for some people. Any job with low pay, long hours, and little public recognition does, especially if your boss is as serious as Huberman obviously is.

One odd thing that came up during the reporting — and after the story came out — was that people were surprised that I was critical of Arne Duncan’s reign as head of CPS. There has been this generally positive opinion of Duncan, a sort of, “Well, Obama wouldn’t pick him just for being his basketball buddy. Obviously he did a great job,” throughout the city. But as soon as I looked at the numbers, I saw that was bunk, and that the record has been, as I said, mixed at best. (For the curious, check out the fine work by Catalyst, here’s just one of many examples.) Fortunately, last month the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, a who’s who of well-connected corporate titans in the city, published a report (link) basically saying 15 years of school reform has failed — despite what the Mayor will tell you. Given that this same club is one of the major powers behind the Renaissance 2010 school reform plan, they didn’t have much incentive to make a statement like that.

Another section in the piece that a lot of people thought was really interesting looked at Daley’s ability (or in some cases, lack thereof) to spot young talent, and the fact that a lot of people in the Obama administration once worked for him. If you want to know more, check out this Lynn Sweet column from over the weekend likening the White House to the 51st Ward.

A ton of people asked me during and after reporting about Huberman’s sexuality. Why did he come out right after he was named CEO of the schools? Why not before? Now, I talked with Huberman about this a lot. It was, honestly, quite awkward, especially because I could care less if someone is gay — gay rights is one of the few issues where I admit being partisan. It’s something I don’t generally report on because I have so much trouble understanding the perspective of people who are against gay marriage or civil unions. But given that we live in such a homophobic city (quick, name three other prominent gay bureaucrats in Chicago), it’s, sadly, still newsworthy for someone to be out, proud, and the head of a major government agency.

Huberman looked me right in eyes and claimed that he was always out, and everyone within shouting distance of him in his jobs knew it, and it was just that no reporter had ever asked before Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times did so. Given that former coworkers also knew he was gay well before a few months ago, and that people in the gay community knew, too, I had no reason to doubt him. A few weeks later, on the phone, he said his sexuality has never been an issue at CPS or anywhere else, which we both knew was bullshit. In fact, one education reporter I talked to after the piece printed said if it were better-known that Huberman was gay, he might not have been appointed, given the kerfuffle over the queer high school last year. But I’m glad he’s out now, and that he doesn’t spend all his time talking about it.

The last thing a lot of people have asked about are the references to him being a potential mayor of Chicago. The reason I used the word rumor in the piece is because most of what I heard was just that — rumor. I also had someone say that after a few years at CPS, he’s going to sell out and become a VP at McKinsey, but too many people said that even the Mayor himself talked about him as a potential successor for me not to lend some credence to the rumblings. I personally don’t think Chicago is ready to elect a gay Jew, but New York City probably wasn’t either, back in 1978, when it made Ed Koch mayor.