Amplify in the dumper. Another Joel Klein/Chris Cerf loser.

 

Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein

"A lot of poor quality work passed off as final products, most everything is worked out in production leading to many hot fixes and more long hours. Little respect for teachers or end-users in many within the company.... No, I would not recommend this company to a friend." -- A 2013 Review from a former Wireless Generation employee

What happened to Amplify? It's a bust. School districts who bought in are screwed. Thanks Joel Klein and Chris Cerf.

Rupert Murcoch's News Corp spent nearly $1 billion on its digital education business, In 2010, they paid $360 million for a 90% stake in Wireless Generation, a company based in Brooklyn that specializes in education software, data systems and assessment tools which was supposed to help teachers analyze student performance and customize lessons.

Once the Murdoch criminal scandal in Europe died down, former N.Y. schools Chancellor Joel Klein led the company’s aggressive push into the U.S. education market and New Jersey schools chief Chris Cerf left his job to become chief executive of Murdoch's Amplify Insight ed tech firm.

Murdoch, Klein and Cerf became the darlings of U.S. corporate school reformers and international criminal Murdoch, whose company is an ALEC supporter, even keynoted Jeb Bush's 2011 Education Summit.

Hundreds of cash-strapped public school districts (including Chicago) were encouraged to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and handed Murdoch's people control of all student records and family information. Amplify, became a top industry seller.

But News Corp. announced today that it would cease actively marketing Amplify’s Access products to new customers. It claims it will continue to provide service and support to its existing customers. But the Company is reviewing strategic alternatives with respect to Amplify’s remaining digital education businesses.

According to The Street:

Known as Amplify, the digital-education unit within Murdoch's News Corp (NWSA - Get Report)  has been hampered by the slow adoption of its mobile device known as the Tablet computer. 

The tablet's future was said to be riding on Amplify's ability to sell the device into districts for the 2015-2016 school year. That effort appears to have fallen short of expectations made five years ago after News Corp, with great fanfare, hired former New York City education commissioner Joel Klein and then paid $360 million for a 90% stake in Amplify's predecessor, Wireless Generation. 

The $1 billion Amplify tablet.

In May, Amplify Chief of Staff Justin Hamilton hinted that such plans might be in the offing when he said that "we will always be responsive to the marketplace."

You might remember Hamilton as Arne Duncan's former press secretary in charge of selling Duncan's Race To The Top. It seems he didn't do any better hustling Amplify.


Says Klein to school districts that bought in -- "Tough luck, suckers."

Why Cerf jumped ship in N.J.

Cerf bails on Christie

If Jersey Jazzman tells me that the Christie's Bridgegate scandal has nothing to do with the timing of Chris Cerf's jumping ship and heading for Murdoch (see comments) I believe him. There's no one who knows N.J. ed politics better than JJ.

I never meant to imply that the bridge scandal and Christie's zero chances of running for president in 2016 were the main reasons, anyway. We all know by now what drives guys like Cerf. Like his former boss, Joel Klein, who left his post as Bloomberg's school chief in N.Y. for Murdoch's greener pastures, only to return with Amplify contracts in hand, Cerf has dollar signs in his eyes.

UNION RESPONDS

NJEA Pres.Wendell Steinhauer expressed concerns that Cerf’s new position will allow him to profit from the “misguided mandates” he has brought to New Jersey schools, including the new teacher evaluation system linked to upcoming PARCC standardized tests.

“While it is clearly a very good career move for Commissioner Cerf, he leaves New Jersey at a time when schools, educators and students are struggling with these new mandates. As a result of his rush to impose costly and unproven high-stakes testing in New Jersey, districts are spending money they don’t have to implement testing they do not need,” Steinhauer said in a statement released today. “Educators are being subjected to a poorly understood and badly implemented evaluation system that relies far too heavily on the kind of costly assessment and student data systems that Mr. Cerf’s new employer helps districts implement, for a cost.”

I don't know, but I think "concern" may be to soft a word here. It's this revolving door between the ed bureaucracy and ed corporate complex that makes the Ownership Society's wheels go round.

HILARIOUS CHRISTIE

Funniest moment (as least for me) came yesterday during Christie's visit to Chicago on a fundraising trip for the RGA, when he blamed his Bridgegate scandal on the "lack of civility" in Washington. Does he think we've forgotten? In case you have, here's a reminder:

 I can use a lot of words for Washington D.C. ‘civilized’ would not be one of them.” -- Chris Christie 

Cerf jumps Christie's ship in N.J. Goes to work for Murdoch

Cerf hooks up with Murdoch

Darling of scandalized Gov. Chris Christie and the state's corporate school "reformers," Chris Cerf is out as New Jersey schools chief. Cerf said Monday he will leave his $141,500-a-year job on Feb. 28 to become chief executive of  international criminal Rupert Murdoch's Amplify Insight ed tech firm. He's following his old boss, Joel Klein, who was New York City schools chancellor, over to Murdoch. Cerf was Klein’s deputy from 2006 to 2009.

It was 59-year-old Democrat Cerf who brokered a landmark tenure law with AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten, a contract which bases teacher evaluation largely on student test scores, and who has approved 37 N.J. charter schools. He was also a key player in the deal to bring $100 million in Mark Zuckerberg money into the corporate reformers' pockets.

Cerf said the timing of his decision had nothing to do with the gov's fall from grace and praised Christie for being “truly an authentic believer in school reform.”

“None,” he said of the timing in relation to the burgeoning scandals. “The answer is none, absolutely none.”

Translation: Of course it has everything to do with it.

Murdoch's Wireless Generation, education's NSA?

I'm half anticipating that a techie or two over at New Corp's ed division will jump ship and flee to Hong Kong after whistle-blowing Murdoch hacking of U.S. students' families. Maybe a Wireless Generation competitor like McGraw-Hill or Pearson, will offer them asylum on one of their privately-owned islands.

Former N.Y. schools chancellor, Joel Klein became Murdoch's go-to guy on damage-control after the company’s News of the World tabloid in Britain had hacked into the phone of a murdered 13-year-old, Milly Dowler. London hearings soon revealed that Murdoch's criminal enterprise was bribing officials and  hacking phones and internet (including police) nationwide.

In 2010, News Corporation paid $360 million for a 90% stake in Wireless Generation, a company based in Brooklyn that specializes in education software, data systems and assessment tools to help teachers analyze student performance and customize lessons.Once the British scandal died down (what short memories the "wireless generation" has), Klein led his company’s aggressive push into the U.S. education market.

Murdoch soon became the darling of U.S. corporate school reformers and keynoted Jeb Bush's 2011 Education Summit. Hundreds of cash-strapped public school districts (including Chicago) were encouraged to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and have handed Murdoch's people control of all student records and family information. Murdoch/Klein's on-line teaching program, Amplify, is also a top industry seller.

Review from a former Wireless Generation employee-- "A lot of poor quality work passed off as final products, most everything is worked out in production leading to many hot fixes and more long hours. Little respect for teachers or end-users in many within the company.... No, I would not recommend this company to a friend."

The school data-mining business is very competitive and includes Gate-funded operation, inBloom. Aside from accessing student records, it is also being used to spy on teachers and violate their privacy in many ways, ultimately replacing them altogether in the classroom.

I'm not opposed to online teaching/learning or record-keeping and think the new technology has much to offer, especially in the area of integrated and personalized learning, pacing and remediation. But there's no evidence that Murdoch's products are a successful application of if Klein is just a good (well-connected) huckster.

I do know that Murdoch and Klein are the last guys, outside of Booz, Allen, Hamilton and the NSA, that should have their hands on student records and school information.

Just waiting for that whistle to blow.

Murdoch wants FCC to change rules so he can grab L.A. Times

Rupert Murdoch's criminal media empire could expand even more wildly in the U.S. if he's able to get the F.C.C. to get rid of some of its basic regulations. Murdoch's NewsCorp company is stepping up lobbying efforts revise a media ownership rule that would prevent the company from acquiring The L.A.Times and other newspapers in markets in which it already owns television stations.

British billionaire Murdoch is also moving to get billions in U.S. public school district contracts for his Amplify Corp., contracts which would give him access to records and data pertaining to every student and their family in the district. This while he and his media companies are still being investigated for criminal use of wire taps and use of public records.

Craig Aaron, president and chief executive of Free Press, an advocacy group that supports diverse media ownership is quoted in Sunday's New York Times:

“We’re talking about Murdoch owning more newspapers in a year when people are still being arrested at the News of the World." 

Charters grease corporate contracts

Rupert Murdoch (AP photo)

Writing in Salon.com, David Sirota warns us to stop pretending wealthy CEOs pushing for charter schools are altruistic "reformers." They're raking in billions.

 Citing a fact sheet from the for-profit education industry itself, the Washington Post recently reported that “the education sector now represents nearly 9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product” while the “for-profit education is valued at $1.3 trillion, and is one of the largest U.S. investment markets.” Likewise, NPR reports that as he’s launched an education technology division, Rupert Murdoch “has described education as a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars.” This is why the tech site Geekwire predicts another full-scale tech industry bubble, thanks to “K-12 and other education segments now being chased by a mob of investment capitalists.”

According to Sirota, contracts are much easier to land in privately run charter schools because such schools are often uninhibited by public schools’ procurement rules and standards requiring a demonstrable educational need for technology. That reality, no doubt, is part of why charter schools often spend so much more on “administration” and “business services” than do their public school counterparts.

From the D.O.E. to Murdoch

Another high-ranking education official has figured out where his bread is buttered. Arne Duncan's press secretary, Justin Hamilton has followed former N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein over to the evil media empire of Rupert Murdoch.

Hamilton becomes senior vice president for corporate communications. Klein, the former chancellor of New York City public schools, is executive vice president at Murdoch’s News Corp. and director of Amplify.

One of the hallmarks of the Military-Industrial complex was the revolving door between the Defense Dept. and corporate contractors. So maybe we should call this the Corporate-Education Complex.

FOX News didn't reveal its ties to testing companies

In 89 segments between September 10 and 16, Fox News reported on the Chicago Teachers Union's strike without disclosing its financial ties to the educational technology company administering the standardized tests with which the union takes issue.  This according to Media Matters.

Fox News parent company News Corp. acquired a 90-percent stake in Wireless Generation in 2010. Last May, the company agreed to provide Early Mathematics Assessment Services and Early Literacy Assessment Services to Chicago Public Schools. These contracts total $4.7 million. A central reason the Chicago Teachers Union decided to strike is their objection to the school district's call for heavily weighing such standardized testing to ultimately determine teacher pay and layoffs.

 But Fox News anchors and reporters never once disclosed its parent company's ties to Wireless Generation even as the network routinely criticized the strike and the Chicago Teachers Union.

News Corp and Wireless Generation are part of the media empire owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Look who's attacking Chicago's striking teachers

No, this strike feels more about attitude—"the mayor doesn't respect us"—than substance.

It's none other than Rupert Murdoch's bag man. In an op-ed in Sunday's Wall Street Journal, News Corp. executive V.P Joel Klein attacked the ongoing teachers' strike in Chicago without disclosing his role in administering $4.7 million in educational testing contracts at the heart of the dispute.

Media Matters reports that Klein, the former schools chancellor for New York City, was hired by Rupert Murdoch to run News Corp.'s education division in July of 2010 and is now the CEO of Amplify. While the Journal -- which is also owned by News Corp. -- identified Klein as Amplify's CEO, neither the paper nor Klein himself disclosed that the company has millions of dollars in contracts for the very testing that is a central issue in the strike.

In May, Chicago Public Schools entered into an agreement with Wireless Generation to provide "math assessment services" and "literacy assessment services" to the school district. The math agreement is for "a total cost not to exceed $1,700,000" while the literacy assessment cites a cost "not to exceed $3,000,000."

Klein back to pimping Murdoch's Amplify program

Murdoch & Klein

"What we're trying to do is really become a hub for serious thinking and trying to make sure that technology is a positive force," Klein said in an interview. "Because I've long said that just giving a kid a computer isn't going to change the game."

Now that Rupert Murdoch has hired the best criminal defense lawyer money can buy, former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein is freed up to do what he does best -- hustling Murdoch's products back to the public school system.

While the criminal investigation into the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal continues, Klein is back in New York to launch Amplify, News Corp.'s digital learning program. Amplify and AT&T will fund a pilot project that will put tablet computers in students' hands in order to "track student progress."

Klein said he has been working full-time at Murdoch's Amplify since mid-June after News Corp. hired general counsel Gerson Zweifach to focus on continuing fallout from the hacking scandal, which broke about six months after Klein started working at Amplify.

Given the ongoing investigation, we're not exactly sure what tracking their progress means. NYC would do well to track Murdoch's progress with a digital ankle bracelet.

Media Matters nails WSJ and ALEC on "Parent Trigger"

According to Media Matters:

The Wall Street Journal this morning failed to report ties between the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and controversial "parent-trigger" legislation that would allow parents to take over and convert public schools to charter schools. They also failed to report that the Journal's parent company, News Corp, is a member of ALEC. The Journal's treatment of the legislation also cited no criticism of the proposal, which has been described as an effort "to manipulate parents into letting [the charter school lobby] privatize more public schools."

WSJ's parent company, New Corp. is owned by international publishing criminal Rupert Murdoch whose chief henchman is Joel Klein. Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, is recognized as one of the godfathers of corporate school reform and school privatization.

The MM piece quotes Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, who calls the parent trigger "an underhanded trick by the charter lobby to manipulate parents into letting them privatize more public schools."

Murdoch's News Corp. is an ALEC Member

Murdoch (l) and Joel Klein.

No big surprise here. Adam Peshek, who staffs ALEC's Education Task Force, told Education Week that News Corp. has been a member of both ALEC's Education Task Force and Communications and Technology Task Force since January 2012.

This according to PR Watch:

When News Corp. acquired Wireless Generation, a for-profit online education, software, and testing corporation, for $360 million in cash in 2010, Rupert Murdoch called the for-profit K-12 education industry "a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed." A few weeks before the closing of the deal, News Corp. hired Joel Klein, then the chancellor of New York City schools, to run its education division.

Murdoch also donated to ex–DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee’s new group, StudentsFirst, which according to The Nation "has pledged to spend more than $1 billion to bring for-profit schools, including virtual education, to the entire country by electing reform-friendly candidates and hiring top-notch state lobbyists." At an earlier Media Institute awards dinner in Washington shortly before he bought a financial stake in privatizing education through purchasing Wireless Generation, Murdoch called Rhee a "bona fide reformer."

U.K.'s version of Duncan in bed with Murdoch, Klein

Brit Ed Sec. Michael Gove 

"I'd expect in the next [few] months we'd be making some acquisitions," Klein told the Financial Times. "There's the willingness to put in significant capital."

The most corrupt and the most powerful media man in the world is Rupert Murdoch. His criminal acts -- bribing cops, spying on innocent victims, tapping phones-- have cause great harm and have threatened his empire which is now under scrutiny both in Britain and in the U.S.

Murdoch's strategy has been to reinvent himself as an education/technology organization. He hired former N.Y. schools chancellor, Joel Klein as his fixer-in-chief, and continues to make millions in new contracts with schools systems worldwide.

At the end of summer 2010, Murdoch formally hired Klein for $2m (£1.3m) a year, plus a $1m signing bonus, to launch what he called a "revolutionary, and profitable, education division". Murdoch bought Wireless Generation, a US educational technology firm, for $360m, and gave it to Klein to run. Murdoch's vision was that he would digitise the world's so far unexploited classrooms. He told investors: "We see a $500bn sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs." He envisaged some of News Corporation's large library of media content being beamed to pupils' terminals.

The Guardian reports that Britain's education secretary, Michael Gove (the U.K. equivalent to Arne Duncan), a former Times reporter, is now snuggling up to Murdoch and will play a key role in Murdoch's attempt to penetrate (no pun intended) the U.K. education market.

According to the Guardian: 

In a speech to the National College for School Leadership, Gove singled Joel Klein out for praise. Klein was a US lawyer then running the New York school system. But Klein was also Murdoch's own favorite US educator. His clashes with the teachers' unions and his enthusiasm for academy-style "charter schools" had caught the tycoon's interest. Murdoch planned to hire Klein himself.

Gove told his British audience on 16 June that US reformers such as Klein were insisting on "more great charter schools … free from government bureaucracy" because they were "amazing engines of social mobility".

Corporate "reformers" are buying local school board elections

Progressive candidate Emily Sirota (at left) lost the election to Anne Rowe who was financed by corporate front groups. 

A pivotal campaign in Denver

It's long been an accepted fact, even by the least cynical amongst us, that national elections are the playgrounds of the rich. Especially with recent court rulings that "corporations are people," corporate interests, secretly and openly, have flexed their muscles by backing pro-corporate, anti-union candidates and lobbying against environmental and other market regulations. But who would have dreamed that these same forces, operating with virtually unlimited funds at their disposal, would begin targeting local school board races?
 
Mike Elk at In These Times reports that increasingly, large donations from wealthy individuals and corporations are pouring into schools board races around the country to enact an agenda that attacks collective bargaining rights of teachers unions and increases the privatization of public education through charter schools and vouchers. Increasingly, it appears that outside corporate groups are becoming involved in school board races across the country from Illinois to Louisiana to Denver. Denver was their most recent target with their front group Alliance for Choice in Education serving as their conduit.

The fingerprints of national corporate organizations coordinating the money from companieslike Wal-Mart are all over the Denver School Board Race, writes Elk.

A corporate reform group called A+ Denver hired a prominent supporter of school vouchers named Van Schoales to be its executive director. Schoales previously worked for the national privatization reform group called Education Reform Now, which pushes vouchers and which is funded, in part, by Rupert Murdoch and was run by Murdoch’s top aide former NYC School Board Chancellor Joel Klein. In addition, the slate of pro-reform candidates has also been endorsed by the national organization Democrats for Education Reform (DEFR). “DFER’s endgame has little to do with learning and everything to do with marginalizing public-sector unionized workers and bringing down the cost of taxes for social programs.” 

Murdoch's horrifying vision of public education

Rupert Murdoch (r) shakes hands with former New York City schools chief and now News Corp. employee Joel Klein during Murdoch’s keynote address at the National Summit on Education Reform. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Julianne Hing writes for Colorlines:

Banish the image of a classic American classroom from your mind—chalkboard, desks and all. The future of education has arrived, and next-era classrooms look like, well, call centers: students seated at individual corrals, some with headphones on, being taught and drilled on quadratic equations while a teacher monitors their progress from behind her own computer. With such individualized learning, students can absorb and master subjects “tailored to their pace and needs.” 

That was the picture painted by billionaire businessman Rupert Murdoch when he spoke last week at a two-day conference in San Francisco hosted by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s education reform outfit. Murdoch’s News Corp. has been quietly developing virtual-learning and technology-driven products for K through 12 schools, and with his address Murdoch made his first large public splash into an arena he’s valued at $500 billion. For entrepreneurs big and small, American public school reform has become a prime business opportunity.

Why is Murdoch speaking at an "education summit" in the first place?

Teachers want to know

Teachers in the San Francisco Bay area picketed Thursday outside an education conference that features News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch as a keynote speaker, saying they believe he and other business leaders are out to profit from the so-called "reforms" discussed at the summit.

More than 100 demonstrators marched outside the Palace Hotel, which was hosting Jeb Bush's National Summit on Education Reform. The protesters, joined by activists from the Occupy Wall Street movement, chanted, banged drums and held signs with pictures of Murdoch and slogans such as "Hey Murdoch! Our Schools are Not For Profit."

"Corporations own all the media in the world. Why should they not own all the education as well?" activist Joe Hill yelled sarcastically.

Last year, News Corp. acquired Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based company that sells software and services to K-12 schools with the help of former N.Y.C. schools chancellor, Joel Klein. In August, New York's comptroller rejected a $27 million contract with the educational technology company because of the phone-hacking scandal involving News Corp.'s British newspapers.

Foundation for Excellence in Education is chaired by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and champions school vouchers, privately-operated charter schools and performance pay for teachers.  Speakers expected during this year's conference include Melinda Gates and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as well as Bush.

Rupert Murdoch's entry into the education business

News Corp.'s entrance into the education sector raises broader education policy questions, says University of Arizona education professor Kenneth Goodman. Having a multinational corporation in charge of assessing kids' reading skills, he notes, shows that "decision making in education is so far removed from people who have anything to do with kids." And like many educators, he is suspicious that Murdoch will bring his conservative ideology to his education ventures: "They'd like everything to be privatized." -- Mother Jones, "Fox in the Schoolhouse"

Rupert Murdoch giving keynote at Jeb Bush’s ed reform summit

“We were motivated to invite Mr. Murdoch after reading his eloquent speech before G8 Summit on leveraging the power of technology to improve education.” -- Jaryn Emhof, communications director for Bush's foundation

Valerie Strauss writes:

The man chosen to give the breakfast keynote address on the second day of the upcoming National Summit on Education Reform 2011: Education Everywhere , is none other than ... media mogul Rupert Murdoch.


The summit is being convened next month in San Francisco by former Florida Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, an organization through which Bush has maintained strong influence across the country as a leader in standardized test-based school reform. Last year’s gathering was in Washington D.C. and topics for discussion were charter schools, choice, innovation and technology — favorites among modern school reformers.

N.Y. Chancellor Tisch spends millions on Race-To-Top 'advisers"

Chancellor Tisch

Power philanthropy rules the schools

“Private people give money to support things they’re interested in.” -- Roger Tilles, member of the Board of Regents.

Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch, is contracting 13 research fellows  to advise the education commissioner and the 17-member board on how to spend its $700 million Race To The Top grant. The fellows will  be paid as much as $189,000 each, in private money; to date, $4.5 million has been raised, including $1 million donated Tisch herself. She is a member of one of New York’s multi-billionaire families.

Donors to the program will include Bill Gates ($892,000), who is leading the charge to evaluate teachers, principals and schools using students’ test scores; the National Association of Charter School Administrators ($50,000) and the Robbins Foundation ($500,000), which finance charter expansion; and the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation ($500,000), whose mission statement includes advancing “Mayor Bloomberg’s school reform agenda.”

Tisch's bankrolling of the program is another indication of a new trend in ownership society schooling where representatives of the billionaire class directly run public institutions themselves and use tax-exempt private investment, either directly, or thorough their private foundations) to do an end run about the democratic process.  Earlier this month, Mayor Bloomberg announced that he would be running a city youth program with $30 million of his own foundation money.

NYT's Michael Winerip writes:

Public education has never been so divided, between those like Dr. Tisch, Commissioner John B. King Jr. and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who support the Obama administration’s signature Race to the Top initiative and its emphasis on standardized tests and charter schools; and dissenters on the board, who call it a Race to the Bottom and put their faith in teachers as well as traditional public schools. The Race to the Bottom folks warn that the supposedly free fellows come at a stiff political price.

Race to the Top requires states to develop student-data collection systems. Recently the Education Department awarded a $27 million no-bid contract to Wireless Generation, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch and overseen by a former New York City chancellor, Joel I. Klein. Mr. Klein is a good friend of Dr. Tisch. The state comptroller’s office is investigating whether it was proper to award the contract without bidding.

More on Murdoch's $27M no-bid contract from NY Dept. of Ed

Leveraged with Duncan's Race To The Top $$$

The Daily News reports:

More than a dozen private firms wanted to work on a project like the one the state Education Department is set to award to a Rupert Murdoch-owned company in a $27 million no-bid contract.  Critics say, state officials had ample time to competitively bid out the contract and still meet a fall 2012 deadline for a federal Race to the Top grant.

"It raises all kinds of questions," said Susan Lerner, executive director of good government group Common Cause New York. "There appears to be time in this process to go through a much more open-bidding process to ensure that the public is getting the best vendor at the best price."

Wireless Generation paid as much as $5,000 a month to lobbying firms to advocate for the contract and Race to the Top funds with state officials.

In December 2010, the state Education Department began work with Wireless Generation on preparing the no-bid contract, A month earlier, Joel Klein had announced he was stepping down as the city schools chancellor to join News Corp., overseeing its budding education division.