Richard Rothstein Demonstrates How Joel Klein Has Lied About His "Poor Kid From The Projects" Autobiography

Extensively researched and documented, Rothstein calls Klein out here.

It's a devastating article, because it shows just how full of crap Klein is about his "I came from the projects and succeeded because of a great teacher" story, the one he uses to back up his pro-privatization/anti-union education policies.

Klein likes to say that he is a "kid from the streets" who grew up in the projects, raised by parents who didn't know about college and had no academic ambitions for him.

The truth is, Klein came from a hard-working family that made well above the national median income and had academic ambitions for him, enough that they got him into "special progress" classes in junior high school.

They lived in a post-war middle class housing project that was not subsidized by the government and excluded people on the basis of too little income and other disqualifying factors that we today associate with low income projects.

Klein the lawyer knows he wouldn't be brought up on perjury charges for misleading people when telling his "poor kid from the projects" story.

But at base it is a deliberate fabrication and distortion meant to support an education policy that places sole emphasis on teachers as the only factor that matters in how students do in school.

Rothstein takes Klein's story apart and in the process exposes him as a charlatan.