With his current appointment as vice chair of the Strategic Management of Human Capital national task force, a branch of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Cohn places the university and SES in the national spotlight of educational reform. Presently, reform is aimed at comprehensively transforming dysfunctional human resource practices in urban school districts in order to put the best and brightest teachers and leaders in front of the neediest kids.
“This is emerging as the next wave of school reform,” said Cohn. “How do you get talent in the 100 largest school districts in America? How do you get them out of their stodgy, stick-in-the-mud, bureaucratic approach to HR? How do you get them thinking in radically different ways about the development of talent with a view on the most needy students in America deserving the best talent? It makes absolutely no sense to talk about closing the achievement gap in the abstract without a powerful new focus on getting new talent in the classroom, in the principalship.”
Cohn couldn’t have arrived at CGU at a better time, as right now is a prime opportunity to be at the cutting-edge of reform with the amount of attention and money being channeled to education by the Obama administration.
“There’s a lot of potential for federal support, in one way or another, to get behind some serious, fundamental reforms that I think we will be participating in,” said SES Dean Margaret Grogan. “Part of our mission and our vision states clearly that we have a commitment to social justice and accountability, and Dr. Cohn’s work puts us at the forefront of trying to understand how schools and school districts can better serve all students, especially those not being well served at the moment. We’ll be among those that will help really move the whole reform project forward.”
And for SES students seeking to cultivate a potency similar to Cohn’s and apply it to education reform, their professor’s ability to synergize academic instruction with extensive and current fieldwork gives them real-world, real-time insights.
“He brings the big picture,” said SES doctoral student Raquel Nuñez, former manager of instruction for the Partnership for Los Angeles Education. “I get a lot of content specific learning in other classes, and you pair that with Dr. Cohn’s teaching about how the system works and how these policies are made, and it’s a perfect fit. He gives you tools to think about large-scale implementation.”
“He’s a prime example of the scholar-practitioner and an excellent role model for our students who want to remain in positions like the superintendency or principalship but, at the same time, be able to conduct solid, well-designed research, and then bring the two areas of expertise together to create better schools and better districts to serve all students,” said Grogan. “That’s the kind of person we have in Dr. Cohn – someone who not only brings the expertise, but is steeped in the scholarship as well.”
Practitioner
Cohn began his career at Dominguez High School in Compton in 1968, opting to trade Roman Catholic priesthood studies for teaching. Soon hired by the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), he rose steadily through the ranks from counselor to attendance director to regional administrator and, ultimately, to superintendent in 1992. During his 10-year tenure as superintendent, LBUSD achieved record attendance and made major strides in student retention, behavior, and academic performance.
To attain such excellence, Cohn implemented a multitude of new programs and initiatives – like mandatory uniforms for K-8 students, which not only sparked higher attendance but led to a 71 percent reduction in fights, vandalism, drug possession, and other offenses over a two-year span. He also launched an intensive focus on literacy through several measures, including summer school for students who couldn’t read by third grade.
Like the reform work Cohn espouses and practices today, he saturated LBUSD with the most talented leaders and teachers he could find. Cohn’s key to securing – and then improving – quality personnel was partnering with national talent-recruiting agencies, as well as California State University, Long Beach, and Long Beach City College. Together, the city’s three core education institutions collaborated on preparing teachers specifically for LBUSD classrooms, creating ongoing professional development activities, and writing rigorous content standards for all subjects.
In 2002, his last year with LBUSD, Cohn won the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education and, the next year, the district was awarded the Broad Prize for Urban Education in recognition of overall performance and the reduction of achievement gaps in low-income and minority students.
“I hope one of my legacies out there about my career is one of having led in a way that really developed and empowered people at levels below the superintendent of schools so they can really carry on the work,” said Cohn, noting that, to his gratification, LBUSD continues to improve.
After Long Beach, he taught at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California from 2002-2005. Then, at age 60, thinking, “If I’m ever going to do this again, I better do it now,” Cohn accepted the monumental challenge of superintendency for the second time, this time with San Diego Unified (SDUSD).
Peacemaking and improving employee morale in a district fraught with conflict are generally regarded as his most notable accomplishments during his stint with SDUSD. Cohn also cited increasing enrollment despite predictions of decline, a feat he achieved by offering more family-friendly schools with alternate choices, ones more reminiscent of charter and private schools.
Scholar
Following a brief time as Leader in Residence at San Diego State University’s College of Education, Cohn became intrigued with CGU after delivering the Pearce Lecture on campus and observing how the institution values close relationships between students and faculty.
“I thought, this is the type of institution where, if I wanted to get it right in terms of higher education, this might be a good fit,” he said, praising the small class size.
As a primary goal, Cohn will build stronger ties to the off-campus educational arena in order to strengthen SES’s Urban Leadership Program, a PhD program that trains students in research, theory, and practice, with an eye to social justice and integrity, giving them a solid academic foundation alongside real-life experiences in urban workplaces.
According to Cohn, enhancing the program means, most importantly, establishing more effective relationships with large urban school districts such as Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), the state’s largest school system. “It’s critical for the Urban Leadership Program to be solidly connected to urban school districts, building key relationships where the university is really influencing practice,” said Cohn, who is currently conducting governance training for the LAUSD school board.
Cohn is also organizing a panel of experts to talk about LAUSD at the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) conference taking place in Anaheim this November.
“It’s very good for SES and for CGU to be associated with a panel about LAUSD and a conversation about what happens next – what are their challenges and how do we meet them?” said Grogan. “It’s very good that he can help position us as having key players interested in the fate of LAUSD.”
Furthermore, Cohn’s work as vice chair of the CPRE Strategic Management of Human Capital Task Force establishes CGU as an instrumental education reform institution. Organized by two veteran reformers, Jim Kelly and Allan Odden, chaired by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Gates, Ford, and Joyce Foundations, SMHC seeks to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement by overhauling personnel – “human capital” – practices in urban schools.
With the action-oriented arm of SMHC, the District Reform Network, Cohn provides nationwide leadership consulting, helping districts take a hard look at their most pervasive HR problems and demonstrating how they can systematically restructure them. Reducing a convoluted application process (Chicago, for example, decreased theirs from 61 days to two days), partnering with colleges and national recruitment agencies to obtain top talent, as Cohn successfully did with LBUSD, and providing ongoing professional development are some of the strategies advocated by Cohn and implemented by the most successful districts, as demonstrated by case studies conducted by the network.
“SMHC will put these human capital issues on the national education reform agenda, and will provide tools and information to courageous local leaders,” stated Pawlenty, as reported by the task force in a 2008 article.
By learning to be courageous school-system leaders and change-agents under Cohn’s instruction and inspiration, SES students are becoming equipped with the tools to succeed and contribute to the reform effort.
“I thought it was too broken for any improvements to be realized,” said doctoral student Sammy Elzarka, former director of curriculum and assessment with a charter school management company. “But Dr. Cohn has renewed the faith I once had in being able to reform the public school system. Thanks to Dr. Cohn, I’m far more open to entering a traditional school system than I was two or three years ago.”
For fellow student Nuñez, the real-world applicability along with the personal attentiveness encountered in Cohn’s approach demonstrate why CGU was the optimal choice for her education. “He makes connections with each and every person in class, which is really the signature of CGU. He truly embodies the spirit of supporting the individual learner,” she said.
And, never wavering from his commitment to push students, Cohn guides them to “think in ways they possibly hadn’t imagined they could,” said Grogan.
“This investment in people’s growth will promote the kind of longevity and the assembling of a team that is needed for helping and reforming a district,” Elzarka commented.
By challenging them, Cohn is preparing the next generation of scholars and practitioners, grooming gutsy and innovative visionaries who can tackle the pressing problems of education today, and into the future.
“I have found Claremont students to be potentially strong leaders. If I were heading a school system, yes, I would hire them in a heartbeat and give them major responsibility.”
