With his 40 years of experience in education – starting as a math teacher in 1971 — Bob Cohen, 59, of the New York Department of Education is transforming some of the most troubled schools in the Bronx, according to NY Times.
Cohen has risen to the most important job of his life, as leader of Cluster One, Network 104, which consists of 31 schools in the Bronx – one of the city’s 60 school networks. In 2008, when he first assumed his post as an advocate for principals in New York’s education bureaucracy, Cohen had two schools on the list of persistently failing schools and thus in danger of being closed. Today, P.S. 230 went to an A from an F, and I.S. 313 to an A from a D.
Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy chancellor of the Education Department, said that what makes Cohen good is that he knows the system and is “humble enough to realize his job is supporting the work of principals and teachers in classrooms.”