Who

Joel Klein is the bald-pated nebbish who serves as the chancellor of the city's schools system.

Backstory

When Queens native Klein took over the New York public school system in 2002, his only experience in education was a stint teaching sixth-grade math in Queens during a leave of absence from Harvard Law back in 1969. After law school he spent 20 years as one of Washington's most powerful lawyers, both as an attorney in private practice (he co-founded the firm Onek, Klein & Farr) and as assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, where he headed up the team of 700 lawyers in Justice's anti-trust division and, most famously, did battle with the likes of Microsoft.

In 2000, Klein left Washington behind and returned to New York, joining the German media giant Bertelsmann to head up its U.S. operations. His stay in the private sector, however, was short-lived: Following Michael Bloomberg's successful campaign for mayor, he tapped Klein as the city's schools chancellor as part of a corporate-style reshaping of city government.

Of note

It's something of a surprise Klein has hung around: When he began the job in 2002, there had been 12 chancellors in the previous 20 years, and his sweeping changes have been controversial, to say the least. Wresting control of the nation's largest school system from the teacher's union led by Randi Weingarten, Klein instituted a city-wide math and reading curriculum and standardized testing system. He also pushed to break up larger high schools, championed small, charter schools, and advocated giving more autonomy to local schools, eliminating the bureaucratic tangle that has existed in recent years.

The results of his work, though, are up for debate. Klein has said the system is a work in progress and it may very well take years to see the fruits of his labor; critics have suggested that his constant experimentation with new programs and his less-conventional methods (such as his 2007 plan to pay students to perform well in school) are misguided. The stats also deliver a mixed message: While city students' performance on state test scores has risen during the Klein era, roughly half the high school students in New York still do not graduate in four years. And his heavy-handed approach (he was an anti-trust litigator, after all) has repeatedly inflamed relations with teachers and parents, particularly his early efforts to micro-manage with dictums on everything from the placement of chalkboards to the size of the in-class "reading rugs."

Klein is widely expected to stay on until the end of the Bloomberg administration, but his next move is up in the air. Some have suggested he may enter the political ring himself, while others have guessed that, depending on who's elected mayor, he may be asked to stay on as schools chancellor.

Personal

Klein's second wife is Nicole Seligman, now the general counsel for the Sony Corporation and one of Howard Stringer's key deputies. (She represented President Bill Clinton during his impeachment proceedings.) Klein has a daughter, Julia, from his first marriage to Patsy Davis. The couple has lived at 565 Park Avenue since 2002; in August 2007, Klein paid $1.7 million for an apartment upstairs to create a duplex.

No joke

When he was a Washington insider, his regular tennis partners included Antonio Scalia and Alan Greenspan.