Joe Klein says he likes a good fight. The CEO of Klein Steel Services says building his company has meant battling New York's anti-business climate for more than 20 years.

Klein has recently taken up another cause: education.

Three months ago, Klein formed Friends of Students of the Rochester City School District. The 16-member advocacy group's mission is to see to it that all city students graduate from high school and are prepared for college.

Klein is against unions, and he's particularly critical of the teachers union. Supporters say Klein's frank, no-nonsense style makes him the right person to speak out about the district's worst problems - primarily its 39 percent graduation rate.

But critics say he's brash and abrasive. When Klein received the 2006 Businessperson of the Year award from the Rochester Business Alliance, his acceptance speech wasn't filled with the usual platitudes. It was instead laced with personal assaults on some of the region's political and business elite, accusing them of aiding in New York State's economic decline. Supporters hailed Klein, but the RBA distanced itself from his remarks.

Klein is not the first person to form an advocacy group or to blame the teachers union for low student performance. Many attempts have been made to improve the city school district's graduation rate. Two years ago, Al Simone, the former president of RIT, assembled a Blue Ribbon panel. That group recommended building a 10,000-person mentoring force for city school students, and discouraged granting tenure to principals. The panel also heard from principals who said they needed better tools for terminating ineffective teachers.

Little came of the panel's recommendations, but Klein says he is undeterred by past attempts. Friends will succeed where other groups have failed, he says, because the district finally has the right superintendent to promote reform from within.

Friends, Klein says, is primarily a lobbying group. Klein picked the group's members based on their concern for the district, and "their willingness to take up a fight."

The eclectic group includes Carlos Carballada, city Commissioner of Economic Development; WHEC-Channel 10's general manager Arnold Klinsky; former RIT President Al Simone; community activist Sister Beth LeValley; city school district teacher and community activist Howard Eagle; community activist Wallace Smith; and Ret. Army Major General John Batiste - who is also Klein Steel's president.

One of the group's first assignments was to weigh in on the Rochester school board's selection of a new superintendent.

"We met with the members of the school board, and we made it clear to them that our preference was to keep [interim Superintendent] Bill Cala," says Klein. The group later backed Jean-Claude Brizard.

City School Board member Willa Powell says she didn't know Klein until he came to all four nights of the superintendent forums. She has met with Klein and she says she respects the intent of the group.

"Some of its members are impressive," she says. "But others are some of the same old faces critical of the district."

Klein and members of Friends did convey their strong interest in Jean-Claude Brizard, Powell says. But it was Klein's attendance at the forums, she says, that really caught her attention.

"I remember thinking he must really care about education," she says. "Other people who supposedly speak on behalf of the business community, and are going as far as recommending mayoral control, weren't there. Did that make up the minds of board members? No. Did it have an impact? Yes."

Contributing to Klein's personal convictions about what is best for the city school district are his recent experiences on the Board of Trustees for Rochester Prep Charter School, combined with running Klein Steel.

Rochester Prep opened two years ago with a fifth-grade class. A sixth-grade class was added last year, and within the next two years, Klein says, the school will expand to include seventh and eighth grades, making it a charter middle school. Students are chosen by lottery from city school district applicants. Most of the school's 148 students are black and poor, Klein says.

"This is not a cream-of-the-crop school," Klein says. "One of the criticisms of charter schools is that they take the cream of the crop. Eighty percent of our students get free and reduced lunches, but 87 percent passed their state math test, and 75 percent passed their English Language Arts exam."

Compared to fifth-grade city school students, scores for both exams are higher. Rochester Prep's principal, like those in many charter schools, operates with a greater degree of autonomy than principals at city schools. And there isn't a union. Teachers can be hired and fired at will, without going through a lengthy grievance process. Rochester Prep's results, although preliminary, have convinced Klein that students will benefit if the city school district operates more like a charter school or a privately-held company.

The causes of the city school district's low graduation rate, Klein says, have less to do with societal issues such as poverty and violence, and more to do with the district's inability to hold principals and teachers accountable. It is an opinion shared by fellow Friends member Al Simone. The obstacle that poverty presents to city school students was downplayed by his Blue Ribbon panel.

Administrators and teachers unions, Klein says, are hurting public schools.

"With the unions, it is almost a situation of us against them," he says.

Klein would reward good teachers and principals monetarily in lieu of tenure - a practice more common in private business.

"I would like to see good principals receive a $10,000 bonus, if they meet their goals," he says. "I would like to see teachers get bonuses. If you have a teacher that is preventing all the other teachers in that school from getting their bonuses, it won't take long for them to stop supporting the ineffective teacher."

Klein's group plans to lobby state legislators to change the law that guarantees tenured principals and teachers a hearing with an arbitrator before they can even be demoted, much less fired. But the unions have a lot of influence over elected officials, Powell says, and changing the law would be difficult.

Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teacher's Association, says the RTA is a progressive union that has made significant strides in working with underperforming teachers.

"Very often, the union helps in counseling them out of the profession," he says.

He agrees that tenure and grievance policies should be reviewed, but teachers unions serve a unique purpose, he says.

"We need to be able to protect those who teach our children how to think from those who want to teach our children what to think," Urbanski says. "Without tenure, you can kiss dissenting views goodbye. The attack on tenure is always the same: to make termination less cumbersome. But we need to have some way of protecting against those who simply want to silence the views of others."