By LISA FLEISHER

Newark’s new schools superintendent, Cami Anderson, outlined a broad plan on Friday to reshape the state’s largest school system, including closing poorly performing schools and lifting standards for charters.

Although many of the changes echoed similar efforts in New York City, Ms. Anderson cast the blueprint as one tailored to the needs of Newark, a district where some parents, teachers and other stakeholders have grown resentful and suspicious of outsiders after more than 15 years under state control.

But in what was perhaps a sign of difficulties to come, her presentation before parents, teachers and residents at Rutgers-Newark on Friday evening was drowned out by shouts for her to return to New York City, where she worked as a superintendent under schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

After the meeting, Ms. Anderson, who took the job eight months ago, said, “We want to talk about our proposals and tonight was just the beginning. The bottom line is that we need more of Newark’s students in schools with the winning ingredients to help them succeed. Change is difficult and that’s understandable, but our kids can’t wait.”

She has waded into rocky waters. Newark is one of three urban districts in New Jersey under some version of state control because schools have consistently failed to meet academic benchmarks. New York City has undergone a decadelong experiment of shutting down failing schools and replacing them, in some instances, with smaller schools.

“It’s a spin on some of the stuff we did in New York, but it’s actually quite different,” Ms. Anderson said in an interview before she spoke at Rutgers. “There are unique elements of Newark that require a very sharp eye toward equity and community participation, which is very different than how we went about it in New York.”

She said she would consolidate about 10% of under-enrolled schools and allow principals in new schools to choose which teachers to rehire. Some buildings could be leased to charter schools. She said she was counting on funding for initial parts of the plan from donors, including a foundation launched with $100 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“This is the Newark way to get there, which has to acknowledge that we have a large percentage of students who are struggling, and who will be for a while,” Ms. Anderson said.

Laura Baker, whose granddaughter attends high school in Newark and who was at the meeting Friday evening, said she wanted to see an academic-based plan from Ms. Anderson, rather than an organizational one.

“This is not New York, and we’re not just going to give away our buildings,” said Ms. Baker, who is a member of the Secondary Parent Council, which has also filed a lawsuit seeking details of Mr. Zuckerberg’s gift. “Why should we listen to her talk about closing schools just to bring in charters?”

The plan, which was first reported by the Newark Star-Ledger, also includes increasing the number of students who have access to the district’s themed, or magnet, schools. Ms. Anderson planned to hold a series of public and private meetings in February and hoped to start implementing changes by March.

“She’s doing a lot of new, creative stuff, building on some of the things we did in New York, building on some ideas she’s developed, and is working tirelessly to engage the community to build the support necessary for this kind of change,” said Mr. Klein, who was Ms. Anderson’s boss as the New York City chancellor until 2010. “That’s a very positive development.”

Mr. Klein, who now works for News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal, said he sees the strategies used in New York replicated across the country and in federal policy.

Newark, a struggling urban school system splintered along political lines, has drawn national attention as it attempts to reverse course. Gov. Chris Christie has frequently spotlighted Newark as he argues for larger education policy changes, such as weakening teacher tenure protections or giving students vouchers for nearby public or private schools.

Ms. Anderson, who was appointed by Mr. Christie, has moved to Newark and met with smaller groups of community members, but she still faces considerable antagonism.

“She is a non-Newarker who basically is taking orders from whoever she takes orders from,” said Joseph Del Grosso, president of the Newark Teachers Union, which represents about 5,000 workers, including 3,800 teachers. “I think she’s put herself in a very precarious situation.”

He said he saw signs of improvement in the schools Ms. Anderson wanted to close, which led him to question why she wanted to change course.

The union is also fighting another of Ms. Anderson’s strategies: giving principals more authority and allowing them to move unwanted teachers out of the classroom and into a districtwide pool, called an excess pool. There are 82 teachers who have been “excessed,” meaning they have no permanent classroom position but are used sometimes as long-term substitutes or for other purposes.

It’s the same strategy that has been used in New York City to move ineffective teachers out of the classroom while satisfying union requirements and tenure protections. In New York, which has about 1.1 million students compared with Newark’s 36,000, there were about 980 teachers in the pool as of mid-January.

Write to Lisa Fleisher at lisa.fleisher@wsj.com

Por GERGORY ZUCKERMAN

Os três fundadores da gigante da private equity Carlyle Group receberam juntos uma remuneração de mais de US$ 400 milhões no ano passado, segundo um informe às autoridades de mercado dos Estados Unidos.

O pagamento gigantesco vai aumentar a desconfiança do público sobre um setor que já se prepara para a reação negativa causada pela campanha presidencial do ex-governador Mitt Romney, fundador de outra grande firma de investimentos em participações, a Bain Capital.

A renda de David Rubenstein, William Conway e Daniel D’Aniello envolveu um salário de US$ 275.000, um bônus de US$ 3,5 bilhões e uma participação de US$ 134 milhões cada nos lucros dos investimentos da firma, segundo documentos apresentados na noite de terça-feira à SEC, a comissão de valores mobiliários dos EUA.

O informe foi entregue antes da oferta inicial de ações da empresa, que está prevista para este ano.

Sediada em Washington, a Carlyle, como outras firmas que compram empresas para fechar seu capital, fica com 20% dos lucros dos seus investimentos. Os US$ 402 milhões que os três executivos dividiram representam mais da metade da comissão de 20% que a Carlyle abocanhou como retorno de seus investimentos em 2011.

Os três também desfrutaram de um retorno substancial de seus investimentos pessoais nos fundos da firma, além da participação deles nos lucros. A Carlyle informou que D’Aniello, Conway e Rubenstein receberam US$ 77,6 milhões, US$ 70,9 milhões e US$ 56,8 milhões, respectivamente. O informe não especificou quanto desses pagamentos se refere ao investimento inicial de cada um dos três executivos.

Ao mesmo tempo, é evidente que os fundadores continuam investindo em seus próprios fundos. Conway, que é codiretor-presidente, investiu US$ 164 milhões no ano passado, enquanto D’Aniello, presidente do conselho, aplicou US$ 98 milhões, e Rubenstein, o outro codiretor-presidente, aplicou US$ 97 milhões, segundo o informe. Eles também se comprometeram a investir mais US$ 490,7 milhões nos fundos, também de acordo com o informe.

A remuneração do ano passado é resultado de um período especialmente ativo e bem-sucedido para a Carlyle, fundada em 1987. A firma devolveu US$ 15 bilhões a seus investidores nos primeiros nove meses do ano, o que representa lucros das operações de fechamento de capital bem como as aplicações iniciais dos investidores. Foi um recorde em relação a igual período em toda a história na Carlyle e quase o dobro do melhor momento anterior da firma.

“Eles obviamente tiveram um ano muito bom e têm incentivos para criar retorno para os investidores e têm direito a 20% desses lucros”, diz um executivo com um investimento nos fundos da Carlyle. “Os investidores têm que ter ganhado um monte de dinheiro” para o trio poder ganhar mais de US$ 400 milhões no ano passado.

By LEE LAWRENCE

Despite its sweeping title, “Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution” showcases a single 20th-century artist, Fu Baoshi—painter, seal carver, teacher and art historian. Although he is well known in China, this is his first big retrospective in the U.S., and the tightly focused approach proves effective. Fu comes across as someone we ought to get to know: a gifted artist working at a tortuous time in China’s history.

Originally organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art in collaboration with China’s Nanjing Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has now added a few paintings from local collections, 20 seals and a handful of books. While these round out our appreciation of Fu (1904-1965), it is the show’s 88 paintings that tell the powerful story of an artist delving into the past to develop a visual language for the present. They range in subject from historic figures and beautiful women to landscapes and the occasional European cityscape. Some are small enough to fit on a fan, others stretch more than eight feet. All are made using brush-and-ink techniques.

The standouts are the landscapes, which are the best represented and the most revealing. Fu’s early work, made in 1925 when he was still an art student, teems with dots, dashes and calligraphic brushstrokes adopted in reverent imitation of 10th- to 18th-century masters. While living in Japan in the mid-1930s, Fu discovered artists who were reinventing ancient Chinese techniques and drawing inspiration from direct observation rather than earlier paintings. Back in China, his strokes became more fluid and spontaneous and his tonal range richer as he layered ink into dark pools and created brushstrokes as ephemeral as smoke.

This is not the only change. After the Communist victory in 1949, the use of red grows increasingly prominent, from fluttering Communist banners to pink skies—a not-so-subtle allusion to the pro-Party lyric “The east is red, the sun rises / China has produced Mao Zedong.” But this trend occurs alongside works that bear no such “red” references. A set of 12 fans painted between 1962 and 1965 are visual meditations that hark back to the literati ideals of the artist he most revered, Shitao (1642-1707).

Two things are remarkable here. Fu did not feel the need to hide these fans, typically giving them as gifts to family and even friends in high places. And the works that overtly glorify the state rarely strike a jingoistic note. One of the most startling paintings in the show, “Heaven and Earth Glowing Red” (1964), features our planet washed in the red of Communism. Yet the composition is so lyrical that we respond primarily to color, line and form, not message. Elsewhere, landscapes include a telephone pole here, a cable car there, and a motif of puffy clouds from smokestacks. But such hallmarks of modernity and “progress” are always tucked inside the landscape, never the focus.

When Fu paints China, it is its earth, water, rock and trees that draw the eye, not man or his feats. Not even when that man is Mao. In the 1958 “Snow: Poem of Mao Zedong,” the leader is a small standing figure in the lower right corner of a mountainscape so snowy it dissolves into abstraction. In “After Mao Zedong’s Poem ‘Swimming’” of the same year, Fu borrows from a famous news photograph but increases the expanse of water around Mao’s small bobbing head. Similarly, in Fu’s “The Far Snows of Minshan Only Make Us Happy” (1953), the Long March of the Red Army appears as a slight string of figures cutting across a corner, while the mountain towers majestically.

If Fu’s love for China is palpable, what is less clear is how he feels about Mao and the Communist Party. At the time of his career, painting was a highly politicized field; opting for traditional Chinese painting, or guohua, carried risks. Many considered it linked to a corrupt imperial past or saw in guohua Nationalist tendencies. While Fu promoted guohua as the avenue toward an authentic Chinese visual language, the opposing camp championed European media and Socialist Realism. All it would take was one word from on high to turn today’s darling guohua artists into tomorrow’s exiled laborers.

This makes reading motive into Fu’s work a speculative endeavor. Maxwell Hearn, who heads the Met’s department of Asian art and curated this installation, believes that “Fu must have had ambivalent feelings vis à vis Communism and Mao” given the hardship caused by the Great Leap Forward and the capriciousness of censorship. He reads into Fu’s work the plight of an artist making politically astute choices as a way of avoiding trouble, “treading a fine line,” Mr. Hearn says, “very similar to Chinese artists today.”

Asked his views on the subject, Nanjing Museum director Gong Liang says that he believes Fu’s writings and paintings express continued faith in Mao and hope for China’s future. Fu’s choices reflect, in his view, a sincere desire to help build a better tomorrow. Anita Chung, the Cleveland Museum’s curator of Chinese art and author of the show’s catalog, has yet another take. “Because of the political circumstances,” she says, “we cannot judge whether the artist is openly expressing himself or hiding some meaning. It is truly up to the interpretation of the audience.” So perhaps Fu hoped that, by expressing ancient ideals of beauty and poetry, he could help the revolution stay true to China. Just as old masters often depicted sages and poets as tiny figures amid mountains and forests, he saw current events and players as just one more element in his vast land. As for whether he chose his subjects out of conviction or to curry favor, his motives were probably mixed; which is what makes this show particularly intriguing.

Ms. Lawrence is a writer based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

By DIANA MIDDLETON

Shane Torchiana was working in asset management in a job focused on global-fixed income, but he wanted to make the leap to analyst and eventually become a fund manager.

His first thought was to apply to a traditional two-year M.B.A. program. But he believed he didn’t need years of general management training in order to get the specific career he wanted. After researching his options, Mr. Torchiana opted for a master’s degree in finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, a new yearlong program launched this year.

“It might be a lesser-known type of program, but in terms of quantitative finance skills and the shorter time period, it wins,” says Mr. Torchiana. He says he is learning finance at a detailed level he couldn’t get in a typical M.B.A. program—including some doctoral-level coursework.

More students are looking to business schools for shorter and more focused alternatives to the M.B.A., with in-depth education in everything from science of management to international finance. Schools, in turn, are beefing up the specialty programs they already offer and adding more to keep up with demand.

These programs, which usually are 12 months long, often include elements of the typical M.B.A. curriculum (classes in finance or advanced mathematics skills are common), but are often more technical and focus less on general managerial skills.

“The master’s in finance degree isn’t designed for broader management positions,” says Debra Luchanin, program manager of MIT’s master’s in finance program. “We’re gearing students up for more specialized quantitative positions, such as asset management.”

Growing Appeal

For those without the five years of work experience most M.B.A. programs require, specialized business degrees offer entrance to students with just a year or two of experience. There are an array of degrees for those set on a specific career path. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the main business-school-accrediting agency, reports that the number of such programs is on the rise. For the 2008-09 school year, 645 such programs were offered, up from 614 two years earlier. In the 2006-07 school year, enrollment in these programs was 24,527; in 2008-09, that increased to 29,907 students enrolled.

Many of these programs are still small—including MIT’s new finance program, which is in its first year. The current class is just 27 students, although the school plans to eventually expand that number to 60.

This year, Tufts University has 31 students in its master’s in international business class—its first year offering the program. Tufts is positioning its program as an alternative to an M.B.A., which the school doesn’t offer. The program is as long as an M.B.A. and requires core business classes, such as corporate strategy, accounting and finance. But classes are globally-focused, with courses in international politics and international negotiations and electives focused on regional issues around the world.

“We want to empower those students who want to work abroad [in business] after graduation,” says Stephen Bosworth, dean of Tuft’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Christopher Barron, a first-year student in the program, applied to M.B.A. programs, too. But it was the opportunity to dig deep into agricultural economics abroad that swayed him toward Tufts. Already, he has detailed his ideal career trajectory with a career counselor—including working in the agricultural sector in Brazil—and he is targeting individual companies that dovetail with his interests and geographical preference.

“The school is small, but [it] helps us leverage our specialized degrees with equally specialized employers,” he says.

Bentley University, located in Waltham, Mass., has offered specialized business-related degrees for nearly 30 years—and it has plenty of traction with employers. Nearly 100% of its 2009 graduates with degrees in human factors in information design–a combination of technology, product design and human behavior studies–information technology, financial planning, accounting and taxation had jobs three months after graduation. Nearly 90% of its marketing analytics graduates had jobs.

Cass Business School in the U.K. offers 18 master’s programs, dubbed MSc degrees, in subjects such as investment management and management. The curriculums are similar to the M.B.A., but are geared toward students with less work experience says Susan Roth, director of Cass’s MSc programs.

“These programs are a deep dive into subject areas,” Ms. Roth says. “You won’t get marketing or strategy, but you may get all finance, all the time.”

Specialized Jobs

When it comes to finding a job post-graduation, these specialized business degrees can offer an advantage and a disadvantage all at once.

For starters, they aren’t as well-known as the M.B.A., so general management jobs will be harder to get. But for specialized jobs, like business-specific analyst positions, recruiters will often eschew two-year students for specialty graduates.

Many of the MSc graduates at Cass meet with some of the same recruiters as M.B.A. students do, but recruiters don’t plumb the MSc class for the same general positions. Instead, they look to the specialized students for international banking, investment management and financial mathematics positions.

“The MSc students have specific knowledge—it’s like knowing how investment management is done versus just understanding how business is done,” she says.

Niyati Gupta, a student in Bentley’s human factors in information design program, says the specialized degree has a strong business core that is well-received with potential employers.

“What I bring to the table is expertise in researching and evaluating consumer behavior,” she says. “I can make recommendations for Web sites, medical devices, financial software.”

Ms. Gupta has received a job offer from a technology consultancy firm and expects more before year’s end.

Paul Sorbera, president of New York finance recruiting firm Alliance Consulting, has seen the number of candidates with alternative degrees, particularly in finance, increasing. Mr. Sorbera, who recently sought a risk manager for a hedge fund, said the hiring firm preferred candidates with specialized degrees.

“The M.B.A. is preferred, generally speaking, but there are other factors that are important,” he says. “A degree with a heavy quantitative focus may edge out an M.B.A. for a trading position.”

To be sure, M.B.A. students still get the lion’s share of the economic benefits of an advanced degree. According to the Graduate Management Admission Council, students with a full-time M.B.A. reported a 73% increase in salary post-graduation. Students with a master’s in a business-related subjectreported a 26% increase.

Mr. Torchiana, the MIT student, admits that he isn’t sure what sort of paycheck his degree will reap. “I certainly hope this will translate to a good salary,” he says. “But for the skills I want to propel my career—this wins over the other options.”

Write to Diana Middleton at diana.middleton@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12