Washington, DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee takes to the Washington Post Op-Ed page today to “set the record straight with students, parents and, especially, teachers” — the poor performance of the city’s schools, she says, is not the fault of teachers.
I often speak of our district’s performance data with sadness and outrage. The situation for our city’s children is dire. Yet while I acknowledge the seriousness of the work we face, I want to be clear about something: I do not blame teachers for the low achievement levels. I have talked with too many teachers to believe this is their fault. I have watched them pour their energy into engaging every student. I know they are working furiously in a system that for many years has not appreciated them — sometimes not even paying them on time or providing textbooks. Those who categorically blame teachers for the failures of our system are simply wrong.
What follows is a lengthy discussion of the proposed teachers contract. Eduwonk downplays Rhee’s shiny gold star for teachers saying “I suspect this will be seen as the ”new Rhee” but this is basically what she’s been saying for a while.” Personally the op-ed reads to me like a standard PR tactic to rally public support for the contract. Countering the union line that Rhee favors a “scorched earth” brand of reform, including teacher evaluation, seems almost secondary here.
As for teachers the chancellor will almost certainly find that regardless of what she has meant these many months, her ready, fire, aim rhetorical style has certainly created the perception that she holds teachers in less than high regard. And it may take more than a single op-ed to change that.
Are conflict and confrontation necessary ingredients in a school turnaround? Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher files a provocative column about a Maryland school that is succeeding without the kind of bare knuckle brawls that are drawing national media attention to Michelle Rhee and the nearby Washington, DC school system.
Fisher goes to Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring where scores were so low eight years ago that a state takeover loomed. Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast and Principal Jody Leleck negotiated with the teachers union to add extra hours to the work week for extra pay. “Teachers would offer no more excuses about poor kids from dysfunctional families; expectations would soar. About a third of the faculty left; Leleck hired 27 veteran teachers that first summer” he reports.
Rhee’s faceoff with the Washington Teachers’ Union creates a dynamic different from the cooperation between Weast and Montgomery County Education Association President Bonnie Cullison. She said she hears Rhee telling teachers, ” ‘You’re not doing the job,’ as opposed to ‘Let’s work together.’ You cannot make it happen in a district where you set up conflict”…Weast won’t criticize his D.C. counterpart, but he will say that narrowing the achievement gap is about expecting all children to work hard and love learning. “You can do it anyplace if you treat people like you want to be treated,” he says.
Today, 81 percent meet reading proficiency standards this year, up from 47 percent in 2003. “Broad Acres did this without Rhee’s reform tactics,” Fisher points out. ”No young recruits from Teach for America, no cash for students who come to class, no linkage of teacher pay to test scores.” And what’s happening inside the classrooms?
Too often, schools desperate to boost test scores become grim factories in which children are force-fed rote skills. But at Broad Acres, teachers coach each other to keep kids engaged in rich material for its own sake. In Andrea Sutton’s fifth-grade class, 16 kids sit on the floor, jumping up to explain to one another the roots of the American colonists’ grievances with the British. The teacher’s voice never rises above a stage whisper as she plies the class with questions that would fit nicely in a high school course. With all the pressure from No Child Left Behind, it’s so easy to cut out history and science,” Bayewitz says. “But these kids are going to need those complex skills in high school and college. And these kids are going to college.”
Claus von Zastrow at Public School Insights observes that Fisher’s piece reminds us “that school improvement does not necessarily require a death-match between high-profile ‘reformers’ and the education ‘establishment.’” Fisher is promising a follow-up column Sunday on ”a D.C. school that matches Broad Acre’s population, put presumably not its methods. Stay tuned.
Washington, DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee have drafted a plan to dramatically expand their effort to remove ineffective teachers from DC schools by seeking federal legislation declaring the school system in a state of emergency–a move that would eliminate the need to bargain with the Washington Teachers’ Union, reports the Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the plan under the Freedom of Information Act
If adopted, the measures would essentially allow the District to begin building a new school system. Such an effort would be similar to one underway in New Orleans, where a state takeover after Hurricane Katrina placed most of the city’s 78 public schools in a special Recovery School District. About half of the district’s schools are charters, and it has no union contract.
The Post’s report notes the plan was drawn up in a statement for a news conference in September where “Rhee and Fenty were scheduled to present a series of steps they could take under existing regulations to rid the system of teachers deemed ineffective.” The news conference was cancelled and the statement never made public. But that doesn’t appear to mean Rhee and Fenty are having second thoughts. “The Mayor and the Chancellor will continue to keep these and all ideas on the table,” a spokesperson tells the paper.
“The moves could force a major confrontation with the union and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, which has denounced the changes in New Orleans,” the Post notes.
My hunch is that Rhee and Fenty are using the threat of a state of emergency to force the teacher’s union to let its members vote on their plan to give teachers hefty salary hikes in exchange for waiving tenure.
Update: Eduflack is also on this and takes the long view. “At the end of the day, once Rhee has gotten all of the change and reform she’s seeking, she actually has to work with those left standing to deliver on her promise to boost student achievement and close the achievement gap,” he writes. “That means parents and families. It means teachers and principals. And it certainly means the Washington Teachers Union. Rhee’s ultimate success will be determined by the effectiveness of the teachers and the union that supports them. And there is no working around that, no matter how hard you try.”
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