April 10, 2008
More Housecleaning at DCPS
It seems that the Post and the Times aren’t the only ones with early retirement plans in the works. Today at 3 p.m., Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee will announce new Teacher Transition Award Opportunities, meant to provide aging teachers with long service to the district opportunities to retire early with full benefits.
Officials from the Washington Teachers Union held a meeting last week to discuss the expected announcement. According to the Post, George Parker, President of the WTU, predicted that under the offers, the minimum retirement age would be reduced from 55 to about 53 and the minimum years of service would be lowered to 20 from 30, in addition to an incentive bonus for early-retirement. He also cautioned that hundreds of teachers might be expected to take up the offer.
Here’s why this is important: Rhee and Fenty often speak of shifting DCPS from a system focused on adults to one focused on students, and this plan seems to fall under that logic. Any reforms put in place will depend on buy-in from the teachers who will ultimately implement them and while Rhee has significant support in the District, there are those both in and out of the schools who are resistant to her ideas and critical of her approach. The Post story quotes an anonymous DCPS veteran teacher who plans to accept an early-retirement offer and who accuses Rhee of wanting to “buy us out.” She says that D.C. schools "are getting worse and worse every year…What's required of us gets more and more demanding." The teacher went on to say she would probably go teach in another district after leaving DCPS.
One can’t help but think that if older teachers who don’t want, or are not willing to, enforce the change in culture end up retiring, so much the better. DCPS certainly isn’t working under the present system, and hasn’t for some decades. As Rhee herself said at an event last Saturday, it requires a different sort of educator, with a different mindset to take on the challenges in the District’s schools. “If you believe these things are too difficult to overcome,” she continued, “you need to go teach in Fairfax.”
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I love the irony of the indignant teacher huffing that Rhee just wants to buy out the old teachers, and then acknowledging that he/she was taking the buyout.
From what I hear, the combined effects of the SOLs and No Child Left Behind make teaching in Virginia no picnic, either.
oh snap, take that, fairfax...you're getting our dregs!
Here's my problem with using this kind of buyout/early retirement deal as a management technique: it has no ability to discriminate between good teachers and bad teachers. There's no way to ensure that the teachers who take the deal are actually the "dead wood" who are doing a crappy job and just trudging towards retirement.
If they make the deal attractive enough to really gain significant savings, they're inevitably going to lose a fairly large cadre of teachers who are skilled and experienced, as well as familiar with the students and the local environment. You're also risking losing the teachers most likely to act as mentors to young, inexperienced colleagues. Bringing new blood into the system may have a revitalizing effect, but adding hundreds of new teachers all at once could cause serious disruptions and delays in implementing and achieving the higher performance standards Rhee is so focused on.
I hope they find ways to offer attractive incentives to good teachers who choose to stay ... it would suck to think you're being penalized for continuing with a difficult task when those who bail out are being rewarded for doing so.
Nate, I gotta disagree with you on that one.
The main thinking behind it has to be that--despite the reality that DC will lose some good, retirement age teachers--it will rid itself of far more bad ones.
Think of it like a bad, watered down vodka tonic. You pour out half of that drink, and you're going to lose some Vodka. But if you refill that half with straight vodka, then there is a far greater chance of you understanding monkeyerotica's posts by the end of the evening. And everybody wins.
ian - You're assuming that the DCPS "bartender" is going to refill your half-empty Stoli and tonic with more Stoli, and not some rotgut like Cossack Molotov Quick-e-Mart Brand Russkey-Style Vodka, or even urine. Better to just send the whole drink back, tip a good 20% to show there's no hard feelings, and switch to bourbon and branchwater or, if they have it, Suntory.
Slower, and more INTENSITY, Bob-san.
But monkey, isn't it our working assumption that Michelle and the Rhee-bots make a far better drink?
And before we go all Chopin/Belvedere on the vodka tonic comparison, no one is asking for a twist of lime here... just a drink that does what it's paid (for) to do.
You assume too much, master jedi. Turnover numbers are pretty high for new teachers. Clearing teacher deadwood and implementing accountability is great, but it doesn't address the turd in the punchbowl that nobody's talking about: central admin. Rhee can fire them at will, but what pool does she have to hire replacements from? An even bigger turd-poisoned punchbowl. So the new crop of teachers looks around and sees that it takes weeks or months or not at all to get basic supplies and support from downtown, so they bail in 18 months for the suburbs. They might make just a little more, but at least their school support system is marginally functioning. So yeah, by all means, clean house. But don't act suprised when the only brand of Mr. Clean they have left on the store shelf is NEW! IMPROVED! FART-SCENTED! And you still have to stare at that big, bulky, bald gay guy who's leering at you.