The Manhattan Project
Morning Roundup: Second Helpings Edition
Compromise Uncertain on Same-Sex Marriage Law
Fire at 17th and L NW Forces Evacuations
Sculpture Garden Ice-Skating Rink Remains Closed
With a little over a month remaining in the school year, things aren’t slowing down for Michelle Rhee. Never mind that the D.C. Schools Chancellor is being named in what looks to be a time-consuming vanity lawsuit by Washington Teachers’ Union vice-president Nathan Saunders, or that City Council Chair Vincent Gray is messing with her budget. The woman has work to do.
As we mentioned this morning, Rhee has begun the process of notifying many DCPS principals that they will not be reappointed for the next academic year. Rhee’s spokesperson, Mafara Hobson, told DCist that while the Post reported that up to 30 principals will be dismissed, decisions are still being made. Although she couldn’t comment at this point on any specific criteria used to evaluate the administrators, it’s likely that over two dozen principals will be fired before the end of the month as part of Rhee’s compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) and her desire to create a high-performing culture within the District's schools.
Hobson said that principals who fill any vacant leadership positions will come from a combination of candidates found through DCPS’s nationwide principal search and from within the district. D.C. Wire also points out that certain contract clauses might allow some fired principals to fill different roles within the school system.
An Education Endorsement: As has been reported, last week Rhee mentioned that she supports the education plan of John McCain “far and away” over those of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. She’s a committed Democrat, but she’s also right on this one – although it took McCain until after he secured the nomination to start paying any attention to education, he has been the only candidate to speak strongly in support of reforming NCLB, which despite its execution flaws is a critical law, or to openly embrace accountability reforms like merit pay, which would link part of teachers’ compensation to their effectiveness. (Last summer, Obama started strong on merit pay, but later backed off under union pressure.) Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama are “pandering, quite frankly, to the teachers’ unions and other folks,” Rhee admonished, citing the Dem’s frequent NCLB-bashing applause lines.
Mathews Makes Sense: In a surprisingly thoughtful column yesterday, the Post’s Jay Mathews argued that those union officials and “schools advocates” protesting the placements of teachers at the 23 schools scheduled for closure are actually doing students a disservice.
Despite complaints that excessed teachers from the closing schools should be automatically transferred to the same schools as their former students, Rhee has worked to make sure that district principals will have the authority to choose which teachers to hire to fill any vacancies, contrasting with long-held policies demanding that principals hire teachers with the most seniority, even if more effective candidates are available.
Mathews writes, “This is, of course, another one of those issues about adults that gets in the way of addressing issues about children and getting them the best teachers available. It might be a good time to shed that old desire to make the grown-ups comfortable, and introduce our kids to the useful discomforts of challenging lessons and demanding teachers, and principals who have the power to put that formula in action.” We chimed in on this issue last week, essentially agreeing that there’s little point to expensive practices that put teacher job security above student achievement.
Schools Notes: The in-fighting Washington Teachers Union gets mediation from representatives of its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers ... Earth-friendly school buses are on their way to DCPS... Tomorrow, famed jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis will help kick off the Capitol Jazz Project, a new initiative to get more music instruction for DCPS students.
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I figure Mccain's education plan will really start to affect test scores sometime in his second term.
[ducks behind sewage trebuchet]
"Despite complaints that excessed teachers from the closing schools should be automatically transferred to the same schools as their former students, Rhee has worked to make sure that district principals will have the authority to choose which teachers to hire to fill any vacancies, contrasting with long-held policies demanding that principals hire teachers with the most seniority, even if more effective candidates are available."
Why is this even an issue for the parents of these students? I am assuming these closures would happen over the summer. So say a student passes the 4th grade (as a hypothetical example). They would then move on to 5th grade and get a new 5th grade teacher.
Why do parents want their students' 4th Grade teacher going to the same school as them if they aren't going to be in the 4th grade?
Am I missing a point to this?
"Never mind that ... City Council Chair Vincent Gray is messing with her budget."
It's a good thing he is though, because DCPS shouldn't be diverting money set aside for school modernization to fund arts and after-school programs. Fenty campaigned on his support for repairing crumbling roofs and broken school bathrooms so I was surprised to see him back away from this in his budget. Until he provides sufficient justification I think the council is doing the right thing.
i'm starting to fear that rhee is going to end up being janeyed before too long. i know that expecting the schools to change overnight is impossible, but it seems like she's getting a hell of a lot more pushback than there was during the first couple months of her chancellorship...
but i don't know anything about school administration, so this is really just me blowing hot air. maybe things will be fine?
The DCPS budget has funny things going on. Like how they transfer duties to other agencies, but keep the money allocated for those duties. Sorta nifty deal for DCPS, right?
Today Ms. Brown puts "school advocates" in quotes, like there's no way someone can disagree with Rhee and support public schools at the same time.
Um, by the way Ms. Brown -- no, Jay Mathews actually _didn't_ refer to school advocates at all in his column. He did say he disagreed with the "many kind and well-intentioned teachers and parents" who he thinks have different priorities. But I guess that would be too generous a description for a Rhee propagandist to use.
- Marc Borbely
http://DemocracyInEducation.net
hey borbely, if she's a rhee apologist, you're a knee-jerk opponent. yin and yang.
Marc - Good point about the connotations of the quotations around "school advocates," and I apologize if they caused misunderstanding. I used the phrase not to quote Mathews, but to address the diversity of the individuals who have raised concern about the teacher transfers, not all of whom are DCPS parents. Rhee's actions have received support on DCist because thus far we've largely agreed with them. However, we definitely welcome more debate over the direction of DCPS, and I hope you'll continue to comment.
Ha! Touché IMGoph!
For the record, here's some of what I think is great about Rhee: she's energetic, she responds to e-mails, she sends her children to DCPS schools, she clearly feels free to talk about problems at DCPS.
In terms of what's she actually done for DCPS, you're right, I haven't seen a lot of positive. In response to a community suggestion, she did launch a Good Neighbor Day in September, to get folks into the schools, which I thought was great.
But since then, she seems to have gone the opposite way: pushing the public out of the schools, literally and figuratively. Here's a DC Examiner editorial from Saturday, worth reading.
Rachael: thanks, and sorry I was so harsh. Just from reading your entries these last few months, I wasn't sure you'd done much (any?) talking to parents and teachers or other involved citizens who have a different outlook on what's going on. It's easy to dismiss Rhee's critics as anti-reform or pro-status-quo, but that's just silly. I'm glad you're open to listening.
DCPS has been in steady decline since Brown v. Board of Education. I'm inclined to think that it's going to take more than 18 months to turnaround a system that's been in the crapper for close to half a century.
Most folks seem to think "if she's pissing people off, she must be doing something right." It remains to be seen whether anything actually substantial gets accomplished, or whether she goes the way of every chancellor and superintendent DC's ever had: golden parachutes and on to the next school district.