Big education news this afternoon: the District of Columbia has sent separation notices to 413 teachers this year, 309 of which will be terminated from their jobs at the city's public schools due to poor evaluation scores. more ›

Ever since Michelle Rhee left the District's public school system, there's been plenty of speculation as to where she would end up. (There were also countless job offers -- she only recently agreed to serve on incoming Florida Governor Rick Scott's transition team, though she won't be moving to the Sunshine State or taking any pay.) But today that speculation ends in a very flashy way: Rhee is launching Students First, a non-profit organization that seeks "to ensure great teachers, access to great schools, and effective use of public dollars. more ›

It was on Tuesday that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee casually dropped the bomb on D.C. Council members that she planned to pay for a significant portion of large teacher raises, a crucial component of her hard-won tentative agreement with the Washington Teachers' Union, at least in part with $34 million in surplus funds that no one knew existed. But on Thursday, D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi dropped a bomb of his own: he told Rhee that the surplus doesn't, in fact, exist. more ›

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has been basking in the limelight since she announced that an agreement on a teachers contract had finally been reached. At a hearing before the D.C. Council today, though, her celebratory mood was quickly dampened by revelations that might endanger the whole contract. more ›

For once, Washington Teachers' Union president's George Parker's robo-call to teachers assuring them that contract negations were nearly finished wasn't just talk. City Paper's Mike DeBonis first broke the news Tuesday evening that the union had at last reached a tentative contract agreement with D.C. Public Schools, ending more than two years of extremely contentious negotiations. DeBonis obtained draft internal documents detailing elements of the agreement, and they're filled with the juicy details. more ›

In an email sent Sunday evening, Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker congratulated union members on having the D.C. public schools closed on Monday. Making no mention of potential factors like, oh, a record snowstorm, a barely functioning Metro system, or the closing of federal offices, Parker suggested that shuttered schools count as a union victory. As he told members, "Your calls to the office of the Mayor and Chancellor expressing your disagreement and outrage has [sic] resulted in success!" more ›

DCPS is now home to 23 new teachers with certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, more than doubling their ranks since 2007. This is a big deal, and good news for the District, where, according to a NBPTS release, only 47 teachers have ever received the honor. more ›

Cue the “Hurricane Rhee” jokes. Here’s the latest being floated by Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee: ask the federal government to declare the D.C. public schools in a “state of emergency.” more ›

While other school districts like Fairfax County and states like Massachusetts are in the midst of slashing schools budgets and cutting funding for education initiatives, D.C. seems to have found ways to avoid such measures, at least for a while. As we mentioned in the Morning Roundup, yesterday Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee asked the Council to approve a relocation of $100 million from the approximately $750 million schools budget. According to a DCPS release, the money is to be distributed as follows: more ›

Some notable finger pointing over the past week: a list showing 90 unfilled teacher vacancies surfaced, prompting complaints of a teacher shortage caused by Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s firing 270 teachers this summer; the long-awaited schools modernization plan was criticized by the D.C. council as incomplete and lacking community input; and a Washington Teachers Union information session about the quagmired teachers’ contract negotiations descended into name-calling and shouting matches. Perhaps Post columnist Jay Mathews had the most grown-up solution: just fire them! more ›

To absolutely no one’s surprise, DCPS enrollment hasdropped 8.7 percent, according to a preliminary count by an independent auditor. While late registration will likely raise the final tally slightly, DCPS spokesperson Dena Iverson said that as of last week, 45,135 students were enrolled in the District's 120 schools, down from last year’s 49,422, continuing a trend in declining enrollment that has persisted since the 1960s. more ›

Earlier this month, we described a new report from a federal court monitor that placed heavy blame on the District for its inability to provide special education services for its nearly 11,000 special needs students. As Post columnist Colbert King put it somewhat dramatically at the time, “the courtroom drama I witnessed this week underscored a sad reality: The one true safeguard between the city's most vulnerable residents and acts of governmental injustice is the black-robed figure in the courthouse.” While we’d like to think that statement veers toward the hyperbolic, court involvement in city administration is nothing new, and neither is what came next – the city official responsible ducking out of the spotlight. more ›

In Denver a couple of weeks ago, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee provoked speculation with her comment that she had a “Plan B” ready on deck should the controversial teachers’ contract fail to pass. On Friday, Rhee revealed that Plan B. more ›

One of the largest financial sinkholes for the D.C. government is that the city pays for approximately one quarter of its 9,400 special education (SPED) students to attend private school, to the tune of more than $200 million. Why the expense? Because the city’s public and public charter schools have thus far proved incapable of addressing those students’ learning needs. It’s a situation that doesn’t seemed to have improved over the past two years, according to a dismal new report from a federal court monitor who was appointed in 2006 to assess the District’s ability to eliminate a backlog of more than 1,000 SPED cases that were delaying placement for SPED students. more ›

Speaking at an A-list (among education reformers at least) event in Denver on Sunday, Mayor Adrian Fenty let loose some choice words for the teachers’ unions that have been balking at D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee’s proposed contract, which centers on merit-based, rather than seniority-based, pay for teachers. When asked by News Hour reporter John Merrow about the union’s opposition, Fenty responded, “The American Federation of Teachers, which I don't think does anything for the people of the District of Columbia, is weighing in against it. And the only thing I can think of is that the heads of the union, they want to keep their jobs." more ›

School starts on Monday, and even though Washington Teachers Union president George Parker recently told a group of protesting teachers that a tentative agreement could be expected within a week, it doesn’t look like we’re any closer to a contract vote for the District’s teachers. The negotiations hinge on D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s proposal to offer salaries upwards of $100,000 to teachers in exchange for increased accountability measures. Today, D.C. Wire reported that a recent poll sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers, the WTU’s parent union, found that teachers want to continue bargaining instead of voting on the proposal, by a margin of 3 to 1 among the 400 teachers polled. The findings should be taken with a grain of salt, however, since this is the same poll that was accused of being a “push poll” or biased against the proposal, while being conducted. more ›

Volunteer Opportunities: With school starting in two weeks, we figure it’s a good time to highlight some of the ways to get involved and support local students. Most volunteer programs are actively recruiting for the fall, and there’s really something for everyone, from mentoring to coaching to sharing your inner-geek as an after-school technology teacher. A few opportunities are featured below, and feel free to make additional suggestions in the comments. more ›

While it's no secret that The American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the local Washington Teachers' Union, isn't thrilled about the merit pay proposal being negotiated between the WTU and DCPS, the AFT had thus far stayed on the sidelines of the controversy. Not so much anymore. more ›

August is a mixed blessing – summer school is over and the afternoons are long, but teachers and students alike are aware that the first day of school is only a few weeks away. August should be a time for relaxation and preparation, but tempers have been running high for such a normally lazy month. The Washington Teachers’ Union and D.C. public schools are still locked in a stalemate over contract negotiations, the Mayor’s office is playing tug-of-war with the D.C. Council over the schools budget, and the Post is editorializing about all of it. Maybe it’s the heat. more ›

This week marks the beginning of a series of meetings between teachers and officials from The Washington Teachers’ Union meant to clarify the much-discussed performance pay plan at the center of the ongoing teachers’ contract negotiations. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has said that initial coverage of the proposal included some incorrect details, and promised to speak with union members during a Q&A at each meeting, telling the Post she plans to offer, "some solace and evidence that we are not going to be making these decisions capriciously or placing them solely in the hands of school principals." more ›

A Post editorial today notes that the most effective action Mayor Adrian Fenty has taken since assuming control of the D.C. public schools a little less than a year ago was to bring schools chancellor Michelle Rhee on board, remarking, “Michelle A. Rhee has done more in months to reshape the system than her predecessors did in years.” However, the editorial also cautions that it will be some time before any true achievement growth takes effect, and that the administration’s issues with transparency and heavy spending should be addressed. In another editorial that ran last week, the Post also cautioned the D.C. Council from interfering too heavily in Rhee’s reform efforts, arguing that, “district boundaries, community whim and political machinations would come into play” if Council proposals “micro-managing” schools decisions were to pass. more ›

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. more ›

D.C. Public Schools and New York City Public Schools have a lot in common – both are large, expensive, chronically low-performing systems that have recently come into seasons of serious reform under mayoral control. Both are also currently wrapped up in brewing controversies over excessed teachers, and it’s not pretty in either town. more ›