Some Rhee-ly Tough Times For D.C. Schools

Parade Magazine yesterday featured an interview with Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee here, and among other things, we learned that, in her second year on the job, Rhee “closed 23 schools and fired 36 principals,” and apparently, one was her own children's principal at the Oyster-Adams Bilingual Elementary School.

Oh, and this WaPo story tells us that she fired about 98 employees in March, including anywhere from 40 to 55 in the school district’s information technology department (the numbers aren’t exactly firm because, as the story tells us, she decided not to provide a list of the fired employees to the D.C. council).

I am certainly not an expert on educational issues, nor am I familiar much with D.C. politics, but when I see someone come on board and give that many people the “ax,” it tends to get my attention.

And I would argue that the fact that Rhee only had two years of classroom experience (despite some sterling academic credentials) before she was put in charge of the D.C. schools is certainly an issue, and I believe that has led to episodes such as this, in which a pay-for-performance plan apparently didn’t achieve the desired results, in particular at Hart Middle School, where 6th, 7th and 8th grade students were to be paid up to $100 every two weeks for good grades.

As far as I’m concerned, no student should ever be paid for their best academic performance, ever. However, I think it’s utterly ridiculous that the NCAA, for example, doesn’t “share the wealth” with student athletes who generate their bounteous revenue (that’s a bit off-topic, though, I’ll admit).

And this Ezra Klein post includes feedback from a grad student studying to be a math teacher; the student tells us…

It seems like reformers keep wanting to jump in and start doing things, because education is so stagnant. Which I understand. But the place to start isn't merit pay, it is finding methods of assessing teachers that aren't totally fucking useless and irrelevant. I think if we had such assessment, people would find teachers much more amenable to merit pay and a lack of tenure.

(Oh yeah, there’s the “F” blast in the quote there – and Rhee wants to abolish tenure and target merit pay also; I realize I didn’t make that plain earlier).

And just for the record, the person responsible for hiring Rhee is NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein, who (according to this post) is being considered as Education Secretary for the incoming Obama Administration (which should definitely raise flags, as they say).

As is usually the case, I’m in agreement with Ezra Klein here. It sounds as if something needs to be done in D.C. and many other places in this country, but firing people indiscriminately isn’t the answer (and remember, the vast majority of teachers, whether they’re in a union or not, are truly unsung heroes and give more of their time and talent to the education of our kids than we will ever truly know; if we weren’t so fundamentally screwed up in this country about who should be compensated best for the importance of their work, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion – and I’m sure the obligatory umbrage about teacher salaries will begin momentarily).

Turning back to Rhee for a moment, I should note that she is a big proponent of NCLB (of course). She is apparently noncommittal on the issue of school vouchers, though, so she has that going in her favor anyway.

But given the indiscriminate havoc she has wrought in D.C. with what appears to be almost no oversight, I think it would be terrible to reward her (or anyone responsible for putting her in her present position) with more authority than that which she appears to have abused already.