Will it Be Rhee? Who Will Run Education Under Obama?
In case you missed it, TIME did an informative piece on Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of Education for Washington, D.C.’s, school district. She could be in line to take Margaret Spellings place as Secretary of Education under President Obama.
Rhee is controversial. She seems to have a singular focus on quality of instruction that translates into a personnel policy something like this: Good teachers should stay (and be paid more), bad teachers should go (and I don’t care where).
Rhee offerred D.C. teachers a pay raise that would almost double their salaries and take them to $130,000 a year if they would give up tenure for one year. The trade-off of higher pay for loss of tenure would have been voluntary, on a teacher-by-teacher basis. The teachers’ union voted against it. Rhee has found a way to fire 270 teachers anyway in her 18 months at the helm of DC schools. And 36 principals – including the elementary principal of the school her daughters attend. She’s closed 21 D.C. schools.
Did I mention that Rhee is also controversial because her personality can at times (perhaps most of the time) seems abrasive. She’s reportedly pleasant with students and in a hurry with adults.
Among the innovations in D.C. – the board of education was dissolved, leaving Rhee in charge without an elected board to guide policy (or insert politics). Some call that reform; to other’s it’s more akin to tyranny.
The dilemma in D.C. is classic, and well described in TIME:
She wants to make Washington teachers the highest paid in the country, and in exchange she wants to get rid of the weakest teachers. Where she and the teachers’ union disagree most is on her ability to measure the quality of teachers. Like about half the states, Washington is now tracking whether students’ test scores improve over time under a given teacher. Rhee wants to use that data to decide who gets paid more–and, in combination with classroom evaluation, who keeps the job. But many teachers do not trust her to do this fairly, and the union bristles at the idea of giving up tenure, the exceptional job security that teachers enjoy.
AFT President Randi Weingarten says that Rhee “believes in scorched earth.” He goes on: “I am not saying that D.C.’s school system doesn’t need a lot of help. But I have been part of a lot of reforms, and the one thing I have never seen work is a hierarchical, top-down model.”
One statement in TIME struck me: “The ability to improve test scores is clearly not the only sign of a good teacher. But it is a relatively objective measure in an industry with precious few.” And there lies one key. No Child Left Behind, as it’s currently configured, will eventually disregard improvement as a sign of anything important if teachers and schools don’t achieve complete master with every student. Unless the accountability provisions of NCLB are revised, schools (and, by extension, their teachers) will be punished for failing to meet this goal despite improved test scores.
Another TIME quote that stood out to me:
IN THE VIEW OF RHEE AND REFORMERS like her, the struggle to fix America’s failing school system comes down to a simple question: How do you get the best teachers and principals to work in the worst schools?
And it is a catch-22. A school is a bad school because it doesn’t have good teachers; good teachers won’t go to a bad school because it’s a bad school… That’s a Gordian know that will require a sharp sword.
Rhee has promised to make Washington the highest-performing urban school district in the nation. She may not be able to keep that promise, because she may get tapped for a cabinet position in the Obama Administration before she gets it done…
