Braveheart In High Heels? More On DC's Rhee And Imported Teachers
Braveheart In High Heels? More On DC's Rhee And Imported Teachers
Date: Friday, November 13, 2009 2:42 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 2077 -- 10/13/2009 >>>>>
blog version:
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2009/11/12/dc-school-teachers-chopped-by-braveheart-in-high-heels/
Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, is
portrayed in a recent Education Next puff piece as a modern day Braveheart
(see painting of her, link below) in high heels because of the way she
ruthlessly chops the jobs of union teachers.
Most of her layoff victims are older teachers. Suspiciously, the race or
ethnicity of the teachers who lost their jobs is not yet available. The rumor
mill has it that most of the teachers who were cut were black women over the
age of 40. The racial mix can be seen in these two youtube videos of a protest
march (youtube video links below). In addition to lots of people with gray
hair there are a few black and white males, perhaps a Hispanic or two -- BUT
NO ASIANS!
DC schools are following the same pattern I have observed in many states,
Louisiana being the most recent example:
1. First, a shortage of teachers is declared. Rhee was hired by DCPS to
solve the shortage. But many feel that chancellor Michele Rhee caused the
shortage by firing teachers because it served the purpose of her former
organization (Teach for America) which was supposedly going to solve a
shortage problem that didn t exist.
2. Then layoffs of a few hundred older teachers takes place. It s a shell
game designed to replace older teachers with younger teachers and American
teachers with younger H-1Bs.
3. Foreign teachers on H-1B visas are hired once most of the Americans have
been let go. It s a sure bet that Rhee, who was born in the USA to South
Korean immigrants, will be hiring mostly Asians. Labor Condition Applications
can be viewed by going to the DOL FLC data center. It reveals that Rhee wants
H-1Bs for jobs that could obviously be filled by Americans.
Here are some examples:
District of Columbia Public Schools
SECONDARY TEACHER $73,844/yr
ESL TEACHER $44,988/yr
ESL TEACHER $44988
BILINGUAL TEACHER $71875
Mathematic Teacher $59330
Secondary School Teacher $56810
SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST $76401
TEACHER $54322
Elementary Education Teacher $58370
Rhee claims that the Oct. 2 layoffs of 266 teachers and educators were needed
to help pay for $43.9 million budget deficit for 2010. Union leaders have
denounced the action as an illegal mass firing designed to purge older
educators. The two sides have taken the dispute to the Superior Court of the
District of Columbia (WASHINGTON TEACHERS UNION, LOCAL # 6, AMERICAN
FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO).
The Washington Examiner just published a column (link below) by Barbara
Hollingsworth that made the connection between two seemingly unconnected
events -- the replacing of American teachers with Filipinos in Louisiana with
the recent firings of teachers in Washington DC. It s a great op-ed but this
paragraph could be confusing:
According to the federal government s Foreign Labor Certification
Data Center, D.C. Public Schools submitted 46 labor condition
applications in 2007 and 2008, giving Rhee authority to import
hundreds of foreign teachers on H1B visas without having to make
any attempt to find eligible Americans.
While it s correct that Washington DC has filed LCAs for foreign teachers, the
total number of applications is probably the tip of the iceberg. That s
because, like most school districts, the DC public schools are probably using
bodyshops for most of their hiring of foreign workers. A similar situation
occurred in Louisiana, where a couple dozen LCAs were filed to hire H-1Bs
directly, while at the same time a bodyshop called Universal Placement
International was used to hire the bulk of the Filipino teachers.
Be sure to read Patrick Cleburne s excellent vdare blog concerning the
Washington Examiner article.
H-1B visas aren t the only way to import foreign teachers, so counting LCAs
can lead to undercounts. The J-1 visa with an Optional Practical Training
(OPT) authorization can also be used to hire them as long as they are
considered "student teachers". J-1/OPT work authorizations don t require an
LCA, so we have no way to know how many of them DC schools are using -- and
the number of OPTs allowed into the U.S. is unlimited.
So where are the teacher unions? The answer is probably two-fold: the liberal
apparatchiks who run the unions are reluctant to touch the H-1B (or any other
immigration) issue. And the odds of winning may be drastically reduced if H-1B
is mentioned. So far, the only way lawsuits have been won when H-1B was a
factor was to drop the immigration issue in favor of age discrimination (AIG).
LINKS:
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/
FLC LCA database
http://www.teachforamerica.org/TeachForAmerica
Ralley For Respect - DC Public Schools
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLv12wFEZhY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLD_jln8Yb8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgzuKhKZH1U
http://www.washingtonteachersunion.org/custom_images/file/FINAL%20WTU%20TRO%20motion.pdf
WASHINGTON TEACHERS UNION, LOCAL # 6, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-
CIO
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2009/11/10/to-improve-dcs-schools-fire-black-teachers-hire-h-1b-asians/
To Improve D.C. s schools - Fire Black Teachers, hire H-1B Asians
http://www.zazona.com/Library/News/PCWeek/AIG/PCW19Nov1998.htm
H1-B safety net fails IT workers
ARTICLES COPIED BELOW:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Importing-teachers-in-the-District-of-Columbia-8508771.html
Barbara Hollingsworth: Importing teachers in the District of Columbia
http://educationnext.org/d-c-s-braveheart/
D.C. s Braveheart, picture included
http://urbanschoolnightmare.blogspot.com/2009/10/people-dont-actually-get-race-cards.html
People don't actually get "race cards," right?
http://rheeform.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/dc-parents-concerned-about-alleged-teacher-shortage/
D.C. Parents Concerned About Alleged Teacher Shortage
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Importing-teachers-in-the-District-of-Columbia-8508771.html
Barbara Hollingsworth: Importing teachers in the District of Columbia
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist
November 10, 2009
District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is in hot water for
firing 266 teachers and administrators Oct. 2, just weeks into the new school
year and only a few months after inexplicably hiring hundreds of new teachers.
But there may have been a method to her apparent madness.
According to the federal government's Foreign Labor Certification Data Center,
D.C. Public Schools submitted 46 labor condition applications in
2007 and 2008, giving Rhee authority to import hundreds of foreign teachers on
H1B visas without having to make any attempt to find eligible Americans.
With the jobless rate now topping 10 percent, tens of thousands of American
engineers, scientists and other professionals would be more than happy to try
a second career teaching. But like many of their blue-collar brethren who
watched their jobs disappear overseas, the deck is now stacked against
experienced domestic white-collar workers as well.
For years, we've been told that the thousands of immigrants admitted to the
United States on such visas each year were needed for jobs Americans couldn't
- or wouldn't - do, such as computer programming or picking lettuce. We're now
supposed to believe that teaching K-12 falls into that category.
Of course, it's no coincidence that young immigrants are willing to work for
far less than their American counterparts; the wage scale for hundreds of
novice teachers in D.C., average age 32, is near the bottom of the District's
unionized pay schedule. But when USA Today reports that there are not enough
jobs for all the students graduating from U.S. colleges and universities, why
are employers - including school districts - still allowed to import
foreigners?
An eerily similar scenario unfolded at the Recovery School District in Baton
Rouge, La., after Hurricane Katrina. Just two years after RSD Superintendent
Paul Vallas (formerly head of Chicago's public schools) complained about a
serious shortage of teachers, he announced major job cuts - and mainly older
Americans were let go.
Guess how they were replaced. Lourdes Navarro, who ran a teacher "bodyshop,"
is accused of illegally withholding up to 20 percent of the pay of the young,
inexperienced Filipino teachers she brought into the United States to staff
RSD's low-performing schools.
Rob Sanchez, author of the Job Destruction Newsletter, says that teachers
union officials have been reluctant "to challenge the liberal consensus that
immigration is a good thing. As long as the imported teachers join the union,
they are willing to sacrifice their American members."
Since visa holders can easily be coerced into joining the union and forced to
do whatever the union bosses demand, union officials didn't bother to protect
the 20,000 or so American educators who lost their teaching jobs to foreign
competitors -- many of whom they were forced to train.
Teachers unions have enjoyed a stranglehold on urban school districts for
decades, but have failed to deliver a quality education to children who need
it most. Importing more union members from overseas will not solve this
fundamental problem.
What urban school districts really need are right-to-work laws that empower
school administrators to hire professional Americans with college degrees in
needed core subject areas who are willing to give teaching a chance -- with a
waiver to pay them entry-level salaries.
Their collective years of experience in the real world, extensive knowledge of
American culture and history, and wisdom acquired over decades in the work
force are an invaluable resource that should not be squandered.
And please, don't tell me you can't find any.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner's local opinion editor.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://educationnext.org/d-c-s-braveheart/
D.C. s Braveheart
Can Michelle Rhee wrest control of the D.C. school system from decades of
failure?
Michelle Rhee s senior staff meeting has all the ceremony of lunchtime in the
teachers lounge. News is exchanged. Ideas tumble around. Rhee sits at the
head of the table but doesn t run the meeting or even take the conversational
lead. Staffers talk over her as often as she talks over them. If consensus is
the goal, the ball is far upfield.
But then, Rhee wades in with, "Here s what I think," or "What I don t want,"
or "This is crap," or "I want someone to figure this out," or "I m gonna tell
you what we re gonna do; we can talk about how we re gonna do it." And that is
that. Next order of business, please.
Rhee s style -- as steely as the sound of her peekaboo high heels on a
linoleum-tile hallway -- has angered much of Washington, D.C., and baffled the
rest since she arrived as schools chancellor in June 2007. But it is also
helping her gain control of a school system that has defied management for
decades: that hasn t kept records, patched windows, met budgets, delivered
books, returned phone calls, followed court orders, checked teachers
credentials, or, for years on end, opened school on schedule in the fall.
When I asked Rhee to name her most significant achievement in her two years in
Washington, her answer suggested that any progress is, so far, only
incremental. "We have begun -- begun -- begun -- to establish a culture of
accountability," she said, with a long pause between each "begun." A teacher
had recently e-mailed her about a personnel matter, she went on, and was
thrilled that Rhee had replied. "It s sorta sad because the expectations are
so low. The fact that you just get a response is celebrated," she said.
Rhee tells parents and taxpayers that they should judge her on "student
performance." Are test scores rising? Are students graduating? So far, there s
some evidence that they are, although some teachers and parents say that even
that evidence is suspect.
But not much learning gets done without institutional support, and for decades
in Washington, not much has. When I asked Kenneth Wong, director of Brown
University s urban-education policy program, on what measures Rhee should be
judged, he answered with a long list. It included how well the schools work
with other city agencies (to get sidewalks plowed in the winter, for example),
how many and which colleges new teachers come from (the wider the net, the
better), how quickly managers return phone calls, and whether teacher
absenteeism is down. Only at the end of the list did he get to student
performance. "The other stuff are the necessary conditions to get to student
achievement," he said.
That s not particularly glamorous for a national media darling who has been
celebrated on magazine covers, on Capitol Hill, and by the president, but it
is a start.
ednext_20101_28_img1
Rhee tells parents and taxpayers to judge her on "student performance."
Rock Bottom?
It s not news that Washington s schools are among the most woeful in the
country, but even a cynic has to gasp. The mismanagement is legendary:
consider the 5 million personnel records Rhee says she found piled on a
storeroom floor when she took office. Marc Borbely, a former teacher, filed a
Freedom of Information Act request in 2004 to find out how many work orders
were outstanding at the central maintenance office. The answer:
25,000.
Teachers complained of out-of-control students: The city s Ballou High School
was closed for a 35-day cleanup after students stole chemistry-lab
thermometers and scattered the mercury around hallways. In most school
districts, mercury thermometers had been replaced years earlier.
The system churned through six superintendents in 10 years, usually after
brutal head butting with the city council and community activists. That made
Washington the La Brea Tar Pits of strategic plans: Each one sank into
oblivion as its drafters moved on. The school funding formula changed four
times under as many superintendents.
Academic measures were miserable. The 2007 National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP), administered before Rhee s arrival but announced five months
after her term began, found that 61 percent of the city s 4th graders had
below-basic reading skills, which means they could barely read. Just 8 percent
of its 8th graders were proficient -- that is, at grade level -- or above in
math.
Scores on the district s own tests for the 2006 07 school year, the last
before Rhee s arrival, were higher but still dismal. Just 38 percent of
elementary-school children were at grade level or above in reading, and
27 percent of high schoolers were at grade level or above in math.
Districtwide, fewer than 30 percent of African American students were reading
at grade level, compared to 87 percent of whites, a 57-percentage-point gap.
Rhee arrived to find that all 10 of Washington s comprehensive high schools
had failed to meet federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) adequate yearly
progress goals and that 48 of its 67 elementary schools were in some level of
NCLB-mandated corrective action. The high-school dropout rate hovered at about
50 percent, and just 9 percent of entering 9th graders ever graduated from
college.
On the SAT -- a test presumably only the most ambitious students take -- 43
percent of district students who took the exam in 2009 scored 390 or below on
the 800-point math test, which awards 200 points just for showing up.
African Americans citywide averaged 773 on the 1600-point reading and math
tests combined, or about 400 points less than they d need for admission to the
nearby University of Maryland.
Community pressure to "do something" about the schools performance had never
materialized, though. Political leaders had seen no upside to taking on a
school system that employs thousands of African Americans in a city where
African Americans account for a majority of the population, the voter rolls,
the city council, local-government posts, and union leadership. And in the
weary way that people get used to dysfunction, no one else complained. Rhee
says she marvels that her decision to shut down 23 failing schools in her
first year drew howls of protest, while keeping failing schools open doesn t
excite anyone.
The Money Question
Washington s business community has fussed for years about the schools because
they turn out so few employable graduates and at a huge cost. The Chamber of
Commerce says that only one in four jobs in the city is held by a D.C.
resident now, and that 44 percent of Washingtonians don t have even a high-
school diploma.
Education expenditures can swing wildly depending on how students are counted
and what spending is included in the calculation. But the U.S.
Census Bureau, in a survey of education finances released in July 2009, says
Washington spent $14,324 per public-school student in the 2006 07 school year,
or about $6,300 more than the national average. The only states to spend more
were New Jersey and New York, which have vastly larger corporate tax bases and
far more upper-income taxpayers. The U.S.
Department of Education reports that the federal government pays 12 percent of
Washington s education budget, a percentage largely determined by the city s
high poverty rate. That puts it well below Louisiana and Mississippi, but well
above the 9 percent national average for federal support.
A simpler way of looking at it: Washington has budgeted $760 million for its
traditional public schools in the fiscal year beginning October 2010.
Using Rhee s enrollment estimate of 45,000, that works out to $16,800 per
student. Using the city council s estimate of 41,500 students, it s $18,300.
ednext_20101_28_fig1As costs have risen, enrollment has plummeted (see Figure
1). Affluent or activist parents enroll their youngsters in three or four
largely autonomous elementary schools in white neighborhoods, or move to
private schools, charter schools, or the suburbs. Between 2004 and 2008,
Washington s traditional public schools lost 13,500 students, while its
charters gained 10,200.
What may be Washington s last hope of stopping the slide from dismal to
disastrous rests on the reform course chosen by its mayor, Adrian Fenty, an
African American Democrat who has staked his political career and considerable
ego on his pledge to improve the schools. After his January
2007 inauguration, Fenty courted and then summoned Rhee to Washington through
her mentor, New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, even though Rhee says she
initially "was not blown away" by the mayor or the job. Fenty quickly pushed
through legislation that abolished the disputatious school board, won Rhee the
authority to fire hundreds of central-office workers, and "has not flinched
once through any of this, never," she says.
Rhee s Roots
Rhee speaks often about her Teach For America (TFA) tour in a Baltimore
classroom between 1992 and 1995: how she struggled the first year until
pairing with another teacher to team-teach a class of 2nd and 3rd graders.
But Rhee s experience a few years later with The New Teacher Project
(TNTP) is a better window on how she s doing her job in Washington.
Political leaders have seen no upside to taking on a school system that
employs thousands of African Americans in a city where they are a majority.
Political leaders have seen no upside to taking on a school system that
employs thousands of African Americans in a city where they are a majority.
As Ariela Rozman, TNTP s current CEO, tells it, superintendents had begun
asking TFA founder Wendy Kopp for help attracting and training teachers like
those Kopp was sending them. Rhee was finishing a graduate program at Harvard
and had never had a management role at TFA, but Kopp tapped Rhee to head the
teacher project as a spin-off in 1997. "The idea came from TFA clients, but
Michelle brought the vision," Rozman told me.
Rhee was a no-nonsense manager. She was so determined to fund The New Teacher
Project out of the revenues it was generating through its training contracts
with schools that she sorely underpaid her staff. For years, she resisted
pressure even from Kopp to take foundation funding, said Kati Haycock, who is
chair of the project s board and president of the Education Trust. Even so,
the project attracted a talented staff with high morale, little turnover, and
fierce loyalty to Rhee. Richard Nyankori, who moved with Rhee to Washington
from TNTP and now heads special education for the district, says Rhee teases
him that he would throw himself under a bus for her, "and she s right. I
probably would."
Rhee s greatest success at The New Teacher Project may be how she left it.
Start-ups frequently struggle when a strong-willed manager leaves:
Staffers move on, backers temporize, and contracts slow as the new leader
finds her footing. But Ariela Rozman says The New Teacher Project has grown
since Rhee left, from 140 people and a $20 million budget to this year s staff
of 210 and budget of $32 million.
Kaya Henderson, who also moved to Washington with Rhee as her deputy
chancellor, says The New Teacher Project s management style moved with them.
Policy differences are hashed out at the weekly senior staff meetings and at
biweekly meetings of a strategy committee, which considers major initiatives.
"We re not going to leave the meeting until one group has convinced the other
group. We all have to be good with the decision,"
Henderson told me. Still, "part of being a good leader is knowing when to say
this is a good thing to do, " a prerogative Rhee doesn t shy from, Henderson
added.
Rhee has pledged to stay to the end of a second Fenty term -- January 2015, if
he is reelected -- and Henderson says "the rest of us are probably in it for
the same."
Bumpy Ride
Six weeks into the job, Rhee called her staff together with the message that
"We are not here to do the bureaucracy better," Nyankori says. Rhee told them
that "that s what all of our friends are doing in reform all around the
country: They re trying to make the trains stay on the track and go faster. We
are here to derail those trains."
If upheaval was the goal, Rhee has succeeded. Teachers say she has set black
teachers against whites and young teachers against veterans with her
controversial 2008 contract offer. Congressional Democrats worry that she has
put them between a policy goal, school improvement, and their teachers-union
allies. Education reformers are nervous that her outta-my-way approach will
wound their movement if it backfires.
Almost everyone has a Rhee story. As when the chancellor closed those 23
schools and scheduled a community meeting at each one but on the same evening,
so she couldn t attend most of them. Or suggested the elected city council was
irrelevant and resisted its invitations to testify. Or arrived for a meeting
with the Chamber of Commerce board with -- surprise!
-- a television news crew in tow. Chamber president Barbara Lang says Rhee
never thanked the chamber for testifying in favor of Mayor Fenty s takeover of
the schools, legislation that will be pivotal to Rhee s success.
Businesses, foundations, and civic groups that funded and ran after-school and
enrichment programs were similarly dismissed. A Chamber of Commerce project
that taught jobs skills to high schoolers was dropped. The World Bank had
outfitted and staffed college-prep resource centers at some of the city s
toughest high schools. When Rhee put the outside groups on hold, the bank
diverted its $1 million a year in youth programming to local nonprofits.
Parent groups that used to be solicited -- even begged -- to help make
decisions about dress codes, building budgets and staffing, renovations and
construction, and principal selection now find themselves shut out.
"Parents feel pushed aside," says Cathy Reilly, who started a parents group
to exchange news about their kids high schools.
Rhee urges parents to e-mail her with questions, and she answers late into the
night (she says she answered 99,000 e-mails her first year). But at the public
meetings I attended last spring, Rhee sat alone at the front of the room,
talked over parents, moved about with an ever-present photographer, and left
immediately afterward in a chauffeured Chevy Tahoe.
Rhee and her loyalists say with jaw-dropping insouciance that none of that
matters because, as she told me, she s "doing what s right for kids."
"The conventional rules and the people who play by them don t get much
change," says the Education Trust s Haycock. "Hordes" of people come to their
table when she and Rhee dine out together, Haycock adds, and "I have never
heard anyone say anything except keep on keeping on. "
Rhee and her senior staff believe that the ed-reform stars are aligned as they
never have been in Washington, and that they have the brains, focus, and work
ethic to leap at the opportunity. In all of that, they re probably right.
The Front Line
Rhee and her top aides don t talk much about curriculum change; their focus is
people. "Strong principals, strong teachers -- that s what turns schools
around," says Nyankori. "That s why we feel so strongly about this union
contract."
The Washington Teachers Union and its parent American Federation of Teachers
(AFT) feel just as strongly, of course, about a contract that undercuts such
union cornerstones as tenure, seniority, and worker solidarity, and that would
set a national precedent. Rhee s proposal to pay six-figure salaries to
teachers who agreed to link their paychecks to classroom outcomes: that s the
"green" option. Teachers who choose the "red" option (green, go; red, stop --
get it?) would collect far-smaller pay increases, but would retain job
security.
Rhee didn t say how she would pay for the salary boosts, although she implied
that foundations would pick up much of the tab. Meanwhile, foundation
endowments have plunged and local tax revenues have shrunk since Rhee offered
the plan in summer 2008.
AFT president Randi Weingarten, who has largely taken over the negotiations
from the local union, insists that the teachers and Rhee "share the same
goals, the issue in contract negotiations is how to get there." She proposes
rewarding teachers equally with school-based bonuses, a nonstarter with Rhee,
who is zealous about getting rid of those she calls "bad teachers." Stakes are
so high for both sides that they appear to be working on a compromise that
gives Rhee some, but by no means all of the staffing and firing flexibility
she is after.
Still, Rhee has some tools that other school heads don t have. Congress gave
her the power to impose a teacher-evaluation system without negotiating its
terms with the union. The new evaluations, set to begin in the 2009 10 school
year, will include student test scores and five classroom observations of each
teacher each year. Henderson, the deputy chancellor, has let the union know
that the district will likely begin observing teachers by video, too.
And then there are some test-score gains, which Rhee is counting on to build
public support for her plans and ease the doubts about her style. Two years
after Rhee s arrival, scores on district-administered tests are up:
49 percent of elementary school students were reading at grade level, a 21-
percentage-point jump in two years, according to test results released in July
2009. Among secondary-school students, 40 percent were at grade level in math,
up 13 points. Rising proficiency levels should win Rhee new clout in the
city s political circles, new respect among parents and civil groups, and more
leverage to turn the troubled system around.
Rising proficiency levels should win Rhee new clout in the city s political
circles.
Rising proficiency levels should win Rhee new clout in the city s political
circles.
Taking Stock
Rhee s other successes aren t exactly the stuff of headlines. Erich Martel,
who has taught social studies in the D.C. schools for 40 years, says teachers
are doing more lesson prep and trying to make their classes more interesting.
"There are teachers who need someone looking over their shoulder and they re
getting it," he says.
Long-neglected school buildings are being renovated or rebuilt, which could
make them more competitive with some better-housed charters. Spending on
professional development has quadrupled. There are art and music classes in
every school, the district says.
Rhee s most important achievement might be in the management fixes most people
can t see. High-school transcripts, which the schools used to hold on to and
sometimes alter to boost graduation rates, are being centralized and scrubbed
(the audit found that one-third of students weren t taking the classes they
need to graduate). Nyankori says he has lured back 155 of the district s 2,400
special-ed youngsters who are in private schools, at a yearly cost of $141
million, with more programs and better case management, and has set a target
return date for each of the others.
Quarterly diagnostic tests have been aligned with year-end assessments:
Unbelievably, the two were designed by different consultants, and didn t
predict or reflect the outcome of the other.
That isn t to say that Rhee is anywhere near achieving her often-stated goal
of making Washington the best urban district in the country. Even she
attributes much of the test-score gains in her two years to the district s
ability to pick what she calls "low-hanging fruit." Saturday test-prep classes
have helped borderline kids pass their year-end tests, even while thousands of
other children remain far behind because of weak basic skills. Accounting
changes helped boost results, too: Children who were absent on test day now
are counted as no-shows; before, they were counted among those with failing
scores.
The graduation rate -- as opposed to the drop-out rate, which is calculated
differently -- was up a few percentage points in 2009 to 70 percent, the
district says. But some teachers and parents attribute that to a new "credit
recovery" program that lets failing students retake courses after school.
Martel, the long-time social studies teacher, says credit-recovery classes ran
82 hours per quarter at his school compared to 125 hours for classes held
during the school day, and that teachers were told not to give homework.
Despite the celebrity surrounding Rhee and Fenty, the traditional public
schools are still bleeding students, which is perhaps the ultimate, market-
driven judgment. Washington s State Office of Education -- yes, this nonstate
has a state office -- says enrollment in the traditional schools dropped to
45,200 in the 2008 school year from 49,500 just the year before. Charters grew
to 25,700 from 22,000. Charter enrollment is even more impressive if you look
at the fine print: In 2008, charters enrolled
48 percent of public-school 6th graders, up from 36 percent a year earlier.
Michael Herreld, who is president of PNC Bank s Washington region and sits on
several local school-reform committees, worries about what he calls the
"disintegration" of the city s traditional public schools if Rhee can t stop
the enrollment decline. Any urgency to fix things would wane, and so would the
schools claim on public revenue. That would have practical consequences:
Washington doesn t have school buses, for example. If more schools are closed,
youngsters could be miles from the nearest kindergarten and its free breakfast
and lunch programs.
The only way to stop the attrition is to "grow good neighborhood schools,"
says Nyankori. Rhee illustrated the obstacles to that when a woman asked her
about her plans for math and science education during a meeting in the spring
of 2009 in the city s northwest quadrant, where most adults have at least one
degree and, often, two or three. Rhee said she had ordered more computers to
support math and science programs, but learned when they arrived that most
schools didn t have three-pronged electrical outlets for the computers three-
pronged plugs. "This is the level where we are subzero," she said, as the
audience stifled a collective eye roll.
High Stakes
Rhee seems irked that policymakers see Washington as the laboratory of the
education-reform agenda. "That is the dumbest thing I ve ever heard," she
said, at the same spring meeting at which she bemoaned the lack of proper
sockets. What matters is Washington s kids, not a national agenda, she
insisted.
In fact, both are at stake. Washington is a natural petri dish, whether Rhee
disdains the idea or not. It s small and deeply troubled, is a foundation
darling, has creative new leadership, and is pursuing the popular academic
ideas of the day. Its big charter sector almost begs researchers to compare
the two systems, and it sits in the spotlight of the U.S. Capitol.
I asked Rhee to name her biggest mistake in two years and she offered this:
She could have done a "better job of communicating with teachers" when she
presented her contract proposal and averted some of the antagonism that dogs
her relationship with them. Since then, she has met with teachers a few times
a week, she said, and finds the exchanges "incredibly heartening." There are
other tiny signs that Rhee may be trying to calm the waters she has roiled.
With contract talks going nowhere in the spring of 2009, she wrote a
Washington Post op-ed in which she insisted that "[t]hose who categorically
blame teachers for the failures of our system are simply wrong."
Around the same time, at a banquet at the Federal City Council, a premier
business and civic group, Rhee thanked a consulting group for undertaking, pro
bono, the school-records audit. "It was the first time I ve heard her thank
anyone for anything," said the head of a major nonprofit. Her staff now
concedes that a Time magazine cover of Rhee -- standing grim-faced in an empty
classroom, holding a broom -- was a mistake.
That may be about it. I asked The New Teacher Project s Ariela Rozman if Rhee
ever called to cry on her shoulder. "Michelle doesn t cry," Rozman said.
That s probably a good thing.
June Kronholz is a former foreign correspondent, bureau chief, and Washington-
based education reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://urbanschoolnightmare.blogspot.com/2009/10/people-dont-actually-get-race-cards.html
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
People don't actually get "race cards," right?
So here's the thing about this RIF: it sucks. I get that there isn't money to
pay people, but I think the whole thing went down in a way that can only be
described as "icky." First, it was supposed to happen on Wednesday. Then it
didn't. It finally went down on Friday, and I got the impression that my
administration didn't have a plan for it. There was zero communication between
admin and staff, which was disconcerting and unprofessional. The whole thing
is gross and I don't like it.
Apparently, I'm not alone. The (admittedly small, egomaniacal, and usually
bizarre -- myself included) DC teacher blogosphere has been blowing up with
allegations that race and age were motivators for the RIF -- specifically,
people are accusing the chancellor of using the RIF to get rid of African
American teachers over 40.
Many people on many blogs have made the comment that the people who were laid
off were "disproportionately" older Black teachers. Here's the thing:
we don't know if that's true, and we won't until someone does some pretty
complex statistical analysis on the numbers. Rather than wax philosophical on
the nature of race relations, I'm going to unleash my inner nerd (OK, it
wasn't on a very tight leash to begin with) and give a statistics lesson.
*adjusts glasses* Here we go.
In order to say that there is statistical evidence that Rhee's team (and her
principals) are racist, we need to know several things. In each school, what
are the demographics of the staffs in each competitive rating category? What
are the demographics of the people who were laid off? If we can then compare
those proportions, we can get some answers. (DORK ALERT) This is called a chi-
squared test for independence. Here's what I mean:
Imagine that I wanted to know whether or not race was a factor in the layoffs
for teachers. First, I'd need to know the proportion of teachers in each
ethnic sub-group. Then, I'd need to know the proportion that was laid off. In
general, we'd want the proportion laid off to be the same for each ethnic
group -- this would mean that race and layoffs were independent of each other.
Make sense? Well, it gets complicated.
For example, let's say we wanted to know whether or not race was a factor in
the layoffs of educational aides. In my school, 100% of the educational aids
are African American women. Therefore, 100% of the educational aides who were
laid off were African American women. The chi-squared test would show us that
the proportions are the same and there was no evidence of racism here (note
that I say "no evidence of racism", not "no racism" -- statistics can't prove
the absence of something).
Next, let's say that we want to look at teachers. Well, each teacher was rated
within his / her department. The principals had to decide whether or not they
could afford to lose an English teacher, for example, and if they could then
the lowest rated English teacher was let go. In order to see if race played a
part in that decision, we'd need to look at the racial makeup of the English
department. At my school, most English teachers are White.
One English teacher was laid off -- a middle-aged Black woman. While the
proportion of African Americans in the English department is only about 40%,
100% of the people in the English department who were laid off were African
American. This means racism, right? Not necessarily. When the sample size is
one, as it is here (only one English teacher laid off,
remember) then we can't really conclude anything. 100% of the English teachers
laid off would have been some race, after all.
If you're still reading, here's my point: it's too early and the statistics
are too complex for anyone on any blog to be accurately declaring that racism
was involved. Certainly, we're entitled to our opinions, but it's
irresponsible to make assertions -- especially using specific terms like
"disproportionate" -- when facts and evidence are as murky as they are here.
One thing is certain, though: this RIF blows, and it blows hard.
It is my opinion that DCPS is a pretty racist place, and that we live in a
generally racist society. One only has to look at the glaring inequality of
opportunity on one side of the river and the other, or on one side of the park
and the other, for evidence. But I don't think it's responsible to declare as
fact that Michell Rhee is racist because we notice a trend in some of the
people laid off. We need to give this issue proper investigation and analysis.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://rheeform.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/dc-parents-concerned-about-alleged-teacher-shortage/
D.C. Parents Concerned About Alleged Teacher Shortage September 30, 2008 7 1
Comment
ABC News writes:
After millions of dollars in renovations, some parents claim McKinley Tech
High School still suffers a critical shortage of teachers.
"We asked what s going on, why there s no teachers," said Monica Lowe.
"They made false promises."
Her son is a junior at McKinley. After weeks of school, his Algebra
II/Trigonometry class is on its second substitute teacher, she says.
"Parent-teacher conference is next Friday, October the third, Mr. Ford, and we
have yet to receive a teacher," Lowe told ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 reporter Sam
Ford Friday.
McKinley s not alone. ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 visited Thurgood Marshall Elementary
School last week and found classes with only substitute teachers. One
classroom with a permanent teacher had 46 students.
The teachers union blames schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
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