Dear APS board: Go get Michelle Rhee

Interesting suggestion for APS – I’ll take a keener look at her record. Interesting that after 3 hours I am first. Where are your followers?

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Kyle ask that question on Get Schooled. You are hidden.

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If you really think that what the Atlanta Public Schools system needs is Michelle Rhee then you have not been paying close attention. I live in Washington, D.C, and have witnessed first-hand how crude and divisive she has been during her tenure. What is her skill set with regard to running an urban school district? How did Mayor Fenty happen upon her? Why were parents and school children alike so against her? Before you buy into the hype, do your diligence. You might just be surprised.

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Kyle, Please take my 5:38 comment from you previous blog out of moderation.

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Rhee will be participating in an “Education Nation” discussion which will be broadcast on Meet the Press this Sunday. Watch it !

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oh my god, linda just stop.

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It’s not possible to improve APS without firing ANY black teachers and principals, so “the community” is going to have to sign on for that, or the problem is insoluble.

The DC school system is 80% black, so probably 80% of the dead wood is black.

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ATL, please take a deeper look at the DC school system before you buy into hiring M. Rhee. She will select and enhance a few high-visibility schools in a gentrified part of the city while others in the not-so-diversified part of town suffer (her wrath in many cases). Knowing the ATL culture and demographics, the honeymoon would end within a week. It won’t take her long to reveal the same coldness that forced Mayor Fenty out of office. In addition, she will alienate a large percentage of the parents because she lacks compassion. All the parents want to know is whether you truly care about their kids! She cares about her “system” instead. You can’t operate a system without motivated kids & participating parents. Don’t get me wrong, she has skills and is great with Pre K-6, but she isn’t the only one in the Nation with such skills. Robert Bobb in Detroit could fix your schools, but he brings similar baggage as well. He served in DC as well. Since she commutes from Sacramento, CA weekly (engaged to former NBA player and Mayor, Kevin Johnson), and doesn’t have children (at least in the school systems where she works), she has no vested interest in truly caring about ALL of the children. My suggestion is that you tread lightly! I don’t see a lot of motivated kids on the Metro each day. Maybe they’re passing the tests but there still cursing and snatching IPods! But that’s another blog entry with parental aspects as well. Just be careful in what you wish for, you may just get it – at least until she decides to stay with Kevin in SAC fulltime! Maybe a 2-year term could work? The commute is a killer!

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Arlington, VA and Fairfax, VA and Montgomery County, MD have all been doing a much better job helping “low performing” (code word for Black) students for years before Rhee even showed up and still are! And without all of the misery she has brought to DC!

Models for D.C. schools? Try next door, in Arlington, Fairfax and Montgomery.
By Jay Mathews
Thursday, September 16, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091305235.html

What kind of research did Wingfield do before writing this “article”?

Like I said if ATL want Rhee, we are happy to send her to you. And I’d be willing to spot the money for a first class (ONE WAY) ticket from DCA to ATL for Ms Rhee!

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Good idea, Kyle! Thanks for the positive, constructive post.

There’s an wrong notion about responsibilities in American education. I doubt much progress can be made until it’s corrected. Teaching is the responsibility of the teacher, learning is the responsibility of the student, and supervising the student’s learning is the responsibility of the parents. Determining what to teach, i. e., the curriculum, is the responsibility of the wisest observers and thinkers of our society, whoever that may be.

We complain that teachers are not teaching, and students are not learning. Yet, we give the teacher and parents no clear definition of what should be taught and learned. We confuse the responsibilities for teaching and learning by blaming the failings of students and parents on the teachers.

A better school superintendent can make a small difference in student learning by demanding better teaching, but only better parents can make a big difference. The superintendent’s ability to improve education is further limited by the availability of good teachers. Few persons with the education and experience to teach well are attracted to the profession: putting up all day with other people’s kids is a trying job, and the pay and advancement opportunities are not comparable with other professions that challenge clever and intelligent people.

So, good luck on improving education by better school administration! Let’s just keep doing the same old things, the same old way, with the same political “leaders”, and hope that someday the results will be different.

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Kyle, a serious subject like education is not much appreciated by your readers. As the token “conservative” of the AJC, you are expected to serve up daily portions of pig-drool politics and dumb-ass philosophies.

Here’s a topic you might want to pursue: why Saxby Chambliss employs a staff of 42 advisors, and whether other members of the US Congress maintain similar private bureaucracies at the public expense. This fact of interest came out in the media hype over a “gay slur” that originated inside Chambliss’s office.

We have a do-nothing, no-accomplishments, ol’ boy politician with a staff of 42 people to advise him on doing nothing. Most likely, they advise him on getting re-elected. What’s going on? We need to know.

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“In Atlanta, Rhee would be accountable to the school board and surely could apply the lessons she learned in D.C”

For thsi reason alone, Michelle Rhee will pass up the opportunity to work for APS. Michelle Rhee will be accountable to no one. The school board was the first thing to go. Rhee only believes in that entity as an advisory board. She believes that no board or entity should stand in the way of her decisions. If she says she needs to fire 350 teachers, she will fire 350 teachers. She will not come to a board for approval. She will bypass the board the same way she bypassed and disregarded legislation in DC. Rhee reported to Mayor Fenty, and Fenty reported to no one – although he technically reported to the city council. His administration was a one man show – Fenty! Mr. Wingfield, you really need to do some fact finding before you begin to advocate for Chancellor Rhee. Learn the truths about what she has done and how she has done it. As a former central office administrator of DCPS that worked directly with Chancellor Rhee and her cabinet, I urge APS to go out and get someone that “truly” have your students’ education in their best interest, not someone that will say, ‘Yesterday’s results were devastating, not for me because I’LL be fine….’ Check your facts!!! She is a dictator – if that is what you are looking for – good luck!

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I’m shocked that you endorse getting Rhee. You do know that she is (gulp) a LIBERAL! She went to those fancy liberal Ivy League colleges Cornell and Harvard. She’s also engaged to a former African American NBA player that graduated from that hippie hotbed, the University of California Berkeley! How could you endorse such a LIB. WHERE ARE YOUR CHRISTIAN AND CONSERVATIVE VALUES?!?!?!

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Rhee and her boyfriend have lots of skeletons in their closets. He has been accused of corruption for his involvement in a foundation and misapprpriating funds. She has been accused of cover up. Don’t believe everything you hear on Oprah. Ms. Winfrey is using her show to promote the agenda of Barak Obama. His approval rating is low and she has got to do something to make sure he is elected again.

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You didn’t say if Rhee is black or not. If she’s not black then there’s no chance whatsoever she’ll be hired in Atlanta.

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Kyle, I am almost at a loss for words at your suggestion, but I will make this brash statement. “This woman should never be associated with public schools again”. As a Board member, I have daily access to education articles from all over the United States which I read. I have read nothing that makes me think she is capable of running the legitimate reform of a school system. The criteria she used to fire teachers probably got rid of some of her best. I’m sure some were not the best, but her criteria used false data for evaluating teachers. She lacks any compassion for adults or children. They are treated as machines.

And just how do we know that some of the D.C. test results were not skewed as were Atlanta’s? We don’t. People can’t be brow beaten and not treated with any respect and expect to get positive results.

During my teaching career, I worked for a short time under someone very much like her. The entire system was falling apart. My now Superintendent is by far the best in Georgia-maybe the county, and he is getting all the results which are not only important to teachers and parents but can be “bragging points” for politicans.

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Kyle, you couldn’t be more right on this one!

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“Just the facts:
Shaw Middle School’s scores did not even stay about the same.
They went down — reading scores declined from 38.52% in ’08 to 29.20% in ’09
and it’s math scores went from 33.33% to 29.02%. This can easily be verified at the official website http://nclb.osse.dc.gov.
The fact that Shaw’s scores didn’t go up is a major embarrassment for Rhee. She installed a new principal (Betts), who hired a new staff, selected for being young and “unjaded” and he paid the kids for good behavior and attendance. It seems imperative that Rhee is asked to re-examine her determination to pursue this method and not gloss over an obvious failure with her ongoing pathological
prevarication & misrepresentation of the facts.

(–info. by efavorite)
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Michelle Rhee is full of herself….. and facts show…. Her scores went down !
The ironic part is watching Rhee loyalists twisting themselves into pretzels to rationalize a 4% drop in D.C. elementary school test scores. Suddenly, the entire test-and-punish crowd is explaining to us how test scores don’t mean anything and how test scores are tied much more to out-of-school conditions. The problem is that she has made rising standardized test scores a central measure
for achievement — writes columnist Valerie Strauss. But judging her reforms on the actual test scores, well, as my kids say, “Not so much.”

– by Mike Klonsky”

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Let’s… Get real, everybody!
==$$==
Michelle Rhee is a wholly-owned subsidiary
of:
Walmart,
Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Goldman Sachs et. al.,
Hedge Fund edu-profiteers
(& their mindless ‘think’ tanks,
planted pundits & sycophants);
and she’s blatantly
a frontwoman / spokesmodel for
KAPLAN learning services, Inc.
(testing, test-prep & online divisions) which is a major business arm (tentacle)
of the “Washington Post” company.

======================

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(reference: “knowyourfacts”)

The DCPS decline in test scores
in elementary schools
(Reading and Math) now reflect 2007 levels.
In actuality the drop was 4 points of proficiency.
These drops in elementary reading and math represent
an overall drop of 9-10% fewer elementary children
scoring proficient compared to last year.

One of the realities of Rhee’s brand of reform leadership is that our youngest children are not being taught well .
See here = /> http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2010/08/20/detailed-results-on-the-dc-cas-for-2010-3rd-grade/

If the reforms were having an impact one would expect
that the third graders who entered the school system
when Rhee did 3 years ago, and are taking the DC CAS
tests for the first time, would have shown great promise now. Unfortunately the opposite is true;
the test scores show declining proficiency rates.

The most difficult thing about being a parent of a child in
DCPS is the huge lack of analysis in the mainstream media and
the general spread of misinformation about the nature of
educational gains (or lack there of). We have a lot to learn from our third graders and owe them a qualified educational leader who can truly enable them to have high-quality learning experiences.

Unfortunately for DC teachers, the greatest beneficiaries of Rhee’s lack of real educational leadership have been the charters — because people have flocked to them for cover as Rhee closed 20 some schools. But perhaps as a teacher you and your colleagues at the charter should ask yourself why isn’t the quality of the schools good enough. Why aren’t all children everywhere being provided with the curriculum rich learning experiences you benefited from at the private school? What needs to happen next to ensure that goal?

I assure you it is not it has nothing to do with the desperation
and other articulate passions expressed by people like Rhee.
It has to do with getting to the hard work of providing children with significantly enhanced academically rigorous curriculum
and learning experiences — including their families in the process. Passion (and broom-mongering) aside, Rhee
really didn’t bring it –
nor was she headed in that general direction in my view.

I have heard Gray speak on the educational issue and he has stated that he will move forward with reforms just not with the expansion of testing as Rhee planned. Hopefully that will mean that our children are getting higher quality instruction here in
DC, rather than Rhee’s’
‘teaching to the test’ approach which has hijacked meaningful, viable real education.

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Inviting Michelle Rhee to APS is like inviting Nancy Pelosi to take over at the Gold Dome.

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the achievement gap widened

DCPS ELEMENTARY TEST SCORES DOWN –
DECLINES IN READING AND MATH

under the “crappy” regime of
Michelle Rhee,
unaccountable & unqualified
‘chancellor’ –
(note: she’s actually not legally qualified
and does not have certification to be
a district superintendent)

“The DCPS had lower math test scores
in grades 4 and 8 in 2009,
and District African-American
test scores went down”

read & view the
data =>
http://www.examiner.com/ward-5-in-washington-dc/rhee-fails-on-nation-s-report-card

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Did anyone else read the article in September’s Ebony where Michelle Rhee proudly touts the fact that programs like TFA
and her ‘New Teacher Project’ are bringing in teachers
from the ‘elite’ schools? She had to backtrack when
Dr. Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College,
challenged her.
And, Rhee didn’t mention that these programs bring in teachers with no disciplinary skills (such as herself — remember her
fond anecdote about “taping shut students’ mouths”) and
who are temp. workers not committed to the profession of teaching (ditto).
These programs are NOT designed to develop
a professional corps of teachers.
As a teacher with 15 years experience,
I can tell you, no one becomes an expert in only 2 or 3 years.
I don’t understand why Rhee (or anyone else) spends their energy trying to build and repair schools with these
types of temporary teachers.
They are a band aid —
nothting more
(band-aids are easily peeled off or fall off) —
a pseudo-reform sham providing cover for a
Wall Street-funded
edu-profiteering scam doesn’t heal anything and
doesn’t construct anything
lasting or worthwhile for the children.

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“Why Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty Lost”
By Diane Ravitch
http://tinyurl.com/2woax9h

Consider Diane Ravitch’s letter to Deborah Meier an indication of the growing awakening to poor quality leadership of K-12 public education by autocrats like DC’s Michelle Rhee, APS’s Beverly Hall and, yes, US DOE’s Arne Duncan.

The idea of bringing Rhee to Atlanta is absolutely insane. And it is difficult to avoid wondering why many so-called influential “black” folk seem so inclined to subject especially “black” children to such dehumanization. Can someone give me a clue?

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Kyle, this is Atlanta and Rhee is not black, she is dis-qualified.

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WHAT, HIRE RHEE AND DISRUPT THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM OF THE CITY OF ATLANTA? OH, THE NERVE OF SOME PEOPLE! MAKE IT SO.

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APS could do and does do much worse than my proposal: Replace all the math and science teachers with Asian students from Ga Tech. Pay them each to teach just one class per day, then return to Tech for their own advanced education. Within four years, math and science scores will increase by at least 20%, or I will admit I am wrong.

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I’ve been following Rhee’s career for some time. She’s very impressive. Her first and foremost concern are the children. A concern that, no doubt, stems from earliest years in teaching…Teach for America? It oughta be a requirement for anyone going into teaching. It’s the students who are most in need that should be every teacher’s focus.

There’s no way APS could lose with Rhee at the helm.

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My jury is out on Rhee. I doubt seriously she’s all that she’s being cracked up to be. The big wigs seldom are.

My question is the same one being constantly asked in the teachers’ lounge. Why do we keep going somewhere else to recruit a superintendant? Are we incapable of producing our own? If that’s the case, then that tells you what the board thinks of its efforts. There are plenty of people quite capable of doing the job already here, already familiar with the local culture, the local problems and the local strengths. For the love of G-d, the reason the founding fathers refused to create a national public education system was because they felt it mete to leave the matter in local hands.

Just one, really rather trivial, instance of what it is I’m talking about. The first year Ole Missus was here, she didn’t close the schools on her first snow day, her Northeastern worldview showing. Instead, she put the children at risk. Talk to a bus driver about that day from hell. But it did show how out of touch with the local conditions she was and still is. She was informed by the locals why it was the schools should be closed. She just chose not to listen to the provencials, she knowing better. This is not a place for on the job training.

For the race baiters hereabouts—I should hope that in an 80% (whatever) system, 80% of the deadwood would be of that category.

Of course the best qualified person should be brought on and I would posit that those being bossed ought to have a considered vote in who that person is. They know the local pool better than anyone else. As an APS employee, I could come up with a list of contenders from my peers and coworkers who would do just as good, if not better, job than someone brought in here from outside.

Bottom line, the people making the decision haven’t the vaguest notion of what they’re talking about. We even have reps on the board who sent their own kids to private schools. The one who used to be my own (and my own school’s) “representative” used her position to have her own little white children enrolled in the best public school in the district when you could actually see the school full of little brown faces from her living room window. Never mind that the little white faces standardized test scores at her neighborhood school were higher than those she was sending her kids to. And BTW she was a Democrat elitist, not a GOP one.

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Awful…

Replace everyone? I take that personally!

Seriously, though, it is long since time for a housecleaning of major proportions and first on the chopping block is that over inflated upper level administration. We’ve got some pretty good people in many of the local schools…

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joseph: It’s good to see an actual teacher commenting here, but I’m afraid your wrong on the founding father’s foresight on the lack of a national public education entity is that it would never have crossed their minds to do it. In the 1790s education was reserved for a very tiny, wealthy elite, except for a few places in New England. But I agree that somewhere in the metro area is an administrator with the ability and stamina to correct the local problems, if they’re left alone long enough to do it. Many of the dilemmas we face in teaching are not suseptible to an instant fix from the education miracle du jour.

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Damn Kyle, did you expect such a sh*tstorm?

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Mr B

The subject did come up. There were proposals to copy the free and mandated system of Prussia in place since the 1720s…the goal was to produce a good “citizen soldier” to serve the state. Jefferson came out dead set against it, warning of what it could lead to…turns out he was right…

Also, there were numerous publicly supported schools throughout the country at the time and not just in New England but in just about every town of any size. Most people lived in the countryside at the time where schools were not so available.

It is interesting to note that the first mandated public schools were in Mississippi in 1868 to operate as centers for reeducation under the occupation.

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Mr B and Kyle..

I tried to post a further comment from Ang Lee and it must have been held up…it was held up previously as well over at Jay’s…there’s something that the moderator doesn’t like and, try as I might, I cannot determine what it is…I’ve looked for all the usual letter combination catches and the such, but can’t determine what…

KYLE? Any ideas?

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As a retired teacher…She is brilliant! I was one of the ones who got “hard to handle kids”…..with no extra money…..

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Kyle, You forgot the mention this but since you recommend her I assume that she does not have the #1 dis-qualification for the job. No matter what she has accomplished, with this attribute there is not a snowball’s chance of her being hired by APS but without it she’s a shoe-in. Is she white?

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Wingboy good idea but as most of the local posters say if she isn’t black she won’t be hired. The corrupy APS does not want educational progress, they want the money.

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come on kyle is this the best you can do? Hire someone else.

only two subjects should be taught from k-8th grade: english and math.

only four subjects should be taught from grades 9 – 12:

english/english literature, math, computer science and american government/law/constitution.

Problem solved.

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Oh my gosh, I literally laughed out loud when I read this. For years, I’ve heard about how Georgia fired “King Roy” because he ruled like an autocrat. Well how in the heck do you think Michelle Rhee runs D.C.schools? There is a reason, her job is in jeopardy. She’s dictatorial. She’s nonresponsive. She’s polarizing. No wonder you like her.

I don’t care how good your ideas are, if you can’t work with the parents and teachers they are not going to hear them. Nice try, Kyle.

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Enter your comments here

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It doesn’t really matter who they hire for super in APS. Teachers have been painted as villians throughout the country. Unless we are willing to go back to being paid less than garbage collectors, work at school and then work 3 or 4 hours at home each night and then go out and patrol poor neighborhoods to make sure that parents are actually at home supervising and nurturing their children…oh please, enough already. Too many African Americans are making a decent living teaching and they vote. That is what this crap is all about.

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I have no affiliation with this blogger. Interesting read on the history, politics, privatization of education, etc. –
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/07/history-lesson-about-sandia-report.html

Again, if the goal is to achieve in the area of STEM, why import labor from countries that have not achieved as much success from or for their own masses?

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jb

Supporter of Obama…? Me? Of ‘Fierce Advocate?’ Oy, Mate, you obviously don’t know my reputation with his disciples over to Jay’s place!

Politicians R

I won’t go so far as requiring a Master’s Degree.in the area of expertise..but I am in your corner on the Education Degree. The Master’s Degree is just one more piece of paper bought from Mail-In U and really holds no indication of the experience in that field. And for the record, by and large it wasn’t the teachers who were the “criminals” but the administrators.

I am reminded of what my mother told one of my teachers who went to citing her degrees in education in a parent-teacher conference, “well, you know all about teaching. Now why don’t you go learn something TO teach?”

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Rhee is a fraud. She dismantled the School Board so she did not have to answer to anyone. In a system where there is oversight she would not take the job. And if you want a bunch of unskilled TFA teacher then she’s your girl. Also I don’t know what the racial dynamics are in Atlanta but if you got African American kids in your schools then you might want as well just say you’ve failed them now without have to pay her an arm and a leg to destroy their lives.

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Michelle Rhee is impolite to others. She often changes her voice as she mocks others openly. She is immature and has terrible leadership skills.

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Gee, these comments are mostly supporting the status quo of aps: lying, cheating, stealing, and failing students. I bet most of these posters work for aps.

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J 8:52, I hope that was sarcasm.

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“Rhee is a crap choice! Some folks need to do some research on Michelle Rhee. There is a reason why she is on her way out.”

The reason she is on her way out is that she more than significantly improved the “per student” education of the students in the DC system.
To do this she fired incompetents, put marginally ineffective teachers on notice and hired “professional” teachers.

The “teachers unions” are the problem along with “partisan politics” and “cultural politics”. Solve these problem and you solve the education problem.

Teachers unions want to protect their members. Yet no member of the teachers’ union wants to go to an incompetent doctor when ill. But they say it is OK to have incompetent teachers teach our children.

The big question on the table is will Congress and the President force the hand on the teachers unions?

And Kyle is correct, Rhee will have her pick among dozens of offers. She is trying to make teaching a “profession” in fact, and not just in name.

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Looks like Democrats have more in common with terrorists than they do with America.

A’jad monster’s ball
Wacky week in NY for wolf in cheap clothing

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s six nights in New York featured a secret sit-down with militant minister Louis Farrakhan, heckling in a hotel bar, and a fear of being rubbed out that bordered on paranoia.

The president shared a hush-hush meal with Farrakhan and members of the New Black Panther Party Tuesday at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street.

The meeting of the podium smackers took place in a banquet room, where the fiery leaders presumably exchanged theories on what’s wrong with the world.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/jad_monster_ball_Z7Km37ydJJJHSxgrxPtfbJ#ixzz10jobUAel

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dcpsparent :
re: Michelle Rhee’s “mom friendly” comment, prepared specifically for the Oprah show, about moms not tolerating mediocre teachers being given time to grow and develop professionally. “Well. The unqualified, needing-to-grow-professionally, TFA principal that Rhee PUSHED on our school, despite protests from a panel of engaged, informed, truly progressive, professional educators and parents with advanced degrees in education . . . . . (this TFA principal) hired and protected even more inexperienced, unqualified teachers who will take YEARS to develop into true professionals. But the principal and those teachers all know how to say “yes” to their boss. Too bad they don’t know the basics of how children learn, or the nuances of curriculum and instruction. It is hard, hard work indeed to have to reprogram my kids every day after school, to get them to embrace and understand learning again. Rhee’s influential, BAD decisions and practices, more than ANY OTHER failure of the DC Public School system, has me on the verge of pulling my kids out of school. Rhee embarrassed herself mightily at the DC screening of this film (”Waiting for Wall Street Super-scammers”) with her comment insulting DC voters. My kids, and the 350 others in their school, will not be devastated at all when she leaves. We assume she will head to the business world for which she may have more appropriate skills.”

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Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this piece! I’ve been telling all of my friends about this all week. I moved back to Atlanta after living in Washington, D.C. less than a year ago and Michelle Rhee is absolutely fantastic. I hope and pray that the people of Atlanta have enough sense to at least make Rhee an offer.

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Had Rhee been properly vetted, she probably would not have been appointed DC schools chancellor. It is unlikely she could survive the oversight process in other large US cities and those cities already know that. And, BTW, nobody cares that Oprah supports her. Her endorsement is worth less than Wheezee’s and Chris Carter’s.

Kyle, snap out of it.

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As a teacher in APS, the last thing we need is top down management from a person that only lasted a couple of years as a teacher and has demonstrated that she has little respect for the people in this profession. Her approach to evaluating effectiveness through standardized testing is not only archaic but completely inequitable. Some teachers have the blessing of working with highly motivated students and their results will typically be on the high end. The teachers that work with students that have low achievement and must try to lessen the gap are the ones that will suffer the consequences. Does that seem fair? Do you know much about education or is it your job to evaluate us with little knowledge of the profession? One trend I’ve always noticed is how novice or poor teachers are typically the ones that teach the low students. Maybe it’s because those students don’t have advocates for them in the classroom. Uninvolved parenting is one of our biggest issues and no matter how hard we try we still get resistance from the community. Yep, more top down management for education so the system of class can be maintained in this country. I do agree that there should be swift action rather than brow beating on the CRCT issue. Plain and simple, all administrators involved should be removed from their positions and all teachers that were involved should be disciplined for following those orders. One final note, Rhee taught for two years and moved on. If she was so effective, why did she crap out after two years? It’s easier to sit on the perch and bark orders than it is to sit in the trenches and dodge the shrapnel. Real leaders put themselves in the line of fire, not site behind the veil of politics. Think before you make bold statements about a person who wields a broad sword rather than try to use precision to deal with the situation.

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Kyle, you need an intervention. Snap out of it.

Don’t you find it odd not a single school system in the country has been reported to have expressed any interest in having Michelle A. Rhee lead them? Could it be they know something about her you don’t? Could it be Rhee stands no chance of surviving any serious vetting by a major school system, the kind of vetting Rhee successfully avoided in DC? If these systems are clamoring for her, as her supporters claim, why are these same supporters aggressively trying to bully the incoming DC mayor into keeping her in DC? Riddle me that.

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We might want to consider the factors that caused Mayor Fenty’s electoral loss in D.C, the primary one of which was Michelle Rhee’s arrogant, abrasive, authoritarian and corporationalist attitude to reforming the schools. Instead of taking a reasonable approach, Ms Rhee, 40 years old, like almost all authoritarians, wanted fast results, better for HER career ‘doncha know,’ and attempted to impose her own, personal ideas on an entire D.C. school district that consists of thousands of teachers every bit as well educated and knowledgeable as herself.

Thus, instead of instituting the sort of democratic system whereby the teachers would assist in the actual management of the schools, she attempted to institute a dictatorial scheme by which she in fact attacked the teachers instead of attacking the system, thus making hostile the very people whom she should have been working with instead of working against. I would venture to say that in general such confrontation usually produces only short term results, even if effective.

Far better, in my own view, to initiate a system of democratic school management in which the teachers actually participate in a voting system of management whereby teachers get to express and to vote on their own opinions as to the efficacy of any particular solution or policy. I suggest this idea because in 35 years of teaching, I have personally heard or seen almost all of the suggestions now being proposed by ‘reformers,’ and those ideas were proposed as many as 35 years ago when teachers were suggesting ideas like smaller class sizes, mandatory after school mentoring for students having difficulty, [paid] teacher internships for prospective new teachers, greater teacher control of curriculum, more effective parental and community involvement, et al.

The 19th century corporationalist system of school management that presently adheres in US schools, where administrators are appointed if they’re sufficiently conciliatory to the school board and whereby teachers are customarily ordered about and expected to follow orders, is in my judgement the single most destructive element in American public schools. As Churchill once noted correctly in one of his more honest comments, “Democracy is the worst form of governance, except for all the others.”

jim crawford
Westwood NJ

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Politicians R Scum. It’s obvious that you associatedthe actions of a choice number of idiots with all teachers just because we work for APS. I don’t need to cheat to get my results and I’ve worked hard to be a legitimate teacher. I love all of your facts and how having a master’s degree automatically makes a person a good teacher? Have you ever taught in an actual public school setting? It’s not about standing up and lecturing the entire time. I’ve seen the best educated people completely falter in this profession because teaching is more about classroom management than it is about content and I am extremely well learned in my content. We have to address the needs of all of the students and specifically their different learning styles. As a science teacher, the two main issues I have are a lack of parental involvement and lack of capital (as in materials). I spend at least $1200 a year on my own supplies because the system is so completely disorganized but I teach by choice. Of course I can’t reach every child, it’s an almost impossible task but I make the effort every single day. Why not look at the inequity that’s been set up in schools. The best students get set up with the top teachers because their families demand them. I get the best students because I’ve established myself as a good teacher. I’ve also requested the so-called “tough” students because they’re the ones that really need my work ethic. Rather than sit back and name call why don’t you get more involved in the system and help us make some actual change. Take a tour of a random number of schools (not the good ones) and see what the teachers have to deal with on a daily basis. See how a school must make the adjustments when class size is no longer limited (I average 36 in each class now). See the struggle of not having a teacher replaced when they leave and how the parents have to threaten to sue in order for the district to hire a person. Learn that all of the great technology that is provided doesn’t amount to squat if it’s used as a diversion from the curriculum. I do agree, a master’s in education is completely useless, I’ve learned to refine my skills by sitting in the middle of the battlefield and by making the necessary adjustments.

As for Rhee, top down management is the last thing that any school district needs and the data shows that scores have dropped under her tenure. She’s a media hound and cares little for the needs of those in education. Her credentials are sketchy at most and look at her association with people. She’s a corporate representative and is romantically linked with a person that has had numerous investigations into illegitimate business practices.

We need increased involvement and accountability for all stakeholders in education. Those that were directly involved in the cheating scandal, enjoy the unemployment line. Those that were coerced, some action but most of all grow a spine and say no when someone directs you to break these types of rules. In the end, it’s rhetoric from individuals such as yourself that does little because it’s all talk. Education is about every child, not the black ones, white ones, Hispanic ones, or Asian ones. It’s about every child and their right to a quality education so they can achieve their dreams.

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