During the end-of-year show last week, ABC 7 "Inside Washington" host Gordon Peterson asked panelists to cite their favorite story of the year.
The most surprising and intriguing selection was offered by Newsweek senior editor Evan Thomas.
"Most educators have given up on inner-city schools," Thomas said. "But right here in Washington, D.C., there's a lady named Michelle Rhee who is trying to actually win this battle, but she's trying to break the union to do it." Thomas called it "an epic struggle."
"Rarely have the lines been so clearly drawn," he said.
So begins a Washington Post column by Colbert King entitled Beyond Publicity, What Is Rhee Producing?. Given that King was originally a supporter of Mayor Fenty taking over the schools and of Rhee's efforts, this column should be of real interest to those concerned about what is happening to our inner city schools under mayoral control
First let me examine the predicate of the statement by Thomas, that "Most educators have given up on inner-city schools." If that were so, you would not have those who have continued to dedicate their professional lives to the children in those schools. You would not have people applying to teach in such schools. And of course absent that predicate, it becomes harder for the so-called "reformers" to make as strong a case to the public about doing things their way, for which Michelle Rhee is their latest poster child.
DC is a special case, and not only because it is our national capital. The system has been dysfunctional for years. It has a teachers' union chapter whose leader was so corrupt she was convicted (Barbara Bullock) and is - as has also been the case in Chicago in recent years, another city with mayoral control of schools - torn up by internecine battles for control: in these cases it is not unusual to see administrators, like Vallas and Duncan in Chicago and Rhee in DC, continue to stir the cauldron to thereby weaken the union as a possible organized source of opposition.
I want to be selective in what I quote - King writes clearly enough that you can easily read his whole piece. He sets the stage for his concern with this:
Rhee was laboring in relative obscurity as a teacher trainer and headhunter for urban public schools only two years ago. Today, she's chancellor of the District's troubled school system and a proxy for the national education reform movement.
Please note that proxy, and also note that, unfortunately there is a group that has been apparently been able to lay claim to the term "reform." I will explore both of those ideas.
After noting the amount of publicity on Rhee's behalf, including the recent Time Magazine cover story, King offers some words with which many opponents of the so-called "reformers" could agree:
But this column is about more than her celebrity status.
Rhee's "epic struggle" with the teachers union bears watching. Remember the old African proverb: "When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled." If a Rhee-union war paralyzes the school system, children may be the ones who suffer.
The struggle has already reduced the children to pawns, since what's really at stake are political interests.
Children as pawns. Political interests.
This is an old issue in DC schools. And part of it came about as a result of mayoral interference, when under Marion Barry the schools were like the rest of city government, with jobs being doled out to maintain his own political support. Officially that dd not include the teaching staff, but many in central office positions, and many in support positions in the schools, owed their jobs to the political influence of Marion Barry. Certainly there were grounds for addressing some of that dead wood years ago, because in both cases, central office and support, ineffectual personnel costs money and does not provide the support teachers need to do their jobs.
King makes another important observation about the so-called reformers: DC is now ground zero for their efforts, which is why
Deep-pocketed reformers have placed large sums at Rhee's disposal to help her to loosen the union's grip on teachers. A Rhee victory would send a message to public schools nationwide.
A slight digression if I may - I have written on more than one occasion that schools are the canary in the coal mine for America. Let me make that allusion again. Teachers unions are a tempting target for those who want to destroy organized labor. Their members are educated and articulate in a way one does not necessarily find in industrial unions. They have direct contact through children with parents. If they can be devalued and undermined, given those resources, it is not hard to see how a similar approach can be taken towards industrial unions. And yes, the idea of Klein's "Shock Doctrine" is also applicable. Certainly those who favor Republicans want to weaken as much as possible these core constituencies of Democrats. What is sad is to see how many Democrats have bought into the false framing, which makes the struggle for meaningful reform, at least in schools, that much more difficult.
Also remember that schools represent big money, hundreds of billions of dollars of tax expenditures each year. There are those who seek control of those dollars, even as the track record - academically and financially - of for profit entities in K-12 education has been far less than stellar. One of the favored companies, Chris Whittle's Edison, was about to be delisted by Nasdac when Governor Jeb Bush of FL stepped in and bought a lot of stock to prop up the price - directing that the pension funds of Florida's teachers be used for that purpose.
Let's return to King's column. Rhee has been able to get this far because of favorable publicity, including, as King himself notes, two columns he wrote in 1957, Rhee vs. the Central-Office Hydra, and Coming Soon: The Real Schools Battle. As he writes now,
From a media viewpoint, the story of a firebrand educator taking the torch to a hidebound union is good copy.
As our own Jeffrey Feldman would note, this is a framing that gives the edge to the so-called "reformers" like Rhee and her supporters, and obscures meaningful analysis of what is actually happening.
At least now there is an attempt for an independent evaluation. Vicent Gray, Chairman of the City Council (and elected to that post by a city wide vote), is mandating an independent evaluation of the impact of Rhee's changes uponteacher and student performance, school system operations, and the school governance structure.
Gray has tapped the D.C. auditor to organize the project, which will draw upon independently produced research, not just school system data. He said the mayor's office was to have produced an evaluation of the new governance structure a year ago. Instead, the mayor proposed a privately funded study to be conducted by researchers known to be favorable toward a mayoral takeover of schools.
researchers known to be favorable toward a mayoral takeover of the schools - far too much of the "research" cite by "reformers" is like this, like studies of energy funded by oil companies. Often laughably deficient in their design and selective in their use of data, too often they are not even subject to any kind of peer review. And yet our national education policy, and that of many states and localities, have been pushed along the so-called "reform" track on the basis of these "studies". It is good that Gray is taking this action, and I can anticipate the screams of supporters of Rhee already. When highly skilled researchers like Linda Darling-Hammond have pointed out the deficiencies of the approaches favored by the so-called "reformer" their response has been to try to destroy her reputation, using contacts in the media to undercut any chance of her becoming Secretary of Education (although at least one of my knoweledgeable sources says she would rather be in the White House helping make policy than fighting battles within DoE itself).
King supports Gray's effort. He set up the close of his column by acknowledging that he has supported Fenty's efforts at takeover to improve a clearly dysfunctional school system, and in acknowledging his early support of Rhee's efforts, cites the two articles to which I have linked above. What makes this column a somewhat telling blow about Rhee is how he then ends it:
Last August, I had lunch with Rhee near the anniversary of our first meeting to get an update on school system reforms.
What a difference a year makes.
The session wasn't what I expected.
An hour's conversation, and it was all about her.
it was all about her - not about the children, which should be the primary concern for those of us in education, about herself. Perhaps the Time cover showing her holding a broom was appropriate, although instead of late November it should have been late October - yes, that is a deliberate reference to the holiday that occurs then.
Rhee was never under consideration for Secretary of Education, nor was her equivalent in New York, Joel Klein. The incoming Obama administration was not about to be that confrontational with the core constituency of Teachers' Unions, at least not yet. The choice of Arne Duncan seems on the surface less problematic, and will likely sail through, although a close examination of his record in Chicago reveals some unfortunate similarities with the patterns of people like Klein and Rhee, including it being about political control and selective use of data. That is a subject for another diary on another day.
If previously strong supporters like King are now becoming skeptical about Rhee, perhaps it will be possible to begin to change the framing of our discussions about education. We do not have much time. If the so-called "reformers" continue to control definition of that frame, we will on a national scale do irrevocable damage to our schools, just as the current administration seems hell-bent on doing irrevocable damage to our environment before Obama takes office.
Michelle Rhee lacks the background, the skill set, and the temperament to lead a major urban school system. Colbert King has an influential voice. We have to hope that others will join him in his new-found skepticism and concern. After all, the focus should not be on the politics of mayors and union-busters and the personalities of leaders, but on the students and what is best for them.
Peace.