Michelle Rhee, Washington D.C.’s maverick Schools Chancellor is looking to change the world!
No, not in any impractical, "social-worker way," but in perhaps the most practical way a person can change the world – making America’s currently broken education system serve its customers/children better.
In that regard, Rhee, who “accidentally” became a teacher via her entrance into the “Teach for America Program” she entered from Cornell University back in 1992.
Now, education experts like Thomas Sowell have long noted that the problem with America’s public education system is that it’s flooded with incompetent teachers. Sowell has long lamented that “In the U.S. a major in education is one of the easiest, least taxing degrees to get and that’s why teachers tend to have some of the lowest SAT scores of any major field of study.”
Rhee knows this all too well.
Ms. Rhee, the daughter of an Ohio physician describes herself as “a relatively high-achieving kid through high school and college. So nobody tells you to go into education, you know, people are telling you to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a stockbroker. They are not telling you to be a teacher.”
As many have noted (it’s hard NOT to notice) the average SAT score of would-be elementary school teachers taking a popular licensing exam is woefully BELOW the average for all college grads.
For that, among other reasons, Rhee has chosen to take on the Teacher’s Union in D.C. and has set up a plan that seeks to pay good/effective teachers six-figure salaries, while eliminating tenure protections for teachers, enabling administrators to simply fire non-effective teachers and open Charter Schools in those districts.
In “Teach for America” she began her entry into American education teaching in an inner city Baltimore 2nd grade classroom.
She recalls an event, one second-grader falling down, while on line at the cafeteria and all the other children walking by, taking turns kicking the kid that was down. “I was like, ‘What are they doing?’ But it was second nature to them. The kid was down, kick him.” She was unable to stop them, or control the children the rest of the semester, she went home that Christmas break with symptoms of severe stress anxiety.
Determined not to be driven out of teaching by a group of eight year olds, she, in her own words, “became obsessed.”
Over the next couple years she and another teacher working with seventy at what she called “sock bottom on standardized tests” to “absolutely at the top. She became convinced that the key to success is SWEAT mainly on the part of the teacher, but also on the part of the student, as well.
She noted, “Those kids, where they lived didn’t change. Their parents didn’t change. Their diets didn’t change. The violence in their communities didn’t change. The ONLY thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults (teachers) in front of them every single day, teaching them.”
Rhee is now locked in a war with the D.C. teacher’s union. She has proposed a new contract that will eliminate tenure for teachers, in exchange for money for D.C. teachers. She notes. “If they are willing to go on probation for a year - giving up their job security – and can successfully prove their talent, they can earn more than $100,00/year and as much as $130,000/year after five years. If not, they still get a 28% raise and keep their tenure, though all new teachers must sign up for the first option and go on probation for four years.
Rhee is betting that more than half the teachers will be willing to take their chances on accountability for higher pay.
The union has shown that it too can play hardball. When Rhee recently tried to reclassify some central administration workers so they could be terminated without cause, the union began running radio spots assailing Rhee with the O’Jays “Back Stabbers” in the background.
One of the sticks that Rhee carries is that the D.C. public school system is shrinking. About a third of D.C. parents now opt to send their kids to Charter Schools, which are public schools, but where teachers are non-union.
The teacher’s union has lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 teaching spots over the past decade. Rhee has let the union know that she is NOT interested in “protecting turf.” She’s made it known that she’d be perfectly happy to let the old failed system simply wither away and be completely replaced by the growing Charter system.
In those charter or KIPP schools kids perform significantly better on all standardized exams and that’s probably because teachers work from 7 am to 7 pm and on Saturday. Summer vacation lasts only about a month. Some not that “in Rhee’s world many teachers finding themselves working hard, burning out and moving on.
As Kati Haycock, President of Education Trust and a long-time education reform advocate says, “What we need to do is change to the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education winds up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market.”
Amen!
Here’s hoping Michelle Rhee’s reforms take hold and make America’s schools a better place for its STUDENTS as well as those effective teachers.
No, not in any impractical, "social-worker way," but in perhaps the most practical way a person can change the world – making America’s currently broken education system serve its customers/children better.
In that regard, Rhee, who “accidentally” became a teacher via her entrance into the “Teach for America Program” she entered from Cornell University back in 1992.
Now, education experts like Thomas Sowell have long noted that the problem with America’s public education system is that it’s flooded with incompetent teachers. Sowell has long lamented that “In the U.S. a major in education is one of the easiest, least taxing degrees to get and that’s why teachers tend to have some of the lowest SAT scores of any major field of study.”
Rhee knows this all too well.
Ms. Rhee, the daughter of an Ohio physician describes herself as “a relatively high-achieving kid through high school and college. So nobody tells you to go into education, you know, people are telling you to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a stockbroker. They are not telling you to be a teacher.”
As many have noted (it’s hard NOT to notice) the average SAT score of would-be elementary school teachers taking a popular licensing exam is woefully BELOW the average for all college grads.
For that, among other reasons, Rhee has chosen to take on the Teacher’s Union in D.C. and has set up a plan that seeks to pay good/effective teachers six-figure salaries, while eliminating tenure protections for teachers, enabling administrators to simply fire non-effective teachers and open Charter Schools in those districts.
In “Teach for America” she began her entry into American education teaching in an inner city Baltimore 2nd grade classroom.
She recalls an event, one second-grader falling down, while on line at the cafeteria and all the other children walking by, taking turns kicking the kid that was down. “I was like, ‘What are they doing?’ But it was second nature to them. The kid was down, kick him.” She was unable to stop them, or control the children the rest of the semester, she went home that Christmas break with symptoms of severe stress anxiety.
Determined not to be driven out of teaching by a group of eight year olds, she, in her own words, “became obsessed.”
Over the next couple years she and another teacher working with seventy at what she called “sock bottom on standardized tests” to “absolutely at the top. She became convinced that the key to success is SWEAT mainly on the part of the teacher, but also on the part of the student, as well.
She noted, “Those kids, where they lived didn’t change. Their parents didn’t change. Their diets didn’t change. The violence in their communities didn’t change. The ONLY thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults (teachers) in front of them every single day, teaching them.”
Rhee is now locked in a war with the D.C. teacher’s union. She has proposed a new contract that will eliminate tenure for teachers, in exchange for money for D.C. teachers. She notes. “If they are willing to go on probation for a year - giving up their job security – and can successfully prove their talent, they can earn more than $100,00/year and as much as $130,000/year after five years. If not, they still get a 28% raise and keep their tenure, though all new teachers must sign up for the first option and go on probation for four years.
Rhee is betting that more than half the teachers will be willing to take their chances on accountability for higher pay.
The union has shown that it too can play hardball. When Rhee recently tried to reclassify some central administration workers so they could be terminated without cause, the union began running radio spots assailing Rhee with the O’Jays “Back Stabbers” in the background.
One of the sticks that Rhee carries is that the D.C. public school system is shrinking. About a third of D.C. parents now opt to send their kids to Charter Schools, which are public schools, but where teachers are non-union.
The teacher’s union has lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 teaching spots over the past decade. Rhee has let the union know that she is NOT interested in “protecting turf.” She’s made it known that she’d be perfectly happy to let the old failed system simply wither away and be completely replaced by the growing Charter system.
In those charter or KIPP schools kids perform significantly better on all standardized exams and that’s probably because teachers work from 7 am to 7 pm and on Saturday. Summer vacation lasts only about a month. Some not that “in Rhee’s world many teachers finding themselves working hard, burning out and moving on.
As Kati Haycock, President of Education Trust and a long-time education reform advocate says, “What we need to do is change to the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education winds up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market.”
Amen!
Here’s hoping Michelle Rhee’s reforms take hold and make America’s schools a better place for its STUDENTS as well as those effective teachers.
