Talk of Reform
Dear Reformers:
Newsweek takes an adoring, uncritical look at Chancellor Michelle
Rhee is its September 1 issue (http://www.newsweek.com/id/154901),
and again it emphasizes her heroic, alone-against-the-world image of
herself as the only person (aside from the mayor, of course) who really
cares about education and students, fighting against teachers, parents,
and the “city’s educational establishment, whose talk of reform was
just that.” In recent weeks, Rhee has been emboldened to express the
contempt she has for all these groups, and also for the press and the
city council. This limits her allies to the mayor and the inner circle
of her employees, whom she has hired.
The Newsweek article does confirm three things about Rhee that
I have long suspected. First, Rhee supports and encourages the charter
school movement, unlike previous DC public school superintendents, who
at best tolerated it. But she doesn’t support charter schools because
they provide competition for public schools and laboratories for
innovation, but because their teachers aren’t unionized, so the more
students they drain from the public schools the more they weaken
teachers unions. Second, Rhee has a vision of the kind of teachers she
wants that differs from what most of us want. She wants young,
energetic, but inexperienced teachers who don’t see teaching as a
career, but as a temporary job that they can do for a few years as sort
of a well-paid alternative to the Peace Corps, before they move on to
their real careers. This viewpoint is expressed in the article by Kati
Haycock, the president of Education Trust, who says, “But what we need
to do is change 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 ends up with a bunch of people
on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job
market.” This expresses well the disdain that Rhee feels for veteran,
career teachers, “people on the low end of the pile,” and it also
explains why she feels she can run a school system in which teachers
have no seniority rights and no tenure. New, young teachers who see
teaching as a way station, a temp job, who are only going to stay in the
profession for a few years anyway, don’t care about whether they have
seniority or tenure.
Third, Rhee quotes herself as threatening Washington Teachers Union
President George Parker, in the midst of contract negotiations, “Either
we do this with you or we do this to you.” It’s obvious that she
thinks she somehow has the power, if teachers won’t accept her terms
voluntarily, to force them down their throats. Her “Plan B” on the
contract negotiations, when she fails to get an affirmative vote from
teachers, is to find some other way to strip teachers of their rights.
But how? She can’t think that either she or Mayor Fenty can eliminate
seniority and job protections for government workers by decree, can she?
She can’t think that a majority of city councilmembers would sacrifice
their political careers by imposing a union-busting contract that would
incite all public sector and private sector unions into full-scale war,
can she? She can’t think that the lame-duck Bush administration or a
new Obama or McCain administration would intervene in local DC affairs
for the specific purpose of making unions its enemy, can she?
Mickey Kaus (http://www.slate.com/id/2197768/)
writes that “Dems Rally Against Unions,” and David Nakamura (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2008/08/rhee_in_denver_media_to_blame.html)
also reports on Fenty’s and Rhee’s Excellent Adventure at the
Democratic convention, preaching busting the teachers unions to an
appreciative crowd. In the August 17 issue of themail, Candi Peterson
asked that the legal opinion obtained by the American Federation of
Teachers on the legality of the seniority terms in the proposed teachers
contract be released so that all teachers could read it. That opinion is
now posted at http://www.dcpswatch.com/wtu/080801.htm.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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On Wednesday, Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee announced they
would hold a press conference at Georgetown’s Hardy Middle School to
announce a new DCPS initiative in conjunction with Harvard University
entitled “School Is Money.” By the time of the Thursday press
conference, the program’s name had been changed to the less offensive
but less descriptive, “Capital Gains.” Under the program, selected
students in fourteen District middle schools could receive up to one
hundred dollars every two weeks, based “on their attendance, behavior,
and other academic indicators (to be determined), such as homework
completion and grades.” The program is the brainchild of Roland G.
Fryer, Jr., an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University.
At the press conference few, if any, details were made available
about how the program would be funded and administered. Since then, I
have learned that the assertion that the program would be funded by the
District government and Harvard University is not accurate. The District
will be paying $1.7 million of the $2.7 million first-year cost for the
program, and it will be seeking that money from foundations and the
business community. Fryer’s American Inequality Lab at Harvard’s
W.E.B. DuBois Institute (http://www.americaninequalitylab.com)
will provide in-kind administrative support, which it values at one
million dollars, but no cash. Fryer, who at the press conference was
identified only as a Harvard academician, is actually on leave from
Harvard. He is now on the payroll of Rhee’s mentor, New York City’s
School Chancellor Joel Klein, where his title is Chief Equality Officer
for the New York City Department of Education.
Under the plan, students in grades 6, 7, and 8 will be paid by having
funds deposited in bank accounts opened in their names. Some time after
the program begins in October, students will be issued debit cards.
Given the Fenty administration’s recent problems with debit cards
issued to participants in the summer youth employment program, many are
raising questions about the administration’s ability to administer
three thousand new debit cards properly, as well as the wisdom of giving
debit cards to such a young population.
At the press conference, I pressed Fenty, Rhee, and Fryer to comment
on what life lesson the “pay for performance” program would have on
students. Rhee was dismissive of the question, and said that adults are
paid for going to work. Fryer was also dismissive, and commented that
kids in the suburbs are rewarded by their parents on a daily basis with
cars, dinners out, and so on; he said this was just “leveling the
playing field” by rewarding inner-city kids. By and large, however,
the reaction of DC residents has been negative. In an online Washington
Post poll, 70 percent of all respondents said that it was not a “good
idea to pay students for their success in school,” 27 percent favored
the idea, and 2 percent had no opinion; see Marc Fisher, “Desperation
Time in DC: School Is Money?” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2008/08/desperation_time_in_dc_school.html).
DC residents’ instinctive skepticism about the initiative seems to
be well placed. The New York Post wrote on August 22 that “Schools’
Cash-to-Kids Plan Doesn’t Pay Off,” http://tinyurl.com/5ooknm: “A
controversial initiative that pays high-school students for passing
Advanced Placement tests has failed to spur more kids to make the grade.”
In New York City, the percentage of students who passed the Advanced
Placement tests actually fell from 35 percent in 2007, before the
payments started, to 32 percent in 2008, after the experiment began. On
August 21, the Wall Street Journal wrote (“When Schools Offer
Money as a Motivator,” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121928822683759447.html),
that studies of various cash payment plans for students have shown
decidedly mixed results. The Journal noted that, “Many
researchers and policymakers are looking to Roland G. Fryer, an
economics professor at Harvard and ‘chief equality officer’ of the
New York City public schools. He oversees a privately funded program in
New York City separate from the AP rewards program. In the Fryer
initiative, about 10,000 elementary and middle school students earn cash
and prepaid cell phones for high state test scores and good grades. He
recently launched a study of the program and expects the initial results
to be complete by October. One question is whether gains attributed to
cash incentives will continue if students no longer are offered rewards.
‘You pay a price in motivation,’ says Barry Schwartz, a cognitive
psychology professor at Swarthmore College. Cash incentives could
ultimately diminish students’ desire to learn for non-financial
reasons, he says.”)
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Rhee Lacks an Educational Plan, Which
Undermines Student Achievement
Candi Peterson, saveourcounselors@gmail.com
As long as DC Public Schools continues to place excessed teachers in
positions that are not in their area of professional certification, DC
students will continue to be shortchanged. Eliminating school counselor
positions on the elementary level, closing twenty-three schools and
restructuring twenty-seven schools simultaneously in one year, while
cutting many required teaching positions, contributes to a shortage of
available teaching positions citywide. Another factor that contributes
to the citywide teacher shortage problem is Rhee’s decision to recruit
and hire new teachers and counselors before locating positions for
existing excessed staff. In addition, many teaching positions, such as
math coaches and science teachers, etc., have been eliminated altogether
while other teaching positions have been reduced to half time.
The frequency with which DC teachers are placed outside of their
certification areas casts doubt on Rhee’s commitment to comply with No
Child Left Behind law “which requires that states create a plan in
which poor and minority children are not more likely to be taught by
inexperienced teachers, unqualified teachers, or those teaching outside
their field of certification.” Teachers, counselors, and art
therapists are being compelled by DCPS central office and principals to
accept alternate positions for which they are not qualified and
certified to teach. For example, art therapists are being assigned to
function as art teachers, while counselors are being assigned to
function as classroom teachers while regular educators are being
assigned to work as special educators, and the list goes on.
If Chancellor Rhee had developed a systematic educational plan as
required, then many of these issues would have been worked out earlier
on. Without the creation of an educational plan as well as immediate
policy changes under Rhee’s Renew, Revitalize and Reorganize school
model — student learning and achievement will continue to be
undermined while DC teachers and providers will continued to be
devalued.
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One Hundred Bucks Every Two Weeks for Being
Polite
Ed T Barron, edtbv1@macdotcom
How about two slaps upside the head for being impolite? The proposal
to pay kids to come to school is whacko. Much better to pay the parents
one hundred dollars a month for making sure that their kids do their
homework, get good grades, and always come to school. There’s too much
coddling of kids these days. They’ll never grow up having any sense of
responsibility with all the nurturing. Even the colleges are babying the
students. Life is not easy, and kids should learn that and learn that
they control their own destiny. Schools should be much like employers.
Do the work and you can stay. Don’t do the work, you fail and out you
go. Sure, some students need extra tutoring. Provide it. But the kids
must assume responsibility for coming to school, behaving, and trying
their best to learn.
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US Flag at Francis Scott Key Park
Mary Anne McCormick, mamccredz@msn.com
Is the United States Park Service doing its job? The US flag (not
contemporary — it is historic) at Francis Scott Key Park in Georgetown
has not been lit after dark for at least two months. The US Flag Code
calls for all US flags to be illuminated after dark. I “Googled” it,
and I E-mailed the Georgetown BID about it; I could not find anyone to
contact and did not know it was a US Park Service property.
The BID gave me the E-mail address of adrienne_coleman@nps.gov.
I E-mailed twice; there was no answer to the first, and the second
bounced back. I called the National Park Service. A rude, dismissive,
inarticulate woman put me into someone’s voice mail. I left a message.
Someone actually called me back: Cindy Cox, Deputy Superintendent. She
said they have been having problems with the lights and something about
electricians. She thanked me for letting her know. She said the US Park
employees don’t look at anything or see anything after they get off
work. She encouraged me to call her, though. When I tried to note the
number that she was calling from, it showed on my caller ID as NO NAME
NO NUMBER; she responded that the Park Service phones are another thing
that needs to be taken care of.
Just what is happening with the Park Service? I asked Ms. Cox to note
the irony of the historic United States Flag not being illuminated over
the Francis Scott Key Park by the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I was given
no assurance that it would be taken care of immediately. The United
States Park Service could do better. I have Cindy Cox’s number and
E-mail, if anyone is interested. Can I be the only person who has
noticed this? Perhaps I’m the only one who cares.
###############
Corporations hire lobbyists, and the good ones ain’t cheap. These
lobbyists pressure politicians to support policies that (further) enrich
the rich. (The technical term for this is “economic development.”)
Patton-Boggs is maybe the most criminal of the firms in the industry.
(That’s a tall task indeed: I’ll submit a follow-up piece offering
evidence of this).
But what if, in a move towards greater efficiency, rather than hiring
lobbyists to pressure politicians, a firm could simply hire the
politicians directly? Patton-Boggs had just this in mind when it
approached Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans. And Jack has come through in
flying colors. I imagine that, dollar-for-dollar, the $240,000-a-year
that Patton-Boggs pays the councilmember is the best investment it
makes.
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On any given day, there are roughly two thousand single men in
District homeless shelters, many of them, perhaps most, substance
abusers, commonly alcoholics. The shelters put these men out on the
street early every morning, and they aren’t allowed back in until
evening. During the day, these unhappy men occupy our parks, having
nowhere else to go, and use our alleys for toilets, having no
alternative. Practically every restaurant in the inner city has a “toilets
for customers only” sign up.
Understandably, nobody wants such men around their homes. Somebody’s
gotten the idea that such indigent alcohol abusers can be dealt with by
eliminating the sale of single containers of alcoholic beverages by
liquor stores, and single-sales bans are all the rage at District
council. Advocates assert that such bans accomplish wonderful things,
but never admit that those benefits come by simply displacing the
problem into adjacent, ban-free neighborhoods. As one Mount Pleasant
resident noted, when a singles ban went into effect here, the problem
drinkers “evaporated.” They weren’t still there, but now sober;
no, they “went away” to somebody else’s neighborhood. That was
nice for him, to be sure, but the neighborhood receiving these badly
behaved men is not likely to be happy about it.
Yes, there’s a better way than the council’s beggar-thy-neighbor
policy. Mayor Fenty supports permanent supportive housing, which gives
such men a place to be during the day and access to toilet facilities,
getting them out of our parks and alleys. Unfortunately the council is
still fixated on single sales bans, quick no-cost fixes that don’t
really solve the problem, but win votes from residents. In July, the
council declared bills for single sales bans in Ward 2, Ward 6, and
Mount Pleasant “emergency” legislation, due to the supposed “crisis”
in “anti-social behavior.” Meanwhile dealing Mayor Fenty’s real
solution to the problem, funding and expansion of the Permanent
Supportive Housing program, proceeds at a leisurely, non-emergency pace.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Stand Up Candidate Forum for Delegate, US
Representative and Senator, September 5
Bill Mosley, billmosley@comcast.net
The Stand Up for Democracy in DC Coalition will present a “Statehood
Now” forum for candidates for Delegate to the US House of
Representatives, US “Shadow” Representative and US “Shadow”
Senator from the District of Columbia on Friday, September 5, 7-9 p.m.,
at the University of the District of Columbia Van Ness Campus, Building
39, Room 201. The candidates will be asked to address how they intend to
use their offices to achieve statehood for DC.
The organization is holding the forum for candidates for Delegate,
Representative, and Senator because these positions were established
specifically to advocate for the District and, in the case of the US
Senator and Representative, expressly to lobby for statehood, the path
chosen by DC voters in a 1980 referendum.
The public is invited to participate and admission is free.
Candidates will be questioned by a panel of activists and members of the
news media (in formation) as well as the audience. Askia Muhammad, news
director for WPFW-FM, will be moderator. For information, contact Anise
Jenkins, 361-9739, anisej@nifcomm.com,
or Bill Mosley, 360-5414, billmosley@comcast.net,
or visit http://www.freedc.org.
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