I don’t have much time to write about the change at Springarn Senior High.  What I will do is leave this excerpt from Thomas Cleary’s translation of Zen Lessons (from Classics of Buddhism and Zen the Collected Translations of Thomas Cleary). See if you recognize anything in terms of Michelle Rhee’s management style.  I will come back tonight and, hopefully, write something longer about Springarn.

Examples

Miaoxi said:

The ancients would adopt what was good when they saw it and if they made a mistake they would change it. following virtue and cultivating accord, they wanted to escape without fault.  They worried about nothing so much as not knowing their own bad points, and liked nothing so much as learning of their mistakes.

Were the ancients like this because of insufficiency of intelligence, or because their perceptions were not clear?  In truth it was an admonition to those of later times who would try to aggrandize themselves and belittle others.

The expansion of a community, with people from all quarters, is not something that can be achieved by one person alone — it is necessary to be assisted by the ears, eyes, and thoughts of associates, in order to fully comprehend what is right and to know the people’s feelings and conditions.

If one rests on high rank, taking oneself seriously, being fastidious about minor tasks but slighting the great body of the community as a whole, not knowing who the wise are, not perceiving who are no good, not changing what is wrong, not following what is right, acting arbitrarily as one pleases, without any deference, this is the foundation of calamity.  How could not one beware?

Should it actually turn out that there are none among one’s associates worth consulting, one should still take examples from sages of the past.  If you shut everyone out, you cannot quite “let in the hundred rivers to become an ocean.”       Letter to Master Bao

An incredible thing is happening over at the Washington Post.  A kind of back-and-forth between Bill Turque and the editors about his blog.  Yesterday Turque posted a revealing bit on the reasons why, during this recent flap of Michelle Rhee’s comments, that the Post seems to publish two versions of the same story. This is no surprise to many of us who have complained about the Post in the last few years.  In terms of Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty the Post acts more as their public relations firm than a newspaper. Turque’s article was proof of the pudding.  To read the most revealing version, though, you had to get online early – because the editors went to work and sliced and diced the remarks that, I am sure, were most stinging in their truth.  Here is the article as it first appeared:

One newspaper, two stories

By Bill Turque
Many of you may have noticed something more than a tad odd Tuesday morning in our coverage of Chancellor Rhee’s now immortal comments to “Fast Company.” My story, which appeared on the front of the Metro section, said that Rhee had yet to explain or elaborate, and that there would be no comment until later in the day. My Monday evening blog entry said pretty much the same thing.

The editorial page told a different story. Citing “information released by the chancellor’s office on Monday,” it said that of the 266 teachers laid off in October, six had served suspensions for corporal punishment, two had been absent without leave on multiple occasions, and one was on administrative leave for allegedly having sex with a student.

So, after asking DCPS about this since Friday–and being promised a response all day Monday–I read the answers in an editorial. Channel 4’s Tom Sherwood also had Rhee’s explanation on the air Monday.

But it’s the disconnect between the editorial page and the news section that I feel requires some kind explanation. So let me try.

The news and opinion columns of The Post are wholly separate and independent operations. This assertion frequently draws a torrent of skepticism, but if this episode does nothing else, it should give the lie to the notion that there is some sort of sinister linkage. I have little-to-no contact with Jo-Ann Armao, who writes The Post’s education editorials (full disclosure: Jo-Ann hired me in 2002 when she was the assistant managing editor for metro news; but we’re all allowed a lapse of judgment now and then). About the only time we cross paths is at news events involving District education. Jo-Ann is a dogged journalist who pursues her own information.

That includes talking to Chancellor Rhee. And while I don’t have their call sheets in front of me, I would wager that the Chancellor talks to Jo-Ann more than she does to me. (After a well-documented period of silence, the Chancellor started taking my calls and e-mails again last summer)

That’s fine. Chancellor Rhee can obviously talk to whoever she wants about whatever she wants. While some of my colleagues don’t agree, my view is that Jo-Ann isn’t responsible for watching my back journalistically any more than I would be expected to align my reporting with her points of view.

The chancellor is clearly more comfortable speaking with Jo-Ann, which is wholly unsurprising. I’m a beat reporter charged with covering, as fully and fairly as I can, an often turbulent story about the chancellor’s attempts to fix the District’s public schools. The job involves chronicling messy and contentious debates based in both politics and policy, and sometimes publishing information she would rather not see in the public domain.

Jo-Ann, on the other hand, sits on an editorial board whose support for the chancellor has been steadfast, protective and, at times, adoring.

That’s what editorial boards do. They form opinions and write about them. People can buy in.

Or not.

Where this gets complicated is that board’s stance, and the chancellor’s obvious rapport with Jo-Ann, also means that DCPS has a guaranteed soft landing spot for uncomfortable or inconvenient disclosures–kind of a print version of the Larry King Show. This happened last September during the flap over the out-of-boundary admission of Mayor Fenty’s twin sons to Lafayette Elementary in Chevy Chase.

The chancellor repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether policies and procedures had been followed to place the kids in the coveted school. A few days after the dust settled, an editorial offered, without attribution, an “innocent explanation”: the Fentys neighborhood school, West Elementary, had only one fourth grade class. Lafayette’s multiple fourth-grade sections made it possible to separate the twins, which studies show is developmentally desirable.

Are Fenty and Rhee gaming the system by using the editorial page this way? Of course. Is this a healthy thing for readers of The Post? Probably not. Is it going to keep me from doing my job effectively?

Nope.

Compare it to the article that is online and you will easily find the differences without anyone having to point them out.  What is the Post afraid of? The revelation that they are duplicitous in their coverage of city officials.  Anyone who has read the recent editorials in support of Michelle Rhee knows this. Their adherence to the belief that Ms. Rhee is the best thing DCPS has ever had happen to it is adamant.

Those of us working in the toxic atmosphere that is DCPS under Michelle Rhee understand what it means to have deaf leadership – which is what seems to be happening at the Post.  They might do well to study this lesson from the Zen Master Caotang on leadership:

From Discerning Feelings

If the leader cannot minutely discern people’s psychological conditions, and the feeling of those below is not communicated above, then above and below oppose each other and matters are disordered. This is how leadership goes to ruin.

It may happen that a leader will presume upon intellectual brilliance and often hold to biased views, failing to comprehend people’s feelings, rejecting community counsel and giving importance to his own authority, neglecting public consideration and practicing private favoritism–all of this causes the road of advance in goodness to become narrower and narrower, and causes the path of responsibility for the community to become fainter and fainter.

Such leaders repudiate whatever they have never before seen or heard, and become set in their ways, to which they are habituated and by which they are veiled. To hope that the leadership of people like this would be great and far-reaching, is like walking backward trying to go forward.   Letter to Shantang

This ancient letter could have been slipped into the letters to the editor today it has so much relevance to what is happening in DCPS, and at the Washington Post.  Just listen to any interview with Michelle Rhee in which she claims collaboration to be overrated or look at how she treated both the Hardy and Ellington communities, not to mention P.R. Harris and all the other schools where changes were often made against the community’s wishes.  Time for the deaf ears to open and the blind eyes to see.

I have decided to help out Michelle Rhee.  Just a little friendly coaching.  Just repeat after me: “I’m sorry.”  That’s all. Just a simple apology. Oh, and maybe get rid of the royal pronoun when talking about your own actions – you know, as when you said “OUR intention was not to paint all teachers with a broad brush stroke.”  You see there wasn’t more than one person speaking to Jeff Chu of Fast Company, just you.  And painting all teachers with a broad brush stroke is exactly what you did, which is why maybe, just maybe, feeling a little remorse and offering an apology would be the right thing to do.

Unlike some I do not hold to the idea that this was just Ms. Rhee shooting her mouth off.  The Washington Post’s editorial today was typical in its defense of Rhee and also condescending in trying to pass off her remarks as having “inadvertently hurt” some teachers. Rhee’s quote in Fast Company was quite definitive. She did not say I got rid of several teachers who had hit their students, I got rid of a teacher who had had sex with his/her students… etc.  No, she said “teachers”.  Plural.  The message was loud and clear: I had to do this RIF because look at the type of teachers we have in DCPS.  She maligned 266 people, more actually because everyone seems to forget that within two weeks of the RIF she had fired more teachers bringing the number closer to 300.  Alright, let’s do a little math. We will subtract 9 from 266 (that’s a take away problem for those of you who have trouble with math). What is the difference?  257.  And that is just it, that it makes no difference to Ms. Rhee that she depicted 265 teachers as having had sex with their pupils or 259 as having hit their students or 264 as missing months of work at a time.

I had friends and colleagues who were fired as part of that RIF (please let us use the correct words here – fired – because using terms such as RIF’ed is exactly the kind of euphemistic language that bureaucrats such as Rhee love). These teachers were dedicated and hard working teachers.  They were let go for all the wrong reasons. In one case, the person was fired because they had the temerity to advocate for their students against the principal. God forbid we have such teachers in our schools.  I resent their being further maligned by the careless remarks of Ms. Rhee – I will give her the benefit of the doubt and call them careless as opposed to willful. That is more of a benefit than she has ever given the teachers in our schools.

From the start we have been the enemy and she made that clear quite early. Anyone who thinks that what she wants is an intelligent teaching staff, able to think independently and critically, is seriously deluded. She wants those who will follow directives without question. People who will, as Thoreau said, “serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies… In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.”  What is wanted are Thoreau’s wooden men.  They’re easier to burn when the need arises.

Last night I returned home after an incredibly long day at school and had an even longer night answering parent emails. Around 11 pm I happened to look at my inbox and saw this headline:  Rhee Says Rif’ed Teachers Abused and Molested Students.  This was the new post on The Washington Teacher.  I could not believe what I was reading.  In February’s issue of Fast Company Michelle Rhee is interviewed about the RIF in September. Here is the article in full:

Update: Michelle Rhee vs. the D.C. Teachers’ Union

By: Jeff ChuMon Feb 1, 2010

Eighteen months after we profiled Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee (”The Iron Chancellor,” September 2008), she still hasn’t won union approval of a new contract. After the October layoffs of 266 teachers and staff, the union claimed Rhee used a budget crunch as a pretext for dismissing veteran teachers, since seniority rules don’t cover cuts for fiscal reasons. “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school,” Rhee says. “Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?” The release of 2009 test scores was good news for Rhee: Only D.C. and four states showed gains in math for fourth and eighth graders. “We’re not good yet,” she says, “but I’m seeing the quality of instruction improving.”

I was appalled and disgusted. I had to wonder what the hell she was thinking making such an incredibly damaging statement about such a large group of people.  This is easily the most reckless and irresponsible statement ever made by Michelle Rhee.  With this one statement she casts aspersions on close to 300 people.  Many of them were good teachers, some were profiled in the Washington Post, some many of us know.  I know at least two people who were rif’ed who I consider to be good teachers and people of high ethical and moral values.  These people had to suffer the unexpected pain of losing jobs they loved only to have salt poured into their wounds by such a glib and destructive statement.  Imagine being a Rif’ed teacher looking for a job and now, on top of stating that you were let go by DCPS, you have to defend yourself against such accusations.

I cannot think what purpose it serves to malign so many in such a careless way. Harder to believe, as well, that Ms. Rhee would put herself in such a strange position. After all, if a teacher assaulted a child or had sex with a child then where are the police reports, the arrest record, the official record of report?  Bill Turque on the DC Schools Insider asked many of these questions to Rhee’s people and is waiting for a response. It is ludicrous that the District would simply fire teachers accused of abuse and sexual misconduct and not seek charges against them – leaving them to get  jobs in other school districts.

This seems like a desperate and self-serving act designed to do nothing more than strengthen her already weak justification for firing 300 teachers two months after hiring 900 teachers.  I am reminded of history once again. This time the McCarthy hearings and Joseph Welch castigating the witch hunting senator.

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

Why Ms. Rhee felt the need to assassinate Rif’ed teachers further is beyond comprehension.  What she said is beyond decency.

I was so happy to get out of the “professional development” day on Friday that I left my notebook with notes at school.  I had wanted to use the notes as a jumping-off point for this article but I will have to rely on my mind-numbed brain’s memory.  Any detailed examination of this entire once-a-month-Fridays-for-professional-development would prove it to be the farce that it is in less than a minute. Instead of any real, in-depth professional development that would help us in our teaching we are given PD on IMPACT and the Teaching and Learning Framework, something that seems quite self-serving in regards to downtown.  Perhaps in Michelle Rhee’s mind these PD’s are one and the same with substantial, informative and instructive professional development – the kind of PD  that a teacher actually learns something from, is engaged by, and is able to make an effective part of their classroom – but I don’t really think so.  She is not naive and she would have to be either naive or deluded beyond redemption to believe that.

What did I learn on Friday?  I learned that  IMPACT is just as arbitrary as I believed it would be, that it is no less arbitrary than the old PPEP was and it will be used in just as arbitrary a fashion as that old evaluation system.  The difference is that where the PPEP forced teachers to “game” the system with a dog-and-pony show once or twice a year, IMPACT forces them to do so five times a year.  The statements made by a number of teachers at my school about their evaluation conference experiences only reinforced this belief.

Some teachers were told by their Master Educator that regardless of whether they already had done something before the ME arrived for the 30 minutes they should “drop it back in again” so that the ME would witness it.  In one instance the teacher was well into their lesson when the ME arrived, manipulatives had been used already, the students were towards the end of their lesson, the ME gave no credit for the fact that materials were out and obviously used. Not having witnessed the use of the manipulatives was equal, to this particular ME at least, to nothing being used whatsoever.  The ME told the teacher that next time they should just “drop it back in again” to insure that the ME sees the manipulatives being used.  Several other teachers had similar stories to tell, basically that it was better to almost start over if the ME walks into the room having missed the crucial aspects of your lesson – the parts that score high on the rubric.  If they missed you stating the objective then, regardless of whether you had stated it 10 times before they arrived, and equally regardless of whether your students demonstrate their understanding of that objective by the way they are working, state it again and have the students state it as well – it never hurts to make sure. In other words, hit the replay button when the ME walks into your room to ensure their witnessing the essentials of your lesson – the hotpoints – because that is all that IMPACT really cares about.

And this is the inherent problem with IMPACT. It is not designed to authenticate good teaching nor to help teachers be better teachers, it has been designed as a system to “catch” teachers at being bad.  It is like a radar gun on the highway. Many speeders will be caught but those using the proper equipment or methods will slip by.  Teachers will learn how to game this system pretty quickly. They will be forced to create a false environment or face getting a poor evaluation.

Not all the Master Educators are being so dogmatic and rigid. Some are coming in, getting a feel for the room, the teacher and the teaching style and trying to be fair in the way they score the teacher. But still, there are elements of IMPACT that simply don’t allow for judgment calls to be made by the ME. It is either/or; there or not there at the moment of witness, evidence be damned.  I think with such check-off lists the most fair-minded person could find themselves constrained.

IMPACT has some very good parts to it. There are those sections based on best practices, much of it coming from The Skillful Teacher by Saphier and Gower, that deal with management, motivation, high expectations, use of time, etc., stuff that should and can be evaluated.  But this is mixed in with a lot of bean counting – how many students have their eyes on you, how many times you orally encourage students, how many times… well, you get the idea.  I find it interesting that differentiated teaching is expected in terms of how we, as teachers, instruct our students but the student responses are expected to be uniform – lambs looking up and baaing to their shepherd. It matters not that the student may take in information differently, staring at their desk but hearing every word you say, able to give back to you, verbatim, what you said, if the student’s eyes are not glued to you than all is naught. Some Master Educators have said as much, stating to various teachers that while they saw evidence of non-verbal encouragement and of students obviously having heard the lesson despite seeming as if they were not in the room the ME could not record that because there was nothing in the rubric for non-verbal communication.

What IMPACT does not measure are the intangibles. The indefinable aspects of a teacher’s craft that can be witnessed but not measured: the feel of the room, the rapport between the students and their teacher, the way the students respond to questions, how parents feel about the teacher, how colleagues feel about a particular teacher, the philosophy that exists inside that classroom. These things make up the art of teaching and it is hard to put on a check-off list. The Reflective Educator covers this subject quite nicely in his current post over at Filthy Teaching.  In What Makes a Great Teacher RE goes into excellent detail about what real teaching entails. The only thing I would add to what he has to say is what I said in an earlier post on this blog:

For me teaching is a vocation. A calling.  It requires of me the same degree of commitment that faith requires, a commitment that does not waver regardless of the number of trials that rattle the windows and shakes the foundations.  The title of this blog comes from a quote by William Stafford, a great teacher and poet, He says “I’m a priest of the imagination, and when I go to class my job is conducting the inner light of those people to wherever it’s going…” That for me is the essence of what I do daily. I am conducting the inner light, the inner intelligence, of these children. I am their guide, helping them to find their way, setting up signposts for them to be able to read and make their way, to chart their own course. Some may not realize it right away. Their appreciation for what I do may come at a much later time in their lives. For right now they will fight and curse me and consider me the bane of their existence.  In some cases that realization will never come. For some, though, I see the recognition in their eyes that they understand and even appreciate what I am doing.  The parents of these children are no different. I am grateful for those that see this and appreciate what I do and a little sad for those that do not.  But neither defines who I am or what I do.  (from Why I Teach, August 9, 2009)

Michelle Rhee’s plans calls for a teaching force that somehow can sustain a constant influx of teachers every 4 years or so.  In several interviews she has stated that she does not see why teaching needs to be a lifetime profession such as medicine. Why not have people put several years into teaching and then move on to something else.  The people Ms. Rhee has surrounded herself with are all examples of this – they teach for 3 or 4 or 5 years and move on.  Many of their views on teaching seem to be short range. It seems as if they do not at all see the danger of having an inexperienced staff  because, after all, exuberance and enthusiasm more than makes up for experience, at least according to their philosophy.  This is why IMPACT is so short-sighted, it isn’t out to improve teachers and keep them in the system longer, it is a plan that drives teachers out – good and bad – to make room for more teachers both good and bad.  Even those who will get good marks on IMPACT will find themselves chaffing under the demands of this system and its cold-hearted evaluation of what teachers do. IMPACT is the creation of people who see teaching not as a calling but as a job that anyone can do as long as they hit all the right buttons.

And, after all, if we are saying in every speech and interview we give that teaching does not need to be a lifetime career like medicine, then it is only natural to believe that anyone can teach.  It boggles my own mind that this could be the philosophy of someone running a school system, that this is what they would want.  Most good teachers that I know and respect are pretty consistent about one thing: that it takes at least 5 years to begin to be a really good teacher; to know what is necessary and what is a waste of time; to be effective more often than not; to be more concise.  I found this true for myself.  I know few people who disagree with this. The people I have met that do disagree with this, that believe that a teacher can be outstanding in their first two years, have almost always, to a person, been so filled with their own self-worth that they seemed to think they had nothing to learn from anyone else.  Amateurs.

In Russia, just before World War II, Stalin had purged most of the experienced officers of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Civil War of 1921.  If a man had been an officer in either war they were purged – either shot or sent to Siberia, 35,000 in all.  Germany attacked Russia in 1941 and had a series of quick and almost devastating victories.  Leningrad (St. Petersburg) was under siege and the German line stopped not far outside of Moscow.  Stalin quickly “rehabilitated” any officers and soldiers in the camps still alive and in condition to fight.  Experience was needed. These experienced soldiers stopped the German advance and, with the aid of the Russian winter, helped defeat the Germans.

Before I am accused of comparing Ms. Rhee to Stalin (I am not nor do I believe she is anything like a dictator – despite her own words) I would like to say that while enthusiasm and youth have their positive aspects neither can really trump experience.  Experience is what carries you through the most difficult parts of any task, experience teaches you how to succeed.  I don’t want to see our system become a system where our oldest veteran teachers have only 4 or 5 years experience. I have heard that positions for mentor teachers were being advertised on the DCPS website and that the requirement for this position was “at least 2 years experience teaching”.  This is what I am talking about. A teacher with only 2 years experience acting as “mentor” to a teacher with no experience.  That is the blind leading the blind.  It reminds me of when I first started teaching, the mothers of many of the 3rd and 4th graders were in their early twenties, which meant that they gave birth when they were in their early to mid teens. “Kids raising kids” the old veterans would say, shaking their heads in sorrow and disbelief.  When inexperience becomes the teacher of inexperience we end up with a nation of amateurs.

“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thought.”  John Locke

It is a sad day for Hardy Students.  They will get up this morning, watch the snow come down, and have to find out that their principal has been replaced.  The students I know at Hardy like their principal.  He is demanding and rigorous and they respect that.  He has high expectations and they appreciate this. He holds them accountable for their actions and those that always follow the rules feel a sense of relief  and those that like to play with the rules understand what the consequences will be. In short, Principal Pope is a leader which is why he is so well respected by the Hardy community.

Notice I say “the Hardy community”.  Not the community of Georgetown but the community of the school. Georgetown long ago abandoned Hardy, choosing to send their kids to prestigious private schools instead of to a mere local public school, mediocre (in their minds) at best.  Of course, now things have changed, haven’t they?  Suddenly, with a bright new building and a Chancellor who routinely gives wealthy white parents what they want, they have a chance to take back the school they never used, even if they will more than likely abandon Hardy once the economy turns back their way (oh, and it will and they will, they always do).

Last night, at a meeting at Hardy Middle School, Michelle Rhee told the Hardy community that the principal who had worked to make the school successful and a desireable choice for parents, regardless of their neighborhood, would be replaced at the end of the year (you can bet that the replacement will have some kind of connection to Ms. Rhee from somewhere else – in other words one of her own). Here is what one Hardy parent wrote on the Washington Post’s blog, The Wire:

Notice what she says repeatedly: “a good manager would have…” This parent is on the mark on every charge.  Michelle Rhee tells us one thing and does another.  Her actions drown out her words. She leaves us, once again, with questions that demand answers.

• why tamper with a school that is obviously doing well and is so much appreciated by the parents that USE that school?
• what exactly is stopping the neighborhood parents from going to the school? Could you give proof that they have been kept from ever attending Hardy or that they have been deliberately “tricked” out of attending Hardy?
• do you have no respect for the current community that Hardy has developed over the time that Mr. Pope has been running the school?
• exactly why shouldn’t a middle school have a strong arts program? Don’t most studies show that a strong arts program in schools are a key component to academic success?
• do you think that anyone really believes that Hardy will cease to have a strong art and music program once Pope is removed and the out-of-boundary students are pushed out by neighborhood kids?
• here’s a good one: how many neighborhood families (presumably the Key Elementary families) will really send their kids to Hardy once the change is made? Do you have numbers? Have they pledged their support much like Gates and Broad have pledged their money – i.e. if such-and-such happens then I promise… etc.

Ms. Rhee, in the footage I watched on ABC News, said that Hardy “is a neighborhood school for the neighborhood. It has never been a magnet school.”  True enough but what can be said of a neighborhood school that has been abandoned by its neighbors and built to a respectable model of a school by people from around the city. Instead of celebrating a successful school built on the diversity of the city demonstrating on a daily basis a model of how diversity can work, that diversity is punished, the hard work the Hardy community put into the school is insulted and denigrated, and the good parents and students of Hardy are deprived of the rewards of their efforts.

Let us be very clear here and emphasize this as strongly as possible, NOTHING has ever kept the families of Key Elementary of taking control of their local middle school. The argument that the admittance process was confusing is ridiculous beyond compare.  These people are not naive, they are not uneducated (there are more degrees in one square block of Georgetown than some entire neighborhoods in this city possess), they know, very well, that their local public school HAS to accept their child regardless of the intelligence, academic skills, talents or self control of the child. Hardy has to accept their child period.  They know this and everyone knows that they know this.  So why this game? Why the underhanded dealing?

For Ms. Rhee to consistently say that all her actions are in the best interests of the children of our city than upend a school with a successfully working program, that consistently exceeds its numbers and has never been in danger of closing in the name of neighborhood parents who have consistently rejected Hardy in favor of Georgetown Day, Maret, Sidwell, National Cathedral and St. Alban’s (we are talking the elite here), is double-talk of the worst variety.  These future Hardy parents have a few Rhee models to look to: Oyster and Shaw.  Both schools had their principals replaced, both schools dropped in scores.  Oyster did not make their AYPs for the first time in years.  What do you think will happen to these new, potential Hardy parents once the same thing occurs at Hardy? Potential is the key word here, potential parents. They haven’t even committed yet.

I have heard arguments from supporters of Michelle Rhee and Andrian Fenty that usually center around the ideas that, one, they are making some good changes and, two, they are certainly better than what Marion Barry did to this city. I think their have been some good changes in the schools and in the city but I also think that the poor management choices (of both Fenty and Rhee) outnumber the good.  As for the comparison to Barry I ask this: how is the consistent rewarding of city positions to friends, former colleagues, husbands and wives of colleagues, and other individuals from your “set”, regardless of their skills and resume, different from Barry? How is the replacing of successful individuals with friends and cronies different from Barry?  How is the lack of transparancy, the double-talk, the questionable tactics and the disregard and disrespect for rules and procedures different from Barry? How is the refusal to asnwer questions, the denials, subterfuge, disingenuousness, and even facile lying (Rhee admitted that one her deputies lied because she felt it would be better for the parents to here what she had to say in this meeting) different from Barry? Honestly, all that is missing here is a hooker and some crack.

Here is an audio recording  from the Georgetown Metropolitan of the meeting at Hardy.  I cannot reccomend enough that everyone hear this dialogue. Listen to how many times Rhee avoids answering specific questions by obstinately repeating her answer from previous questioners.  Not once does she say that Mr. Pope has a choice in whether he stays or goes nor does she answer the question about what would happen to Mr. Pope if he chose to stay at Hardy. I will gladly take bets from anyone on whether Mr. Pope is still working for DCPS in a year’s time.

Recently I was reading Jay Matthews blog, Class Struggle, on the Washington Post online edition. It was the Jay’s post about the evaluation of Dan Goldfarb a Benjamin Banneker High School AP History teacher.  One respondent had this to say, and I quote it in full:

It sounds like the evaluation form is identical to the one used by Kaplan “Higher Education” (owned by the Washington Post). I remember it, as I taught there before I got a position teaching at a real college. While these evaluations may be appropriate for corporate training, from which they were adopted, both the form and the evaluation are garbage in a real education setting. They’re based on the current education fad of student-directed learning that TFA and corporate education have embraced because it allows them to give any idiot a script and call it education, and because it allows anyone who can recite its simplistic pedagogy to become an evaluator. It does, indeed, use evaluation criteria that MIGHT be appropriate for elementary school, and it does not account for either student learning or effective teaching styles. My guess is neither the evaluator, nor anyone involved in the “creation” (by photocopy? cut and paste?) of the evaluation form could recognize an effective teacher if one hit him/her in the face. (Which may happen, if they continue with this baseless “evaluation” system.) By the way, it took Rhee and DCPS almost 3 years to “develop” an evaluation system that was plagiarized from corporate training? Haven’t we seen this sort of laziness and dishonesty from the Fenty education team before?

Indeed, where have we seen this type of thing before? If true that IMPACT bears resemblence to Kaplan’s own evaluation form I cannot say I would be at all surprised. Increasingly the Post shows itself to be uncompromising in the protection of its investment in Kaplan.  When it comes to any criticism of Michelle Rhee… wait, have they included any criticism of Ms. Rhee beyond the pages of their blogs? 

There needs to be an investigative article from some news organizaton into all of this mess. Why? Because there are too many ethical questions that have not been answered by Ms. Rhee.  It would be one thing if there were only one lapse or even two. Human error accounts for such things. But if we look at the whole a troubling picture emerges. For example:

• inflation of resumes – Both Rhee and Jason Kamras make claims on their biographies. On her part, Ms. Rhee made unsubstantiated claims of incredible student progress during her short time as a teacher. Kamras’ bio claims that all of his math students at Sousa High School made AYP, a claim refuted by former math teacher Guy Bradenberg who demonstrates, on his blog GFBrandenburg’s Blog, that only 14% of Kamras’ students made AYP.
• holding several, conflicting positions for one organization – Ms. Rhee’s titles at the St. Hope Charter Academy boggle the mind. Were all the positions paid positions? How did she perform the duties of board member and Chief Operating Officer at the same time? As president, Chief Operating Officer and Board Member at the same time? as President, COO, board member and a consultant for St. Hope on three projects, at the same time? How did she act as a consultant for St. Hope on the New Teacher Project, an organization that supplies teachers to schools, and as a consultant for St. Hope’s Human Resource Department’s reconstruction? Did she suggest to the Human Resource consultant which applicants to hire? It must have sounded interesting.
• Why, when  Rhee was apprised by St. Hope employee Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez about sexual misconduct allegations against Kevin Johnson by 3 Americorps teenage volunteers, did she not contact California State authorities she was obligated to do under California law?  Was this another one of those irksome laws she sees no problem in ignoring because she “knows” better?
• As COO and President, not to mention those consulting positions, was Ms. Rhee aware of the misuse of Americorps funds and volunteers as outlined in the Investigative General’s report of August 2008?  As one of the top three office holders of St. Hope it seems that either Ms. Rhee was aware and therefore particpated or that she was not aware and she was negligent in her duties or these positions were merely window dressing for her resume and padding for her bank account.
• Why did Ms. Rhee not only try to bring in St. Hope to run two DC schools but insisted that she need not recuse herself from the process despite her involvement with St. Hope and of her knowledge of the charges being investigated about St. Hope?

These are important questions that need to be answered, not dodged, not fobbed off with a comment by the DCPS spokesperson (read Rhee spokesperson) refuting the charges as old and unsubstantiated (that IG report is pretty substantial and damning). These questions need answering because the parents, teachers and children of DCPS deserve to know that the person that is leading their system is credible and has integrity.  

As teachers we have heard over and over the words “trust me” or “you just have to trust me”.  Recently we heard that Ms. Rhee was asking principals how to regain the trust of teachers. Leaving these questions unanswered, admitting, as she as done in countless interviews and speeches (all available online, by the way), about her willingness to disregard laws and rules she deems “bureaucratic” or “not very intelligent”; unsubstantiated claims Ms. Rhee has made both about her teaching at Harlem Park as well as the claims that her teaching there put her on the pages of the Wall Street Journal and on Good Morning America (archive searches show no mention of Rhee for that time); claims about gains in test scores despite the fact that 12 schools are being investigated for cheating (how will those scores fare if the cheating is proven to have happened?); and the recent firing/hiring/firing of DC teachers (all the while still soliciting for positions in DCPS as well as bringing in DC Teaching Fellows just after the last firing round) have done nothing to help us trust her.

The Post’s ownership of Kaplan Testing Services makes their coverage and claims for Ms. Rhee invalid. They have ceased to be a newspaper that investigates and reports and have stepped over the line into being a publicity department for Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee. Without a full, comprehensive investigation that gives us all the information and allows us to make an honest, informed judgment, the question of trust will remain open.  In the words of Sophocles “Trust dies but mistrust blossoms.”  In Washington DC our garden is in full bloom.

It is interesting to me how the Michelle Rhee/Kevin Johnson situation is playing out in the newspapers and blogs.  For those of you not keeping up suffice it to say that in a congressional investigation it has been revealed that Michelle Rhee acted as a fixer/damage controller for her fiance when he was accused by three girls of inappropriate touching.  I won’t go into the allegations but refer you to the articles via The Washington Teacher’s Blog. Candi Peterson has aggregated all the newsources beautifully and this allows you to read each and come to your own conclusion.

Personally, I think the sex part of this scandal is somewhat of a misdirection.  Not that I think the charges are groundless – read not only the Inspector General’s report but also the transcripts, as reported by The Sacramento News and Review , of Johnson’s phone conversation with another girl (not one of the accusers but a girl from 10 years before when Johnson was still a player on the Suns) and it will be hard to avert your eyes or find any excuse for him – but I think that there is much more damning evidence in the IG report than sex.

I cannot recommend enough reading the entire report right down to the interview of Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez, the former employee of St. Hope Academy Charter Schools.  Your jaw will drop, your eyes will pop out of your head.  No matter how you try to play this report it looks stinky.  Just a for instance: Michelle Rhee was listed as a board member of St. Hope. Simultaneously she was listed as: the consultant for the New Teacher Project, the consultant for the reconstruction bridge span, the consultant for the reconstruction of the HR department, while on another memo she was listed as the COO. In yet another letter she was listed as the President and Johnson as the CEO. So many hats for one person and absolutely no conflict of interest, is there, in being both a board member and a consultant for the very board of which you are a member. Sarcasm in that last sentence.

The discrepencies are legion in this report.  Just read the summary of charges.  According to these charges Johnson used Americorps money and Americorps volunteers in complete violation of the government contract and volunteer contract.  These volunteers are supposed to be used for the community and as tutors for students in schools. According to the report none of the volunteers did a single hour of tuturing for their time at St. Hope.  What they did do was wash KJ’s car, clean his place (Johnson told one employee that the Americorps volunteers were there for “grunt work”), worked as clerks in the St. Hope store, canvassed the neighborhoods for candidates for local political offices, used them to solicit funds for St. Hope – even traveling to NYC on the Americorps money to do so.  Johnson also misappropriated Americorps funds to pay SHA staff.

Here was one of the most incredible things I found in this report: the volunteers, who were on a stipend of around $4000 plus dollars, were charged rent for their housing.  The housing was owned by (wait for the drumroll please) The St. Hope Development Corporation – they were charged $300-$350 a month.  SHA never revealed to federal authorities their relationship to SHD (you would think, though, that they would change the name of their corporation just a tad so that no one would notice – you know, like Enron).

The sex allegations are here, as well.  I don’t see how anyone can dismiss them as groundless nor as the accusations of people who hold a political motive.  It is obvious throughout this report that there was a culture of abuse. The culture of power that Johnson practiced (one person describes him as micromanaging every thing right down to the position of all the office furniture) is one in which abuse is the predominate factor.

Here is what disturbs me after reading this report: Michelle Rhee tried to bring St. Hope Charter schools into our school system to take over some schools.  She tried to do this AFTER this report had been filed.  It was only due to the due diligence on the part of the parents of those schools that would have been overtaken (deliberate use of word here) and their objection to SHA coming in because of what they found out in their own investigations.

Due diligence in regards to Ms. Rhee has been missing in DC from the very beginning.  From the vetting process on down she has been given a free ride by Adrian Fenty,  the Washington Post, many on the city council, and a host of other people who believe she is “doing what has to be done.”  Discrepencies in what she says and does have been ignored or explained away at almost every turn. She contradicts herself, denies, changes facts to suit her need and all of this is dismissed as quibbles on the part of those of us who have had worries about her methods and the true nature of her plans.  OK, fine, than read this report and explain to me how anyone could think to bring in this corrupt, unethicial organization to run any of our schools? She knew about the charges in that report. Given her status as one of the three main operators of St. Hope – again read the report and Ms. Wong-Hernandez’ interview to see the number of titles Rhee held – there is no way she can claim ignorance to these charges.

That is the real scandal that should be on the front page of every paper.  Diligence is now due.

I have cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post. I have been saying for some time that I would do this but the habit (really addiction) I have had towards newspapers goes back a long, long time. Not an easy one to break. The clincher for me was today’s editorial on Michelle Rhee, Ms. Rhee on trial.  That is not a link, you’ll have to go to the Post’s site yourself to read it.

Here is my problem with the Post’s attitude.  There is this one-sided view coming from their editors and Jay Matthews that the only people in this city who care about the school system and are doing anything about it are Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty.  That position having been taken, the Post has backed up Fenty and Rhee unambiguously, unreservedly, and without holding either accountable for their actions.  Today’s editorial is a good example.  That Ms. Rhee shamelessly manipulated the budget, and the city council’s dysfunction, to do what she wanted – that is fire teachers – is obvious to anyone who was at the hearing or has read the transcripts.  She hired 900 teachers despite having been warned that she faced a 12-13 million dollar deficit.  She ignored the council’s directive – which is law – and did exactly what she wanted.  Now, either the council is the lawmaking branch of our city or it isn’t.  Isn’t it the same way with our national government?  We live by the laws. We may protest the laws, we may commit acts of civil disobedience (and be arrested as a consequence) to protest those laws, but they are the laws and, until changed by the LAWMAKING body of our government, we are subject to them as law-abiding citizens.  But it isn’t just a question of whether Michelle Rhee was morally right in disobeying the council.  That is her excuse – that she is “acting in the best interests of the children”  it is a question of why she disobeyed the council.  She did it for Summer School.  Summer School?!!!!!!!

You have got to be kidding me? Right?  Any teacher in DC who has done time in summer school – and, let’s face it, that is exactly what summer school is, doing time – knows what a waste of people, time and money summer school is.  In our system, the way it works is as a kind of palliative – it promises to help a child who is behind catch up and be ready for the grade they will start in the fall.  The children arrive around 9 am and leave at 1 pm.  The kids you have there are a mixture of kids whose parents cannot afford daycare and the worst case kids in any given classroom.  You know the ones I mean – the ones who come into your classroom a year to two years behind, who substitute bad behavior as a form of ability, and who spend most of the day disrupting your lessons by acting out.  Put them all together for summer school and what do you get?  That is what needed saving?

So as not to sacrifice the high-quality, high-performing summer school program, Ms. Rhee affected cuts of teaching staff DURING the first quarter of school.  Again, as any teacher who has spent time in the classroom knows, this means that any teacher who takes over the class of a RIFFED teacher must start at sqauare one with that class – effectively making negligeble whatever progress that teacher made with that class.  If a child is already behind in level this isn’t going to help, in fact it could arguably hinder.  Ms. Rhee admitted that teachers were fired regardless of their quality so this also means that teachers who were perhaps effective in their classrooms were let go. Their class had to start at sqaure one with a teacher who has to establish trust, bond with the class and learn how to manage that class – oh, but these are intangibles that anyone with a big, red S on their shirt can manage – right?

The argument made by the Post, and many others, is that the Council’s hearing on Ms. Rhee’s actions were tantamount to a witch hunt.  Now the council is no paragon of civic responsibility but that does not make the hearings wrong.  Ms. Rhee is a public servent whose actions should be held accountable. Her tactics regarding the recent RIF, especially in light of some of the testimony by people who worked with her, are questionable and deserve the scrutiny of a hearing.  What does not serve the public interest is to let our officials work as if they are above such scrutiny.

I have read postings by teachers who have questions, good questions, questions that deserve full and comprehensive answers.  The Post isn’t asking these questions.  Their support is unequivical and blind. Of course they are doing well in this climate of test the students ad infinitum.  In today’s paper as well the Post has reported their losses and earnings as a company.  Their circulation is down almost 4 percent (as of today they can add me to that percentage, I’ve cancelled my subscription effective Monday), their ad revenue is down 28%, 27% in just the last 9 months, and their online revenue is down 18%.  What keeps them afloat?  Ta-da, Kaplan Testing Services.  The Post’s ownership of Kaplan is the company’s “biggest revenue generator.”  According to the Post itself this includes brick-and-mortar campuses “in addition to test prep.” $685 million in third quarter revenue is more than enough justification for them to support a Chancellor who sees teaching to the test as a way of getting the curriculum across.

Good people will leave our schools. They will leave our good schools and, what is even worse, our schools that need such people the most.  The mood in our system is terrible, the morale is at its lowest I have ever witnessed, and all the Post can do is recommend more of the same.  They are the doctor who amputates in place of trying to heal.

We allow ourselves to be fooled.  We fall into the traps of talking about ageism and racism instead of talking about what should be discussed – was this RIF, for any reason, necessary?  When the numbers are put out there more questions are raised than answered.  When Michelle Rhee answers questions, or, I should say, when she deflects questions or when anyone from her office pretends to answer questions, the only thing that seems to happen is an obvious deflating of the morale of teachers and more questions being raised. Good teachers, intelligent people, have some serious concerns and the benevolent dictator-like answers we are being given are not comforting in the least. No longer is it bearable to hear the words “you have to trust us” and “we are doing what we think best” and “if you knew what we knew than…”

Tell us what you know. Be transparent and trust us to decide what we think is right.  Ah, but then that would put some of these flimsy ideas in some very harsh light.  The only thing transparent about Michelle Rhee’s administration of our school system is in the quality of her ideas – truly, here we have the emporer standing naked.  We are given borrowed, half-worked-out ideas that have had mediocre results in other parts of the country; we are given an evaluation system that is, admittedly by the administration, vague and incomplete; we are told that we need to be treated like children because we do not know what is best for our schools.

The Post’s argument is that our system is so abysmal in performance that anything the Chancellor does is worthy of not only consideration but implementation.  They have yet to really examine any of the claims made about the effectiveness of these borrowed ideas or their effect on the workforce.  The Post should be apprised that the morale of teachers in the better schools in DC is as low as it gets.  John Kelly, in a recent comment on his online blog, dismissed what one teacher said by questioning whether it could possibly be Michelle Rhee defeating the morale of teachers instead of the fact that kids can’t read?  This is what the Post writers do – sit in their chairs and dismiss information coming to them from the working troops instead of going out and finding out if this is how all teachers feel.  Teacher morale is terribly low in every school in DC – not just the schools where there are “bad” teachers (God how I hate hearing that word – use effective or ineffective; this “bad” and “good” commentary is infantile and part of the problem). Is this what is wanted?  Do we throw out the good with the bad?  “The baby with the bath water” that is what I am hearing coming from the mouths of teachers and parents in these schools.

As for those of you who still believe what the Post printed in today’s editorial: Brother what’s it take to make you wise?  Do you really believe that we were ever going to see that money?  Look at that proposal again, please. Look at the fact that it takes four years to get to the highest earning potential on that chart. The private foundation funding for the bonus system is slated for four years after which the schools have to make up for that money by enrollment and managing the budget. The principals have the sole right to fire. What do you think they are going to go for:  high-paid veterans or lower priced, newer teachers. Sometimes the choice will not be theirs. This is already playing out in New York City, our very own test model for what Rhee and Fenty want to do here. Wake up.

I don’t advocate for senorioty simply on the basis of longevity.  A good school has a core of good, veteran teachers who are able to provide newer teachers with the culture and philosophy of that school.  They provide the continuity that gives consistency to the quality of education in the community.  I am very aware that in many DC schools that is lacking. But then the communities that many of those schools are in are lacking in many other things as well.  But that does not mean that destroying morale system-wide, in big, sweeping gestures, is an answer to those problems.  A good manager comes into a workplace and can discern pretty quickly what works and what doesn’t. That manager then shores up what is working and finds ways to fix what is not and to get rid of what can’t be fixed.  That is not what is happening here.  Wake up.

The other thing that parents in the NW keep hearing is about autonomy.  Once schools demonstrate an ability to score high on AYPs they will be given autonomy to work without downtown looking over their shoulder.  One parent said to me that when they questioned Rhee about autonomy for their school they were given the excuse that things weren’t there yet for autonomy to be put in place.  Give them autonomy lord, but not yet.  Promises, promises.

In a speech at Cornell university this week.  No mention was made of the budget cuts, none made about the layoffs.  But this was said:

“According to Rhee, he [Fenty] also refused to cut the budget of DCPS, asking that other departments shoulder more of the burden so that children did not have to pay for the mistakes of the adults.”

No matter what context you put that quote in, the fact that she made it without following up with what is happening now in our system speaks volumes to how Ms. Rhee manages.

Brothers and sisters, what’s it take to make you wise?