A blog designed to facilitate communication about education, teaching, schools, labor issues, social justice, politics and ordinary life. Statements or expressions of opinions herein 'do not' represent the views or official positions of DCPS, American Federation of Teachers, Washington Teachers' Union or its members. Views are my own. Anyone who claims otherwise is violating the spirit and purpose of this blog.
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Jan 7, 2009
More Terminations Without Explanation By Rhee & Company
According to sources who wish to remain anonymous, Tammye Martin- Special Education's Chief of School Based Programs at the DCPS central office got fired Tuesday by Rhee's administration along with five other staff members. It has been reported that these staffers were told that their services were no longer needed. What a way to start off the new year -termination without explanation. (Posted by The Washington Teacher).
And she (Rhee) wonders why the WTU is fighting so hard for personnel protections! Her agenda is very clear and we must continue to stand in solidarity against her.
ReplyDeleteMaybe some of the money saved on these salary positions can be used towards hiring special ed staff that is so desperately needed.
ReplyDeleteIt is truly outrageous how so many special ed students are suffering due to Rhee's poor leadership skills. First she hired special ed czar Phyllis Harris and then Richard Nyankori. Harris is out now with her half baked ideas partially implemented and Nyankori has decided to blame service providers not showing up for sped mtgs as the cause of the problems.
What a joke.
Rhee is a disaster. The "most arrogant bureaucrat" in America.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the second anonymous, who wrote, "It is truly outrageous how so many special ed students are suffering due to Rhee's poor leadership skills."
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that we need more special educators, and that the state of special education in DCPS is unacceptable. I do, however, disagree with your assessment that children with special needs are receiving inadequate services "due to Rhee's poor leadership skills." Special Education in DCPS has been a disaster for years, and while Rhee hasn't fixed it, she certainly didn't start it either. Just because you don't like Rhee doesn't mean she is the cause of all our problems. Remember that this system has been dysfunctional for a long, long time.
Is the judge and two attorney's still over seeing the Special Education program ? Ya don't know if it's budget or what the reason.The Unemployment office in DC will investigte hopefully why these people were fired.It's reasonable to think they'll apply and need to give an explanation.
ReplyDeleteSpecial Education has been underfunded for to many years in the US. An area Obama says he's going to push for increases in funding.Then enter NCLB and 10% with IDEA.Will those employee's come foward to share their experience ?
ReplyDeleteI was reading "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" the other day (yeah, I know) and I found a quote that perfectly describes Rhee, "... bangs and smoke more often the marks of ineptitude than expertise."
ReplyDeleteMr. Potter,
ReplyDeleteI am anonymous #2 and I am very well aware that DCPS has had severe problems with providing special ed services for years.
My problem is that Rhee has made it worse in many ways (but not all) not better.
Anonymous#2, interesting that you think that Spec. Ed is much worse. According to a recent press release the IEP backlog of cases has been reduced to its lowest in more than 30 years and the work of the Spec Ed department has improved dramatically over the last few months. The department has reduced the number of new cases along with the backlog. I always love reading this blog because I know where to hear from the entrenched interests of those who support the status quo. Candi tries to say she's unbiased but does not mention at all the good news coming out of DCPS. She would be taken more seriously if showed at least some neutrality. Also, the idea that these people were given no explanation is simply untrue based on Candi's own statement. They were told their services were no longer needed. That's the thing with at-will employment. It is at someone else's will.
ReplyDeleteCandi, WaPo just posted, on their online edition, Marc Fisher's piece parallel to the one he did last week on Broad Acres ES in Montgomery County. For tomorrow's Sunday edition, he has written about a DCPS. He picked Truesdell ES, as it is a transformed school, as was Broad Acres. Both Truesdell and Broad Acres, he says, have similar demographics. He raved about changes made at the low income Montgomery County school and is asking whether DCPS can also turn around a similar school. Good luck to all the Truesdell teachers and their principal as they work, as we all do, to enrich children's lives.
ReplyDeleteThis is Anonymous #2. To the anonymous responder to my post: If you read all of the words in my comment you will see that I acknowledged that not everything Rhee is doing is making special ed worse. I know it is convenient for some people to try to frame the argument around Rhee as either/or.
ReplyDeleteI think an intelligent discussion can be had about special ed, Rhee and DCPS in general but it cannot continue to be framed in a black/white view of where people stand.
If you want to understand my points please look up what an impartial court monitor of DC special ed recently said about the progress being made. It wasn't a pretty picture for Rhee.
To Anonymous #1 from Anonymous #2 - granted there have been problems with Spec Ed that were 30 years in the making and Rhee and her group have a lot of work ahead of them.
ReplyDeleteAs to the "impartial" monitor assigned by the court I have real problems with the pocketbook interest that this monitor has in the school system. Her business of "monitoring" is predicated on no changes occuring. She gets paid more than $2 million per year by DC and Baltimore. From my understanding, she was hired by DC to help in relieving the backlog and was such an abysmal failure that her "impartial" report was more a way to protect her interest than a full accounting of the changes.
Regardless, what I am glad to see is that there is such interest in fixing the schools. Say what you will about Rhee, there has been significant interest from the general public, our politicians, as well as the "cottage industry" that has cropped up around education in the brief time that she has been here. I myself have lived in DC for more than 20 years and have never been quite so interested in the fixes and on a Sunday afternoon am reading education blogs though my career has nothing to do with education.
We have had 30 years of the worst schools in the Nation. Some of my comments may come off as sour toward those with as I called "entrenched" interests but what I would like to see is a dialogue where everyone acknowledges that the principals in this drama are good people with good intentions. You may all disagree with how you would change things but there are no villians here. Rhee does not want to get rid of all veteran teachers or all African American teachers. Most of her top people are African Americans. And I will allow that Candi Peterson is not the devil trying to protect all incompetent teachers. What I don't see in general is an acknowledgement that there are bad teachers out there at all who shouldn't be in front of children.
Unfortunately, I don't think that any of us should acknowledge that ALL principals have good intentions. To the contrary, I have known personally of more than a few that do not have good intentions or the skills necessary to be effective leaders. This is reality, not just my reality but many others.
ReplyDeleteI think it has been acknowledged on my blog as well as other blogs- that there are teachers like in all other professions who are not effective. However, there has been a request made by many that 'ineffective teaching' needs to first be defined in some sort of standardized way.
I have tried to frame the discussion so that we can consider what needs to be done to support teachers when they are ineffective. I have seen too many new teachers come and go even up till present that lack the promised supports like mentor teachers, and the appropriate types of professional development, lack of leadership and necessary resources, while being overburdened with over class size ratio's, etc. Then after they have worked for us for 3 years - then the community and others argue let's fire them which makes no sense.
I do hope that the plan to provide appropriate professional development only to DC's new teachers in the upcoming future rings true but let's just say I am cautiously optimistic for now as I have seen DC jump on one educational bandwagon after another- often abandoning previous grandiose educational plans.
Oh yes...Dr. Nyankori loves to play the blame game...Watch out or he'll hire you, just to blame you for his lack if competence with this school system and special ed department. Tisk tisk tisk
ReplyDelete