Independent Evaluation of DC Public Schools Too Little Too Late to Impact Plight of Teachers

Written By Candi Peterson, WTU General Vice President

Somebody dropped the ball. Who’s to blame for the eight years we waited for an independent evaluation of mayoral control of DC Public Schools ? Well accountability is reserved only for us peons (teachers, school personnel, principals, vice principals and; central office staff). Right? Not for mayors and other elected officials.

Under a 2007 law, known as PERAA (Public Education Reform Amendment Act) gave control of DC Public Schools to the Mayor (Former Mayor Adrian Fenty) as well as other changes in school governance. The purpose of the law was to give leaders more flexibility in making changes in light of the school systems history of failed fix it plans and floundering student achievement.

The reform law required the mayor to submit an independent evaluation of our public schools annually on academic achievement,personnel policies and business practices. The law also included an option to skip annual assessments and deliver a five year independent assessment by September 15, 2012. Obviously that deadline was not met.

There was much ado on the road to selecting independent evaluators. In 2009, Fenty eliminated funding for an independent evaluation. Then there were two evaluator names that initially surfaced including Frederick Hess, of American Enterprise Institute and Kenneth Wong, of Brown University who were proponents of mayoral control and made many uncomfortable about their objectivity including former Chairman Vincent Gray, who raised concerns, to his credit.

Eventually funding was restored for the independent evaluation in 2009. A total of $325,000 was included in the DC government budget to hire the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct the evaluation. NRC is one of four non-profit organizations that operate under the National Academies. It was estimated that DC government would provide 20 percent of the funding, with NRC raising the remaining cost from private donations.

The road to this independent assessment has been a rocky one. Let's count the three mayors who presided while we waited for a glimpse of this assessment. Let's see first there was Adrian Fenty, then Vincent Gray and now Muriel Bowser.

At long last, members of the evaluation committee reported their findings and recommendations on June 3, 2015 at a public round table at the Committee on Education held at the Council of the District of Columbia. Tweets were rampant on June 3rd from inside DC City Council chambers as the committee unveiled its report.

The report findings are in excess of 300 pages and for purposes here, I will try to dissect this information in smaller chunks.

Significant amongst the findings, the report indicated "while there have been some improvements in the public schools of the District of Columbia since a 2007 reform law, significant disparities remain in learning opportunities and academic progress across student groups and the city's wards."

On a positive note, both DCPS and the Public Charter School Board were noted to be operating more effectively than before PERAA and pursued improvements that show promise.

A top priority for the mayor and chancellor after PERAA was to improve teacher effectiveness and introduce an evaluation system to assess teacher performance. The report revealed what we already know that the Impact teacher evaluation was introduced in 2009 under former Chancellor Michelle Rhee and rated teacher's on classroom observations,

on their commitment to school community (CSC), core professionalism (CP), and linked students' test scores to teacher effectiveness.

It was recommended that procedures be developed by the district to ensure that scoring on commitment to school community and core professionalism is consistently applied. The committee expressed concerns that even though the district had articulated goals for IMPACT, a plan for evaluating their own progress has not been developed, to date.

The report clearly captured the district's premise that a more effective teacher workforce would result in improved learning conditions and achievement for all students. The key phrase here is ALL. However, it was noted that teachers with the highest performance are not equitably distributed across the city and students' in the poorest wards have the least access to these high performing teachers.

More than 80% of teachers who were rated as effective or higher in 2013-14 chose to remain in the school system the following school year. Teachers with minimally effective ratings were more likely to leave the school system or be dismissed. There was no mention of the developing category of teachers which was added as rating category in 2012, despite the DC Municipal Regulations which states that you can only have four( 4) categories of performance ratings.

The committee found that indicators for proficiency in student achievement still remains low. Gains are larger in reading than math. Not surprising, that black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, English language learners and those eligible for free and reduced lunch are more likely to be the lowest performing students. Although it was noted that there was some improvement since 2009, more than half of students in these above groups still score below proficient.

After all the mumbo jumbo, excuse me if I get to the bottom line here. According to this report, DC Public Schools student gains still remain unacceptably low and students of color and English language learners and students with disabilities still half of them remain less than proficient. And students in the poorest wards still have the least access to a high performing educator. Wow!

 No wonder it took eight years for our government to release this report. Wouldn't it have made sense to conduct an independent evaluation annually rather than wait every five or eight years in this case ?

This time we can't blame it on the teachers or principals, assistant principals or school personnel because many of them have been fired over the years. Remember Rhee's plan to dismantle the education workforce?

So you tell me whose to blame for little gains in student achievement when 80% of our teachers are effective or higher and the other half were fired? Hmmm- Thank God for independent evaluations! Too bad, it's too little too late.

© Candi Peterson 2015

Arne Duncan's Close Ties to Victor Reinoso, Former DC Deputy Mayor of Education

Victor Reinoso (right)

Written by Candi Peterson

Word has it that Victor Reinoso, former DC Deputy Mayor of Education from 2007-10 under the Fenty administration is now a high-powered consultant to the United States Department of Education (DOE), working for Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education.  Confirmation that Reinoso is a local friend of Arne Duncan's was evidenced on Reinoso's personal Linked in account when he proudly displayed his DOE position until recently, that is. To refresh your memory further about Reinoso, as Deputy Mayor he oversaw the education reform agenda and was the person responsible for recruiting former DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee in 2007, a former elected DC Public Schools Board of Education member, former CEO of the Federal City Council and now a Senior Advisor to the President at Georgetown University.

Reinoso received recognition when he was caught plagiarizing Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina's public schools "school takeover plan" when he was acting deputy mayor.  At his 2007 confirmation hearing, the DC City Council had lively debate about his role in the plagiarism incident. In true politician style, Reinoso dodged questions about plagiarizing the takeover plan. The DC Examiner, on June 28, 2007 reported that Reinoso said he took full responsibility for the plagiarism, calling it a "shortcut" taken "to meet a deadline." He said the omission of attribution was unintentional."

Why is it important to connect the dots between Victor Reinoso and Secretary Arne Duncan?  With Reinoso  teaming up with Arne Duncan (who by the way has close ties to Eli Broad), it isn't a stretch to believe that a deal was cut to encourage Mayor Vincent Gray to maintain then Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson, after Michelle Rhee's ousting. I often wondered why Mayor Gray was adamant about not conducting a national search for a DC Public Schools Chancellor and didn't allow any resumes to be submitted when considering this high level appointment and I think I now have my answer.  Most recently, I imagine that Reinoso also influenced/supported Chancellor Henderson's honorary doctorate from Georgetown University, as a Senior Director there as well. This honorary doctorate will serve to further the occupational aspirations and enhance the political appeal of Chancellor Henderson, despite her obvious lack of education credentials. The awarding of an honorary degree like Henderson's creates press releases, attracts attention to the university and DC Public Schools and also signals the strength of "special interest groups" within Georgetown University.  

Certainly we can make the argument that relationships like Duncan and Reinoso are part of a larger aggressive school reform education movement in the United States and includes unequivocal support for mayoral control of public education, adopting the business/corporate model for school leadership, opening more charter schools, turning over public schools to charter school operators, creating a revolving door teacher workforce, changing the way teachers are evaluated, and stripping teachers of tenure in exchange for lucrative pay funded by education philanthropists. (i.e. Eli Broad, Bill Gates, etc.)

In the words of a teacher "It breaks my heart to see Duncan playing along. You should have seen my students when Obama won the presidency. Their eyes were shining. I tell them they will be the ones to walk across the stage, go on to the life they are supposed to live, and bring prosperity, health, security and life itself to their struggling families. Instead, it turns out Duncan owns his own his own stock in the Emperors New Schools Venture Fund." And if I had to make an educated guess, so does Reinoso.

© Candi Peterson 2013

No DC Middle School For You !

This is an op-ed piece published in the N.Y. Times newspaper. It is a must read. Who better to tell the story of school reform than a DC middle-class parent who has lived the nightmare under the direction of education deformers Rhee, Fenty and now Henderson? 

deformer: (n.) One who deforms.

December 4, 2011

Why School Choice Fails

By NATALIE HOPKINSON

Washington

"IF you want to see the direction that education reform is taking the country, pay a visit to my leafy, majority-black neighborhood in Washington. While we have lived in the same house since our 11-year-old son was born, he’s been assigned to three different elementary schools as one after the other has been shuttered. Now it’s time for middle school, and there’s been no neighborhood option available.

Meanwhile, across Rock Creek Park in a wealthy, majority-white community, there is a sparkling new neighborhood middle school, with rugby, fencing, an international baccalaureate curriculum and all the other amenities that make people pay top dollar to live there.

Such inequities are the perverse result of a “reform” process intended to bring choice and accountability to the school system. Instead, it has destroyed community-based education for working-class families, even as it has funneled resources toward a few better-off, exclusive, institutions.

My neighborhood’s last free-standing middle school was closed in 2008, part of a round of closures by then Mayor Adrian Fenty and his schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee. The pride and gusto with which they dismantled those institutions was shameful, but I don’t blame them. The closures were the inevitable outcome of policies hatched years before.

In 1995 the Republican-led Congress, ignoring the objections of local leadership, put in motion one of the country’s strongest reform policies for Washington: if a school was deemed failing, students could transfer schools, opt to attend a charter school or receive a voucher to attend a private school.

The idea was to introduce competition; good schools would survive; bad ones would disappear. It effectively created a second education system, which now enrolls nearly half the city’s public school students. The charters consistently perform worse than the traditional schools, yet they are rarely closed.

Meanwhile, failing neighborhood schools, depleted of students, were shut down. Invariably, schools that served the poorest families got the ax — partly because those were the schools where students struggled the most, and partly because the parents of those students had the least power.

Competition produces winners and losers; I get that. Indeed, the rhetoric of school choice can be seductive to angst-filled middle-class parents like myself. We crunch the data and believe that, with enough elbow grease, we can make the system work for us. Naturally, I’ve only considered high-performing schools for my children, some of them public, some charter, some parochial, all outside our neighborhood.

But I’ve come to realize that this brand of school reform is a great deal only if you live in a wealthy neighborhood. You buy a house, and access to a good school comes with it. Whether you choose to enroll there or not, the public investment in neighborhood schools only helps your property values.

For the rest of us, it’s a cynical game. There aren’t enough slots in the best neighborhood and charter schools. So even for those of us lucky ones with cars and school-data spreadsheets, our options are mediocre at best.

In the meantime, the neighborhood schools are dying. After Ms. Rhee closed our first neighborhood school, the students were assigned to an elementary school connected to a homeless shelter. Then that closed, and I watched the children get shuffled again.

Earlier this year, when we were searching for a middle school for my son — 11 is a vulnerable age for anyone — our public options were even grimmer. I could have sent him to one of the newly consolidated kindergarten-to-eighth-grade campuses in my neighborhood, with low test scores and no algebra or foreign languages. We could enter a lottery for a spot in another charter or out-of-boundary middle school, competing against families all over the city.

The system recently floated a plan for yet another round of closings, with a proposal for new magnet middle school programs in my neighborhood, none of which would open in time for my son. These proposals, like much of reform in Washington, are aimed at some speculative future demographic, while doing nothing for the children already here. In the meantime, enrollment, and the best teachers, continue to go to the whitest, wealthiest communities.

The situation for Washington’s working- and middle-class families may be bleak, but we are hardly alone. Despite the lack of proof that school-choice policies work, they are gaining popularity in communities nationwide. Like us, those places will face a stark decision: Do they want equitable investment in community education, or do they want to hand it over to private schools and charters? Let’s stop pretending we can fairly do both. As long as we do, some will keep winning, but many of us will lose."

Natalie Hopkinson is the author of the forthcoming book “Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City.”

Top Ten Lessons Learned From The DC Mayoral Primary

Yesterday was a victory for many educators when Vincent Gray won the democratic primary for mayor of the District of Columbia. On the morning after the primary (Wednesday), when I arrived at the school house door, teachers stopped me in the halls to express their delight about Gray's win. Some gave a nod, some winked while others smiled, one did a little jig and some took just a minute to ask "did you watch the primary results on the news last night ?" I couldn't help but feel all the positive vibrations and energy that were abuzz in the air.

This got me to thinking about my favorite bible verse "to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun." While raising my son- (now 21 and legal), I often used this bible passage to teach him some of life's hardest lessons. For Gray it is now a season to plant, to laugh, to dance and a time to seek new possibilities. For Fenty it is a time to lose, a time to weep, a time to mourn, a time to pluck up that which is planted and a time to reflect. As we have read that during Fenty's campaign he had advisers and supporters who tried to help him change course to get in touch with voters along the way, however, he (Fenty) wouldn't hear of it. While it's too little too late for a campaign victory, it's never too late to learn lessons that life and the school of hard knocks has to offer us. While reading an education list serve, I came across Jackie Pinckney-Hackett's top ten lessons learned from the DC primary election. Maybe Fenty and company will take heed as failure presents us an opportunity to intelligently begin again or maybe he (Fenty) will just keep on keeping on as he has been. In the event, he's listening here's Jackie's ten lessons learned from the DC primary:

1. Dictatorships Don't Work in DC

2. School Reform without Parent & Community Involvement is not welcomed

3. Being Nice and Showing that you CARE counts as VOTES

4. RHEE-member that the people who VOTED you IN can VOTE you OUT

5. It's not what you do but how you do it (do it with the people)

6. Mother Knows Best (Mother Williams supported Gray, while her son supported Fenty)

7. Crying won't change anything

8. ENDORSEMENTS are not VOTES

9. Sometimes it's too late to APOLOGIZE

10. President Obama AIN'T stupid

Rhee's Leadership Drives DC Public Schools Students Out The Door

Education Notes On Line blogger featured an excellent piece on how our DC Public schools student population is shrinking under the helm of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee- 17% less than last year to be exact. Unfortunately, our mainstream press fails to adequately cover these news worthy details. The Washington Post and local news stations continue to heap tons of praise on Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee instead of asking why DC public schools has such a  decline in enrollment over the last two years of education reform. I can't help but wonder, if education reform under Fenty and Rhee has been so successful- why then are parents voting with their feet and heading to charter schools ? Here are some insights:

Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s leadership continues to drive students away from DC public schools and to shrink the public school system

Since this post on Friday on the disappearing public school students in Washington:

Washington DC: How to Wipe Out a Public School System

and its attendant graphic

there have been some developments that make the situation worse than it seems and we may see these lines cross sooner than we thought. I actually heard another favorable report on Rhee on NPR (funded by Bill Gates) today where the commentator actually said Rhee was struggling to keep kids in the public schools. I had to pull over to the side of the road. They just don't get it. That Rhee - and Klein, et al. - were chosen to preside over the demise of the public school system, not its resurgence. Their goal is to one day have zero schools under their direct management so they can be left to go to press conferences at successful charters, whose $370,000 a year CEOs will bow and scrape in genuflecting thanks.

Gary Imhoff writes in DC-based themail

Leah Fabel’s article in the Examiner is well summarized by its headline writer: “Enrollment in DC Schools Plunges as Students Go Elsewhere”(http://tinyurl.com/mc9moq).“By Monday’s first school bell, charters project at least 28,000 students, or about 2,400 more than last year, while DC Public Schools expect about 45,000, or 2,000 fewer than in spring.”

Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s leadership continues to drive students away from DC public schools and to shrink the public school system, and she continues to escape public criticism for it. But she realizes that her Teflon coating can’t last forever, so she also continues to make optimistic predictions that stand little to no chance of coming true: “Rhee said she expects regular public schools’ declines to level off by next year and enrollment to creep up soon afterward.”

One person who understands the importance of keeping an urban school district’s enrollment figures up is Robert Bobb, DC’s former city administrator and school board president, who this year is in Detroit as the emergency financial manager of its schools, trying to persuade and beg parents to keep their children in the public schools (http://townhall.com/news/us/2009/08/22/robert_bobb_hits_streets_to_coax_students_back).

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

 Bill Turque in the Washington Post, August 24, 2009

37,000 to Start D.C. Public Schools Today, Well Below Budget Figure

Despite an advertising campaign and an early push to sign up students, the D.C. public school system will begin classes Monday with an enrollment of about 37,000 -- 17 percent below the total at the end of the last academic year, officials said over the weekend.

Enrollment in regular public schools often grows during the year, as students and parents complete paperwork and some transfer from public charter schools. But a spokeswoman for Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee declined to predict whether the system would reach 44,681 -- the audited enrollment figure from last school year and the basis for its $760 million 2010 budget.

Moreover, because the school system moved up the start of its annual enrollment process from July to April, the late surge could be smaller than usual."We anticipate a much smoother start to school with fewer families needing to enroll during the first few days," said Jennifer Calloway, Rhee's spokeswoman. She added that last year at this time, only 15,000 students had completed enrollment. In addition to a radio and bus sign ad campaign ("Go public and get a great free education!" said some spots), principals visited homes, held community barbecues and conducted enrollment fairs in concert with immunization clinics held by the District's health department.

Regular public school enrollment in the District has declined by more than half since 1980, while the public charter community has grown dramatically since the independently operated schools began in the 1990s. More than a third of the city's public students attend charter schools, which project an enrollment of about 28,066 this fall, up more than 10 percent from last school year's 25,363. Some analysts say public charter enrollment could surpass the regular school population by 2014.

The vastly different trends have made enrollment politically contentious. Rhee has said she expects persistent declines to bottom out, with the school system's numbers perhaps starting to edge upward. But the D.C. Council voted May 12 to hold back $27 million of the 2010 budget, because it found implausible her projections for an increase of 373 students, to a total of 45,054.

Council members contended that the charter schools would be drawing more students from regular schools. The council projected regular public school enrollment at 41,541, based on trends from the previous three years. Both sides eventually agreed to use last school year's number -- 44,681 -- as the benchmark.

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said Sunday that the 37,000 total is "probably low," given the school system's history of late enrollment. But he added: "I do question the likelihood of getting 7,681 enrolled between now and the first of October," when the first official count is taken. 

Posted by The Washington Teacher, Story courtesy of Ed Notes On Line, Gary Imhoff-themail & Bill Turque/The WaPo

No Accountability Mayor Adrian Fenty: Fears Independent Evaluation of Chancellor Rhee

In the latest saga of DC schools- here comes Mayor Adrian Fenty's latest dastardly deed. Fenty has eliminated funding for an independent evaluator assigned to assess the progress of school reform under Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. Are you surprised ? Well I'm not. Isn't this typical of life under Fenty ? So it seems that General Greenhorn (AKA Adrian Fenty) is afraid of a little accountability. Well afterall accounability is reserved only for us peons (i.e. teachers, principals, vice principals & central office workers). Right ?

General Greenhorn is the title bestowed upon Adrian Fenty by certain journalists early on in his mayoral career.

My email is all ablaze this morning about what should we do next in this latest 'mayhem madness' we call DCPS. You tell me ! Here's the story in its entirety as reported by Wash. Post Staff Writer, Bill Turque and might I add buried back on page B 4.

Latest Fenty Budget Cuts Funds for Schools Evaluation

"Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has eliminated funding for an independent evaluator assigned to assess the progress of public school reform under Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, according to the revised 2010 budget he submitted to the D.C. Council late Friday.

Fenty (D) also reversed a series of other budget measures, approved by the council in May, that sought to divert some of the mayor's control of education to other agencies. They include the shift of staff and funds from Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso to the D.C. State Board of Education, which would be established as an independent agency. The board would house the office of the ombudsman for public education, which is responsible for investigating complaints and answering questions from parents.

The proposed moves reflect the council's discontent with what some members see as a lack of transparency and accountability in the mayor's efforts to transform the District's struggling public school system. The ombudsman's office, for example, is supposed to file monthly reports but has not done so since March. The ombudsman, Tonya Vidal Kinlow, resigned in December and has yet to be permanently replaced.

Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) and the council are free to restore the funding cut when they vote on the revised budget July 31. But speaking to the council Monday at a hearing on Fenty's plan to close a two-year, $666 million revenue shortfall, city administrator Neil Albert urged that the governance structure established in 2007 remain intact.

"Our education reform efforts are demonstrating real results," Albert said, "and we strongly believe that, rather than changing course with the established structure, we should maintain momentum forward." Albert did not directly address the school evaluation, which Fenty is required to submit annually under the law that established mayoral control. He also has the option to skip the yearly reports and deliver a five-year independent assessment by September 2012.

In May 2008, Reinoso recommended two prominent education scholars for the project, Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute and Kenneth Wong of Brown University. But the plan stalled when Gray raised questions about their independence. Hess wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post in 2007 praising Rhee. Wong testified in favor of the mayoral takeover.

When Reinoso didn't offer other candidates, Gray decided to move on his own. This past May, he included $325,000 to hire the National Research Council, one of four nonprofit organizations that operate under the National Academies umbrella, to conduct the evaluation. The money would cover about 20 percent of the total cost, with the NRC raising the rest from private sources. Fenty spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said Monday that the mayor was still committed to an independent evaluation but did not elaborate.

The council also has attempted to bolster the power of the state board, which does not run school operations but formulates standards for academic programs and teacher qualifications and oversees the school system's standardized tests. Although state board members are elected, the panel is under the control of the state superintendent, who reports to Reinoso.

"We don't believe a set of elected officials should report to a set of appointed officials," Gray said Monday. When Fenty's original budget cut the board's $1 million in funding in half this spring, the council restored the money and added money for two staff members who would answer directly to the panel. D.C. State Board President Lisa Raymond said the group is simply trying to do its job. "We understand this is a very tough time for the entire city, and if we have to reduce our budget to help the city, we are willing to do that," she said. "Cutting it in half is not acceptable. It wasn't acceptable three months ago, and it's not acceptable now."

Posted by The Washington Teacher, story courtesy of The WaPo

Where Have All The Teachers Gone ?

Answer: Rhee has fired everyone

I received the email below from a concerned insider about Sousa Middle School's high turnover rate of teachers and staff under the helm of Principal Dwan Jordan. Sousa is located at 3650 Ely Place, SE Washington, DC. Little has been reported by the mainstream media about the impact DC teacher/principal firings and high staff attrition rates will have on returning students come August. The Washington Post has limited coverage on teacher terminations and no reports to date on the recent principal terminations and staff attrition rates. Little wonder why given that The Washington Post has a proclivity for covering up the news rather than reporting the news.

Soon I imagine that we will be singing the song - Where have all the teachers gone ? (to the music of Pete Seeger's -Where have all the flowers gone ?)

Where have all the teachers gone ?
Long time passing
Where have all the teachers gone ?
long time ago
Rhee has fired everyone.
When will she ever learn ?
When will she ever learn ?

Dear Candi

"Sousa Middle School has experienced the highest teacher and staff turnover rate in its' history, under one year of leadership with Principal Dwan Jordon. Dwan Jordon terminated 8 teachers that he placed on the 90-Day Plan; however, more than 30 additional staff members have either transferred, resigned, or left in the past 10 months Principal Jordon has been on the job. To have more than 30 people (including janitors) voluntarily leave a brand-new, 20 million dollar plus, state-of-the-art- middle school should be very telling about Mr. Jordon's treatment of teachers and staff.

Students, parents and community leaders are outraged at this high turn-over rate as it will effect the human ecology of their neighborhood. As such, they have signed petitions, and have called for Principal Dwan Jordon's termination to Chancellor Rhee. On Wednesday, July 1, 2009 at 3:00 p.m., students, parents, and community members met at headquarters with CHANCELLOR RHEE and presented compelling evidence as to why Principal Dwan Jordon is not a good fit for Sousa. They presented CHANCELLOR RHEE with all the names of the teachers and staff members who were no longer at Sousa. Also, they provided personal testimony regarding their experiences at Sousa.

THIS WAS THE RESPONSE OF CHANCELLOR RHEE TO THE SOUSA MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS, PARENTS, AND COMMUNITY LEADERS ABOUT PRINCIPAL DWAN JORDON:
"Well, I will investigate the various allegations that you have brought against Mr. Jordon. However, I feel that Mr. Jordon is an awesome, awesome, principal who sets very high standards for his teachers and staff. Therefore, I do not agree with terminating Mr. Jordon. At the very least, Mr. Jordon deserves another school year as Sousa Middle School's principal."

Can all the teachers and staff-members be wrong? Can all the teachers and staff-members who accuse Principal Jordon of being mean-spirited, uncaring and a tyrant be incorrect? What is going to happen to all the students who are returning to Sousa in August when they realize that only 5 teachers out of the original 24 will be back? Also, how will the students respond to 19 new teachers who don't know anything about the neighborhood or its' student body ?

Posted by The Washington Teacher

Is This Change We Can Believe In ?

Why In The World Did President Obama Dub Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee A Wonderful Superintendent ?

According to Time magazine article in which Michelle A. Rhee appeared on the cover with a broom, it states: “In the last presidential debate each candidate tried to claim her (Rhee) as their own with Barack Obama calling her (Rhee) a wonderful superintendent.” Who knows why Barack supported Michelle Rhee so effusively?

Whatever President Barack Obama’s reasoning for this national shout-out, the million dollar question is why would a president support a chancellor when Rhee only “offered pleasing but implausible claims, while saying next to nothing about educational policy.” (Daily Howler) Does Barack Obama still praise Rhee given that her 5 year education plan lacks any substantive educational reform other than to rid DC schools of a significant share of its educational work force through terminations and buy-outs thereby creating a revolving door at-will work force?

Many think Rhee’s incredulous claims of raising her former students scoring on the 13th percentile on standardized testing to the 90th percentile in her short lived teaching career were simply pleasing anecdotes that still cannot be substantiated. Rhee by her own admission suffered during her first year and so did her students. It has been reported that in Rhee’s second year she got better. Would Barack Obama have given Rhee an endorsement if he had known that she didn’t afford DC’s probationary teachers and teaching fellows the same opportunity she was given to improve as a teacher? Did the president know that Rhee fired approximately 70 probationary teachers arbitrarily last year without regard to their 'Meets and Exceeds Expectations" annual performance evaluations? Did Barack just turn a blind eye all in the name of politics ?

Would Barack Obama knowingly approve of a so called reformist like Rhee who failed to implement a city-wide mentor program for all new teachers as well as failed to offer regular and consistent assistance to struggling teachers like the peer assistance and review programs provided in the Washington-metro suburbs ?

Does the president actually think it is okay for DC's school chancellor Rhee to sign off on the terminations of 250 DC teachers

even though some teachers were not given annual performance evaluations,

even though some teachers were not rated according to the appropriate curriculum standards ,

even though some teachers were targeted for termination in order to meet a city-wide quota,

even though some teachers had not yet completed their 2 year fellows program

and just because some were probationary teachers ?

I thought that our president believed in the American way of justice and liberty for all. You mean Barack doesn’t support the right to due process and a right to an appeals process for public employees unjustly terminated ?

Some say that Barack was only straddling the fence between the Joel Klein/Michelle Rhee types and labor unions . I’m not so sure because our president’s actions speak louder than words. Is this change we can believe in? Coming Soon to a city near you !

Posted by The Washington Teacher. Quotes courtesy of The Daily Howler.