<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER  No. 2077 -- 10/13/2009 >>>>>

blog version:
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2009/11/12/dc-school-teachers-chopped-by-brav
eheart-in-high-heels/

Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, is
portrayed in a recent Education Next puff piece as a modern day Braveheart
(see painting of her, link below) in high heels because of the way she
ruthlessly chops the jobs of union teachers.

Most of her layoff victims are older teachers. Suspiciously, the race or
ethnicity of the teachers who lost their jobs is not yet available. The
rumor mill has it that most of the teachers who were cut were black women
over the age of 40. The racial mix can be seen in these two youtube videos
of a protest march (youtube video links below). In addition to lots of
people with gray hair there are a few black and white males, perhaps a
Hispanic or two -- BUT NO ASIANS!

DC schools are following the same pattern I have observed in many states,
Louisiana being the most recent example:

   1. First, a shortage of teachers is declared. Rhee was hired by DCPS to
solve the shortage. But many feel that chancellor Michele Rhee caused the
shortage by firing teachers because it served the purpose of her former
organization (Teach for America) which was supposedly going to solve a
shortage problem that didn’t exist.

   2. Then layoffs of a few hundred older teachers takes place. It’s a
shell game designed to replace older teachers with younger teachers and
American teachers with younger H-1Bs.

   3. Foreign teachers on H-1B visas are hired once most of the Americans
have been let go. It’s a sure bet that Rhee, who was born in the USA to
South Korean immigrants, will be hiring mostly Asians. Labor Condition
Applications can be viewed by going to the DOL FLC data center. It reveals
that Rhee wants H-1Bs for jobs that could obviously be filled by Americans.
Here are some examples:

   District of Columbia Public Schools     

   SECONDARY TEACHER  $73,844/yr

   ESL TEACHER $44,988/yr

   ESL TEACHER  $44988

   BILINGUAL TEACHER   $71875

   Mathematic Teacher  $59330

   Secondary School Teacher  $56810

   SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST  $76401

   TEACHER  $54322

   Elementary Education Teacher  $58370


Rhee claims that the Oct. 2 layoffs of 266 teachers and educators were
needed to help pay for $43.9 million budget deficit for 2010. Union leaders
have denounced the action as an illegal mass firing designed to purge older
educators. The two sides have taken the dispute to the Superior Court of
the District of Columbia (WASHINGTON TEACHERS’ UNION, LOCAL # 6, AMERICAN
FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO).

The Washington Examiner just published a column (link below) by Barbara
Hollingsworth that made the connection between two seemingly unconnected
events -- the replacing of American teachers with Filipinos in Louisiana
with the recent firings of teachers in Washington DC. It’s a great op-ed
but this paragraph could be confusing:

    According to the federal government’s Foreign Labor Certification
    Data Center, D.C. Public Schools submitted 46 labor condition
    applications in 2007 and 2008, giving Rhee authority to import
    hundreds of foreign teachers on H1B visas without having to make
    any attempt to find eligible Americans.

While it’s correct that Washington DC has filed LCAs for foreign
teachers, the total number of applications is probably the tip of the
iceberg. That’s because, like most school districts, the DC public
schools are probably using bodyshops for most of their hiring of foreign
workers. A similar situation occurred in Louisiana, where a couple dozen
LCAs were filed to hire H-1Bs directly, while at the same time a bodyshop
called Universal Placement International was used to hire the bulk of the
Filipino teachers.

Be sure to read Patrick Cleburne’s excellent vdare blog concerning the
Washington Examiner article.

H-1B visas aren’t the only way to import foreign teachers, so counting
LCAs can lead to undercounts. The J-1 visa with an Optional Practical
Training (OPT) authorization can also be used to hire them as long as they
are considered "student teachers". J-1/OPT work authorizations don’t
require an LCA, so we have no way to know how many of them DC schools are
using -- and the number of OPTs allowed into the U.S. is unlimited.

So where are the teacher unions? The answer is probably two-fold: the
liberal apparatchiks who run the unions are reluctant to touch the H-1B (or
any other immigration) issue. And the odds of winning may be drastically
reduced if H-1B is mentioned. So far, the only way lawsuits have been won
when H-1B was a factor was to drop the immigration issue in favor of age
discrimination (AIG).


LINKS:

http://www.flcdatacenter.com/
FLC LCA database


http://www.teachforamerica.org/
TeachForAmerica

Ralley For Respect - DC Public Schools
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLv12wFEZhY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLD_jln8Yb8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgzuKhKZH1U

http://www.washingtonteachersunion.org/custom_images/file/FINAL%20WTU%20TRO%
20motion.pdf
WASHINGTON TEACHERS’ UNION, LOCAL # 6, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS,
AFL-CIO


http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2009/11/10/to-improve-dcs-schools-fire-black-
teachers-hire-h-1b-asians/
To Improve D.C.’s schools - Fire Black Teachers, hire H-1B Asians

http://www.zazona.com/Library/News/PCWeek/AIG/PCW19Nov1998.htm
H1-B safety net fails IT workers


ARTICLES COPIED BELOW:


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Importing-teachers-in-the-
District-of-Columbia-8508771.html
Barbara Hollingsworth: Importing teachers in the District of Columbia


http://educationnext.org/d-c-s-braveheart/
D.C.’s Braveheart, picture included


http://urbanschoolnightmare.blogspot.com/2009/10/people-dont-actually-get-ra
ce-cards.html
People don't actually get "race cards," right?


http://rheeform.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/dc-parents-concerned-about-alleged-
teacher-shortage/
D.C. Parents Concerned About Alleged Teacher Shortage


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Importing-teachers-in-the-
District-of-Columbia-8508771.html

Barbara Hollingsworth: Importing teachers in the District of Columbia
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist
November 10, 2009

District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is in hot water for
firing 266 teachers and administrators Oct. 2, just weeks into the new
school year and only a few months after inexplicably hiring hundreds of new
teachers. But there may have been a method to her apparent madness.

According to the federal government's Foreign Labor Certification Data
Center, D.C. Public Schools submitted 46 labor condition applications in
2007 and 2008, giving Rhee authority to import hundreds of foreign teachers
on H1B visas without having to make any attempt to find eligible Americans.

With the jobless rate now topping 10 percent, tens of thousands of American
engineers, scientists and other professionals would be more than happy to
try a second career teaching. But like many of their blue-collar brethren
who watched their jobs disappear overseas, the deck is now stacked against
experienced domestic white-collar workers as well.

For years, we've been told that the thousands of immigrants admitted to the
United States on such visas each year were needed for jobs Americans
couldn't - or wouldn't - do, such as computer programming or picking
lettuce. We're now supposed to believe that teaching K-12 falls into that
category.

Of course, it's no coincidence that young immigrants are willing to work
for far less than their American counterparts; the wage scale for hundreds
of novice teachers in D.C., average age 32, is near the bottom of the
District's unionized pay schedule. But when USA Today reports that there
are not enough jobs for all the students graduating from U.S. colleges and
universities, why are employers - including school districts - still
allowed to import foreigners?

An eerily similar scenario unfolded at the Recovery School District in
Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Katrina. Just two years after RSD
Superintendent Paul Vallas (formerly head of Chicago's public schools)
complained about a serious shortage of teachers, he announced major job
cuts - and mainly older Americans were let go.

Guess how they were replaced. Lourdes Navarro, who ran a teacher
"bodyshop," is accused of illegally withholding up to 20 percent of the pay
of the young, inexperienced Filipino teachers she brought into the United
States to staff RSD's low-performing schools.

Rob Sanchez, author of the Job Destruction Newsletter, says that teachers
union officials have been reluctant "to challenge the liberal consensus
that immigration is a good thing. As long as the imported teachers join the
union, they are willing to sacrifice their American members."

Since visa holders can easily be coerced into joining the union and forced
to do whatever the union bosses demand, union officials didn't bother to
protect the 20,000 or so American educators who lost their teaching jobs to
foreign competitors -- many of whom they were forced to train.

Teachers unions have enjoyed a stranglehold on urban school districts for
decades, but have failed to deliver a quality education to children who
need it most. Importing more union members from overseas will not solve
this fundamental problem.

What urban school districts really need are right-to-work laws that empower
school administrators to hire professional Americans with college degrees
in needed core subject areas who are willing to give teaching a chance --
with a waiver to pay them entry-level salaries.

Their collective years of experience in the real world, extensive knowledge
of American culture and history, and wisdom acquired over decades in the
work force are an invaluable resource that should not be squandered.

And please, don't tell me you can't find any.

Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner's local opinion editor.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


http://educationnext.org/d-c-s-braveheart/

D.C.’s Braveheart
Can Michelle Rhee wrest control of the D.C. school system from decades of
failure?

Michelle Rhee’s senior staff meeting has all the ceremony of lunchtime in
the teachers’ lounge. News is exchanged. Ideas tumble around. Rhee sits
at the head of the table but doesn’t run the meeting or even take the
conversational lead. Staffers talk over her as often as she talks over
them. If consensus is the goal, the ball is far upfield.

But then, Rhee wades in with, "Here’s what I think," or "What I don’t
want," or "This is crap," or "I want someone to figure this out," or "I’m
gonna tell you what we’re gonna do; we can talk about how we’re gonna
do it." And that is that. Next order of business, please.

Rhee’s style -- as steely as the sound of her peekaboo high heels on a
linoleum-tile hallway -- has angered much of Washington, D.C., and baffled
the rest since she arrived as schools chancellor in June 2007. But it is
also helping her gain control of a school system that has defied management
for decades: that hasn’t kept records, patched windows, met budgets,
delivered books, returned phone calls, followed court orders, checked
teachers’ credentials, or, for years on end, opened school on schedule in
the fall.

When I asked Rhee to name her most significant achievement in her two years
in Washington, her answer suggested that any progress is, so far, only
incremental. "We have begun -- begun -- begun -- to establish a culture of
accountability," she said, with a long pause between each "begun." A
teacher had recently e-mailed her about a personnel matter, she went on,
and was thrilled that Rhee had replied. "It’s sorta sad because the
expectations are so low. The fact that you just get a response is
celebrated," she said.

Rhee tells parents and taxpayers that they should judge her on "student
performance." Are test scores rising? Are students graduating? So far,
there’s some evidence that they are, although some teachers and parents
say that even that evidence is suspect.

But not much learning gets done without institutional support, and for
decades in Washington, not much has. When I asked Kenneth Wong, director of
Brown University’s urban-education policy program, on what measures Rhee
should be judged, he answered with a long list. It included how well the
schools work with other city agencies (to get sidewalks plowed in the
winter, for example), how many and which colleges new teachers come from
(the wider the net, the better), how quickly managers return phone calls,
and whether teacher absenteeism is down. Only at the end of the list did he
get to student performance. "The other stuff are the necessary conditions
to get to student achievement," he said.

That’s not particularly glamorous for a national media darling who has
been celebrated on magazine covers, on Capitol Hill, and by the president,
but it is a start.
ednext_20101_28_img1

Rhee tells parents and taxpayers to judge her on "student performance."

Rock Bottom?

It’s not news that Washington’s schools are among the most woeful in
the country, but even a cynic has to gasp. The mismanagement is legendary:
consider the 5 million personnel records Rhee says she found piled on a
storeroom floor when she took office. Marc Borbely, a former teacher, filed
a Freedom of Information Act request in 2004 to find out how many work
orders were outstanding at the central maintenance office. The answer:
25,000.

Teachers complained of out-of-control students: The city’s Ballou High
School was closed for a 35-day cleanup after students stole chemistry-lab
thermometers and scattered the mercury around hallways. In most school
districts, mercury thermometers had been replaced years earlier.

The system churned through six superintendents in 10 years, usually after
brutal head butting with the city council and community activists. That
made Washington the La Brea Tar Pits of strategic plans: Each one sank into
oblivion as its drafters moved on. The school funding formula changed four
times under as many superintendents.

Academic measures were miserable. The 2007 National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), administered before Rhee’s arrival but
announced five months after her term began, found that 61 percent of the
city’s 4th graders had below-basic reading skills, which means they could
barely read. Just 8 percent of its 8th graders were proficient -- that is,
at grade level -- or above in math.

Scores on the district’s own tests for the 2006–07 school year, the
last before Rhee’s arrival, were higher but still dismal. Just 38 percent
of elementary-school children were at grade level or above in reading, and
27 percent of high schoolers were at grade level or above in math.
Districtwide, fewer than 30 percent of African American students were
reading at grade level, compared to 87 percent of whites, a
57-percentage-point gap.

Rhee arrived to find that all 10 of Washington’s comprehensive high
schools had failed to meet federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) adequate
yearly progress goals and that 48 of its 67 elementary schools were in some
level of NCLB-mandated corrective action. The high-school dropout rate
hovered at about 50 percent, and just 9 percent of entering 9th graders
ever graduated from college.

On the SAT -- a test presumably only the most ambitious students take -- 43
percent of district students who took the exam in 2009 scored 390 or below
on the 800-point math test, which awards 200 points just for showing up.
African Americans citywide averaged 773 on the 1600-point reading and math
tests combined, or about 400 points less than they’d need for admission
to the nearby University of Maryland.

Community pressure to "do something" about the schools’ performance had
never materialized, though. Political leaders had seen no upside to taking
on a school system that employs thousands of African Americans in a city
where African Americans account for a majority of the population, the voter
rolls, the city council, local-government posts, and union leadership. And
in the weary way that people get used to dysfunction, no one else
complained. Rhee says she marvels that her decision to shut down 23 failing
schools in her first year drew howls of protest, while keeping failing
schools open doesn’t excite anyone.

The Money Question

Washington’s business community has fussed for years about the schools
because they turn out so few employable graduates and at a huge cost. The
Chamber of Commerce says that only one in four jobs in the city is held by
a D.C. resident now, and that 44 percent of Washingtonians don’t have
even a high-school diploma.

Education expenditures can swing wildly depending on how students are
counted and what spending is included in the calculation. But the U.S.
Census Bureau, in a survey of education finances released in July 2009,
says Washington spent $14,324 per public-school student in the 2006–07
school year, or about $6,300 more than the national average. The only
states to spend more were New Jersey and New York, which have vastly larger
corporate tax bases and far more upper-income taxpayers. The U.S.
Department of Education reports that the federal government pays 12 percent
of Washington’s education budget, a percentage largely determined by the
city’s high poverty rate. That puts it well below Louisiana and
Mississippi, but well above the 9 percent national average for federal
support.

A simpler way of looking at it: Washington has budgeted $760 million for
its traditional public schools in the fiscal year beginning October 2010.
Using Rhee’s enrollment estimate of 45,000, that works out to $16,800 per
student. Using the city council’s estimate of 41,500 students, it’s
$18,300.

ednext_20101_28_fig1As costs have risen, enrollment has plummeted (see
Figure 1). Affluent or activist parents enroll their youngsters in three or
four largely autonomous elementary schools in white neighborhoods, or move
to private schools, charter schools, or the suburbs. Between 2004 and 2008,
Washington’s traditional public schools lost 13,500 students, while its
charters gained 10,200.

What may be Washington’s last hope of stopping the slide from dismal to
disastrous rests on the reform course chosen by its mayor, Adrian Fenty, an
African American Democrat who has staked his political career and
considerable ego on his pledge to improve the schools. After his January
2007 inauguration, Fenty courted and then summoned Rhee to Washington
through her mentor, New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, even though
Rhee says she initially "was not blown away" by the mayor or the job. Fenty
quickly pushed through legislation that abolished the disputatious school
board, won Rhee the authority to fire hundreds of central-office workers,
and "has not flinched once through any of this, never," she says.

Rhee’s Roots

Rhee speaks often about her Teach For America (TFA) tour in a Baltimore
classroom between 1992 and 1995: how she struggled the first year until
pairing with another teacher to team-teach a class of 2nd and 3rd graders.
But Rhee’s experience a few years later with The New Teacher Project
(TNTP) is a better window on how she’s doing her job in Washington.
Political leaders have seen no upside to taking on a school system that
employs thousands of African Americans in a city where they are a majority.

Political leaders have seen no upside to taking on a school system that
employs thousands of African Americans in a city where they are a majority.

As Ariela Rozman, TNTP’s current CEO, tells it, superintendents had begun
asking TFA founder Wendy Kopp for help attracting and training teachers
like those Kopp was sending them. Rhee was finishing a graduate program at
Harvard and had never had a management role at TFA, but Kopp tapped Rhee to
head the teacher project as a spin-off in 1997. "The idea came from TFA
clients, but Michelle brought the vision," Rozman told me.

Rhee was a no-nonsense manager. She was so determined to fund The New
Teacher Project out of the revenues it was generating through its training
contracts with schools that she sorely underpaid her staff. For years, she
resisted pressure even from Kopp to take foundation funding, said Kati
Haycock, who is chair of the project’s board and president of the
Education Trust. Even so, the project attracted a talented staff with high
morale, little turnover, and fierce loyalty to Rhee. Richard Nyankori, who
moved with Rhee to Washington from TNTP and now heads special education for
the district, says Rhee teases him that he would throw himself under a bus
for her, "and she’s right. I probably would."

Rhee’s greatest success at The New Teacher Project may be how she left
it. Start-ups frequently struggle when a strong-willed manager leaves:
Staffers move on, backers temporize, and contracts slow as the new leader
finds her footing. But Ariela Rozman says The New Teacher Project has grown
since Rhee left, from 140 people and a $20 million budget to this year’s
staff of 210 and budget of $32 million.

Kaya Henderson, who also moved to Washington with Rhee as her deputy
chancellor, says The New Teacher Project’s management style moved with
them. Policy differences are hashed out at the weekly senior staff meetings
and at biweekly meetings of a strategy committee, which considers major
initiatives. "We’re not going to leave the meeting until one group has
convinced the other group. We all have to be good with the decision,"
Henderson told me. Still, "part of being a good leader is knowing when to
say ‘this is a good thing to do,’" a prerogative Rhee doesn’t shy
from, Henderson added.

Rhee has pledged to stay to the end of a second Fenty term -- January 2015,
if he is reelected -- and Henderson says "the rest of us are probably in it
for the same."

Bumpy Ride

Six weeks into the job, Rhee called her staff together with the message
that "We are not here to do the bureaucracy better," Nyankori says. Rhee
told them that "that’s what all of our friends are doing in reform all
around the country: They’re trying to make the trains stay on the track
and go faster. We are here to derail those trains."

If upheaval was the goal, Rhee has succeeded. Teachers say she has set
black teachers against whites and young teachers against veterans with her
controversial 2008 contract offer. Congressional Democrats worry that she
has put them between a policy goal, school improvement, and their
teachers-union allies. Education reformers are nervous that her
outta-my-way approach will wound their movement if it backfires.

Almost everyone has a Rhee story. As when the chancellor closed those 23
schools and scheduled a community meeting at each one but on the same
evening, so she couldn’t attend most of them. Or suggested the elected
city council was irrelevant and resisted its invitations to testify. Or
arrived for a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce board with -- surprise!
-- a television news crew in tow. Chamber president Barbara Lang says Rhee
never thanked the chamber for testifying in favor of Mayor Fenty’s
takeover of the schools, legislation that will be pivotal to Rhee’s
success.

Businesses, foundations, and civic groups that funded and ran after-school
and enrichment programs were similarly dismissed. A Chamber of Commerce
project that taught jobs skills to high schoolers was dropped. The World
Bank had outfitted and staffed college-prep resource centers at some of the
city’s toughest high schools. When Rhee put the outside groups on hold,
the bank diverted its $1 million a year in youth programming to local
nonprofits.

Parent groups that used to be solicited -- even begged -- to help make
decisions about dress codes, building budgets and staffing, renovations and
construction, and principal selection now find themselves shut out.
"Parents feel pushed aside," says Cathy Reilly, who started a parents’
group to exchange news about their kids’ high schools.

Rhee urges parents to e-mail her with questions, and she answers late into
the night (she says she answered 99,000 e-mails her first year). But at the
public meetings I attended last spring, Rhee sat alone at the front of the
room, talked over parents, moved about with an ever-present photographer,
and left immediately afterward in a chauffeured Chevy Tahoe.

Rhee and her loyalists say with jaw-dropping insouciance that none of that
matters because, as she told me, she’s "doing what’s right for kids."

"The conventional rules and the people who play by them don’t get much
change," says the Education Trust’s Haycock. "Hordes" of people come to
their table when she and Rhee dine out together, Haycock adds, and "I have
never heard anyone say anything except ‘keep on keeping on.’"

Rhee and her senior staff believe that the ed-reform stars are aligned as
they never have been in Washington, and that they have the brains, focus,
and work ethic to leap at the opportunity. In all of that, they’re
probably right.

The Front Line

Rhee and her top aides don’t talk much about curriculum change; their
focus is people. "Strong principals, strong teachers -- that’s what turns
schools around," says Nyankori. "That’s why we feel so strongly about
this union contract."

The Washington Teachers Union and its parent American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) feel just as strongly, of course, about a contract that
undercuts such union cornerstones as tenure, seniority, and worker
solidarity, and that would set a national precedent. Rhee’s proposal to
pay six-figure salaries to teachers who agreed to link their paychecks to
classroom outcomes: that’s the "green" option. Teachers who choose the
"red" option (green, go; red, stop -- get it?) would collect far-smaller
pay increases, but would retain job security.

Rhee didn’t say how she would pay for the salary boosts, although she
implied that foundations would pick up much of the tab. Meanwhile,
foundation endowments have plunged and local tax revenues have shrunk since
Rhee offered the plan in summer 2008.

AFT president Randi Weingarten, who has largely taken over the negotiations
from the local union, insists that the teachers and Rhee "share the same
goals, the issue in contract negotiations is how to get there." She
proposes rewarding teachers equally with school-based bonuses, a nonstarter
with Rhee, who is zealous about getting rid of those she calls "bad
teachers." Stakes are so high for both sides that they appear to be working
on a compromise that gives Rhee some, but by no means all of the staffing
and firing flexibility she is after.

Still, Rhee has some tools that other school heads don’t have. Congress
gave her the power to impose a teacher-evaluation system without
negotiating its terms with the union. The new evaluations, set to begin in
the 2009–10 school year, will include student test scores and five
classroom observations of each teacher each year. Henderson, the deputy
chancellor, has let the union know that the district will likely begin
observing teachers by video, too.

And then there are some test-score gains, which Rhee is counting on to
build public support for her plans and ease the doubts about her style. Two
years after Rhee’s arrival, scores on district-administered tests are up:
49 percent of elementary school students were reading at grade level, a
21-percentage-point jump in two years, according to test results released
in July 2009. Among secondary-school students, 40 percent were at grade
level in math, up 13 points. Rising proficiency levels should win Rhee new
clout in the city’s political circles, new respect among parents and
civil groups, and more leverage to turn the troubled system around.

Rising proficiency levels should win Rhee new clout in the city’s
political circles.

Rising proficiency levels should win Rhee new clout in the city’s
political circles.

Taking Stock

Rhee’s other successes aren’t exactly the stuff of headlines. Erich
Martel, who has taught social studies in the D.C. schools for 40 years,
says teachers are doing more lesson prep and trying to make their classes
more interesting. "There are teachers who need someone looking over their
shoulder and they’re getting it," he says.

Long-neglected school buildings are being renovated or rebuilt, which could
make them more competitive with some better-housed charters. Spending on
professional development has quadrupled. There are art and music classes in
every school, the district says.

Rhee’s most important achievement might be in the management fixes most
people can’t see. High-school transcripts, which the schools used to hold
on to and sometimes alter to boost graduation rates, are being centralized
and scrubbed (the audit found that one-third of students weren’t taking
the classes they need to graduate). Nyankori says he has lured back 155 of
the district’s 2,400 special-ed youngsters who are in private schools, at
a yearly cost of $141 million, with more programs and better case
management, and has set a target return date for each of the others.
Quarterly diagnostic tests have been aligned with year-end assessments:
Unbelievably, the two were designed by different consultants, and didn’t
predict or reflect the outcome of the other.

That isn’t to say that Rhee is anywhere near achieving her often-stated
goal of making Washington the best urban district in the country. Even she
attributes much of the test-score gains in her two years to the
district’s ability to pick what she calls "low-hanging fruit." Saturday
test-prep classes have helped borderline kids pass their year-end tests,
even while thousands of other children remain far behind because of weak
basic skills. Accounting changes helped boost results, too: Children who
were absent on test day now are counted as no-shows; before, they were
counted among those with failing scores.

The graduation rate -- as opposed to the drop-out rate, which is calculated
differently -- was up a few percentage points in 2009 to 70 percent, the
district says. But some teachers and parents attribute that to a new
"credit recovery" program that lets failing students retake courses after
school. Martel, the long-time social studies teacher, says credit-recovery
classes ran 82 hours per quarter at his school compared to 125 hours for
classes held during the school day, and that teachers were told not to give
homework.

Despite the celebrity surrounding Rhee and Fenty, the traditional public
schools are still bleeding students, which is perhaps the ultimate,
market-driven judgment. Washington’s State Office of Education -- yes,
this nonstate has a state office -- says enrollment in the traditional
schools dropped to 45,200 in the 2008 school year from 49,500 just the year
before. Charters grew to 25,700 from 22,000. Charter enrollment is even
more impressive if you look at the fine print: In 2008, charters enrolled
48 percent of public-school 6th graders, up from 36 percent a year earlier.

Michael Herreld, who is president of PNC Bank’s Washington region and
sits on several local school-reform committees, worries about what he calls
the "disintegration" of the city’s traditional public schools if Rhee
can’t stop the enrollment decline. Any urgency to fix things would wane,
and so would the schools’ claim on public revenue. That would have
practical consequences: Washington doesn’t have school buses, for
example. If more schools are closed, youngsters could be miles from the
nearest kindergarten and its free breakfast and lunch programs.

The only way to stop the attrition is to "grow good neighborhood schools,"
says Nyankori. Rhee illustrated the obstacles to that when a woman asked
her about her plans for math and science education during a meeting in the
spring of 2009 in the city’s northwest quadrant, where most adults have
at least one degree and, often, two or three. Rhee said she had ordered
more computers to support math and science programs, but learned when they
arrived that most schools didn’t have three-pronged electrical outlets
for the computers’ three-pronged plugs. "This is the level where we
are…subzero," she said, as the audience stifled a collective eye roll.

High Stakes

Rhee seems irked that policymakers see Washington as the laboratory of the
education-reform agenda. "That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard," she
said, at the same spring meeting at which she bemoaned the lack of proper
sockets. What matters is Washington’s kids, not a national agenda, she
insisted.

In fact, both are at stake. Washington is a natural petri dish, whether
Rhee disdains the idea or not. It’s small and deeply troubled, is a
foundation darling, has creative new leadership, and is pursuing the
popular academic ideas of the day. Its big charter sector almost begs
researchers to compare the two systems, and it sits in the spotlight of the
U.S. Capitol.

I asked Rhee to name her biggest mistake in two years and she offered this:
She could have done a "better job of communicating with teachers" when she
presented her contract proposal and averted some of the antagonism that
dogs her relationship with them. Since then, she has met with teachers a
few times a week, she said, and finds the exchanges "incredibly
heartening." There are other tiny signs that Rhee may be trying to calm the
waters she has roiled. With contract talks going nowhere in the spring of
2009, she wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which she insisted that "[t]hose
who categorically blame teachers for the failures of our system are simply
wrong."

Around the same time, at a banquet at the Federal City Council, a premier
business and civic group, Rhee thanked a consulting group for undertaking,
pro bono, the school-records audit. "It was the first time I’ve heard her
thank anyone for anything," said the head of a major nonprofit. Her staff
now concedes that a Time magazine cover of Rhee -- standing grim-faced in
an empty classroom, holding a broom -- was a mistake.

That may be about it. I asked The New Teacher Project’s Ariela Rozman if
Rhee ever called to cry on her shoulder. "Michelle doesn’t cry," Rozman
said. That’s probably a good thing.

June Kronholz is a former foreign correspondent, bureau chief, and
Washington-based education reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://urbanschoolnightmare.blogspot.com/2009/10/people-dont-actually-get-ra
ce-cards.html

Tuesday, October 6, 2009
People don't actually get "race cards," right?
So here's the thing about this RIF: it sucks. I get that there isn't money
to pay people, but I think the whole thing went down in a way that can only
be described as "icky." First, it was supposed to happen on Wednesday. Then
it didn't. It finally went down on Friday, and I got the impression that my
administration didn't have a plan for it. There was zero communication
between admin and staff, which was disconcerting and unprofessional. The
whole thing is gross and I don't like it.

Apparently, I'm not alone. The (admittedly small, egomaniacal, and usually
bizarre -- myself included) DC teacher blogosphere has been blowing up with
allegations that race and age were motivators for the RIF -- specifically,
people are accusing the chancellor of using the RIF to get rid of African
American teachers over 40.

Many people on many blogs have made the comment that the people who were
laid off were "disproportionately" older Black teachers. Here's the thing:
we don't know if that's true, and we won't until someone does some pretty
complex statistical analysis on the numbers. Rather than wax philosophical
on the nature of race relations, I'm going to unleash my inner nerd (OK, it
wasn't on a very tight leash to begin with) and give a statistics lesson.
*adjusts glasses* Here we go.

In order to say that there is statistical evidence that Rhee's team (and
her principals) are racist, we need to know several things. In each school,
what are the demographics of the staffs in each competitive rating
category? What are the demographics of the people who were laid off? If we
can then compare those proportions, we can get some answers. (DORK ALERT)
This is called a chi-squared test for independence. Here's what I mean:

Imagine that I wanted to know whether or not race was a factor in the
layoffs for teachers. First, I'd need to know the proportion of teachers in
each ethnic sub-group. Then, I'd need to know the proportion that was laid
off. In general, we'd want the proportion laid off to be the same for each
ethnic group -- this would mean that race and layoffs were independent of
each other. Make sense? Well, it gets complicated.

For example, let's say we wanted to know whether or not race was a factor
in the layoffs of educational aides. In my school, 100% of the educational
aids are African American women. Therefore, 100% of the educational aides
who were laid off were African American women. The chi-squared test would
show us that the proportions are the same and there was no evidence of
racism here (note that I say "no evidence of racism", not "no racism" --
statistics can't prove the absence of something).

Next, let's say that we want to look at teachers. Well, each teacher was
rated within his / her department. The principals had to decide whether or
not they could afford to lose an English teacher, for example, and if they
could then the lowest rated English teacher was let go. In order to see if
race played a part in that decision, we'd need to look at the racial makeup
of the English department. At my school, most English teachers are White.
One English teacher was laid off -- a middle-aged Black woman. While the
proportion of African Americans in the English department is only about
40%, 100% of the people in the English department who were laid off were
African American. This means racism, right? Not necessarily. When the
sample size is one, as it is here (only one English teacher laid off,
remember) then we can't really conclude anything. 100% of the English
teachers laid off would have been some race, after all.

If you're still reading, here's my point: it's too early and the statistics
are too complex for anyone on any blog to be accurately declaring that
racism was involved. Certainly, we're entitled to our opinions, but it's
irresponsible to make assertions -- especially using specific terms like
"disproportionate" -- when facts and evidence are as murky as they are
here. One thing is certain, though: this RIF blows, and it blows hard.

It is my opinion that DCPS is a pretty racist place, and that we live in a
generally racist society. One only has to look at the glaring inequality of
opportunity on one side of the river and the other, or on one side of the
park and the other, for evidence. But I don't think it's responsible to
declare as fact that Michell Rhee is racist because we notice a trend in
some of the people laid off. We need to give this issue proper
investigation and analysis.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://rheeform.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/dc-parents-concerned-about-alleged-
teacher-shortage/

D.C. Parents Concerned About Alleged Teacher Shortage
September 30, 2008 · 1 Comment

ABC News writes:

After millions of dollars in renovations, some parents claim McKinley Tech
High School still suffers a critical shortage of teachers.

"We asked what’s going on, why there’s no teachers," said Monica Lowe.
"They made false promises."

Her son is a junior at McKinley. After weeks of school, his Algebra
II/Trigonometry class is on its second substitute teacher, she says.

"Parent-teacher conference is next Friday, October the third, Mr. Ford, and
we have yet to receive a teacher," Lowe told ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 reporter
Sam Ford Friday.

McKinley’s not alone. ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 visited Thurgood Marshall
Elementary School last week and found classes with only substitute
teachers. One classroom with a permanent teacher had 46 students.

The teachers’ union blames schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

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