The lady with a mission has a soft side. This morning's Washington Post featured an editorial from DC Chancellor of Schools herself. I couldn't help but hear a sharply defensive tone throughout and be somewhat mystified by the whole thing. Is Madame Scorched Earth, to ad lib Weingarten's nickname for her policies, announcing the planting of a veritable forest? Or is she just trying to smooth things over after thoroughly alienating the District's teaching force?
Three things, in particular, stuck out. First, she very much wants to set the record straight. "I want to be clear about something: I do not blame teachers for the low achievement levels," she says. Although this statement, if memory serves me, is technically correct, Rhee is leaning a bit too heavily on semantics for my taste. Her argument is basically this: it's not that she blames teachers for all of DC failures, but that she understands how important teacher quality is--the most important factor, in fact--when it comes to student achievement. But that's like saying that 6 is the same as one half dozen. If teacher quality is the most important factor, then teacher quality is at the heart of DC's dismal performance. Just last month, Rhee promised to use 90 day plans to fire a "significant share," as she put it, of DC's teachers who are incompetent or ineffective. Why would she fire a "significant share" of effective teachers? She wouldn't. So that means that Rhee thinks a "significant share" of DC's teachers are ineffective. In other words, she IS blaming teachers for low achievement levels.
Next, Rhee outlines the "key goals" to creating "the most effective and highly compensated educator force in the country." What a second. When did creating the most "highly compensated educator force" become one of Rhee's goals? If history serves us, buying off the unions or other status quo groups is usually how reform gets passed in the first place. (This, in fact, was the subject of a recent Gadfly editorial that argued the recession might be the end of reform, since it relies so heavily on getting carried along with more money. Recession means no money. No money means no reform.) A perfect demonstration of this, in fact, is Rhee's original contract proposal, which promised raises to all teachers, with teachers who give up tenure simply getting a bigger raise. This isn't that surprising or new, but announcing that making DC's teachers the most "highly compensated educator force" (versus, say, making DC the most highly scoring urban district or similar) is kind of strange. I thought paying teachers more was a means to an end (attracting and retaining better teachers, which will, in turn, result in higher achievement), not an end in and of itself.
And then there's bullet point number four:
Protection from arbitrary firings. Some teachers are concerned a principal may want to fire them for reasons unrelated to performance. While principals who do this risk their own jobs (firing effective teachers is a sure way to lower school achievement), we will ensure protections for teachers. We need a fair and transparent process, free from bias and haste, designed with teachers' input.
The parenthetical is an interesting, and in my opinion, much ignored observation. For teachers worried their principal would fire them over a personal grudge, I want to know, why would a principal fire a teacher if the teacher increases student performance and benefits the school (and the principal's reputation) as a whole? That's some grudge to overcome self-interest and common sense. And if they are such an excellent teacher, and they do get fired anyway over a personal grudge, wouldn't another principal (without a grudge) recognize that and want to hire them if they applied to another school? If you're good at your job and there's a market for your services, then you should be rather secure in your job or at least your ability to be hireable. For teachers, it's a bit more complicated than that, of course, but the rubber room up in New York demonstrates this point rather nicely. It's a neglected point that Rhee is perhaps right to point out.
Now we'll just have to wait and see if these friendly overtures result in contract progress...or if the union still holds a grudge.
