Rhee battles union in drive to reform D.C.’s schools
By Leah Fabel
Examiner Staff Writer 10/12/08
Michelle Rhee battles the teachers’ union in her drive to reform D.C.’s schools. Emily J. Reynolds Michelle Rhee gives herself one F: for the way she handled a classroom of second-graders at Baltimore’s Harlem Park Elementary School.
“My first year teaching was a huge disappointment. I don’t think I was able to give those kids what they deserved in terms of an education,” said Rhee, now in her second year as chancellor of Washington’s public schools. “But that initial challenge has fueled what I’ve done my entire career.”
And to hear Rhee tell it, she hasn’t failed since.
Sixteen years after her first days in the classroom, the steely 38-year-old is among an elite cadre of young education reformers around the nation who flout the notion that change can only come by sweet-talking the unions that represent principals and teachers.
“We’ve seen people try to be consensus builders and get the community to love them and bring everyone along, and those efforts we know aren’t successful,” she said in an interview at her office near Union Station, overlooking Northwest Washington.
“What we don’t know is an effort where the focus is different, the pace is different, the willingness to piss everyone off is different. We haven’t seen whether that works or not, so I’m going to go with that one whole hog.”
But an angry Washington Teachers’ Union is eager to teach Rhee and her brand of reformers a lesson about patience. They are refusing to accept a contract — even one that includes six-figure salaries for high performers — until it includes protections for veteran teachers, minimum standards for classroom resources, stronger security in the schools and mentoring for new or struggling teachers.
“We have a philosophical difference in how to get to a successful school system,” union President George Parker said. “I happen to believe you’ll accomplish that by developing a work force. The chancellor seems to be focused on simply hiring and firing.”
Put another way, Parker puts the onus on the school system to support individual teachers and principals; Rhee puts the onus on teachers and principals to prove their place in the system.
“At some point you have to stand up and say yes, teaching in this city is going to be harder,” Rhee said. “And that’s why not everybody can do it, because it’s going to take something extraordinary to work past the challenges.”
Rhee has staked her career on the idea. She developed it over three years working in the classroom as part of the nonprofit Teach for America program, two years earning a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard, and 10 more as a founder of the New Teacher Project, another nonprofit reform group.
Teach for America takes top-notch recent college graduates and puts them in the classrooms of America’s worst schools. The New Teacher Project partners with failing school districts and recruits well-trained teachers to fill their classrooms.
Both count on tireless educators who apply the same high standards to all pupils, including homeless students, children of addicts and kids with criminal records.
Alumni of both organizations, with idealism still intact, now fill top posts in Rhee’s central office.
Rhee practices in private what she preaches in public. Living in her basement is one of her former students from Baltimore, now pregnant with a second child and without a permanent place to stay. Rhee has mentored the young woman for 14 years.
“If she had grown up in the suburbs, she’d be about to graduate from Harvard right now,” Rhee said. “She’s a reminder every day of what I’m doing and why.”
So it’s not surprising that Rhee is pushing relentlessly ahead, despite the stalled contract negotiations. Most notably, she is moving to rid the schools of chronically bad leaders — even if union leaders like Parker say many failing teachers could improve with more help.
Parker said he has other differences with Rhee, a Korean-American who was raised in the Midwest — and who is the first non-black chancellor since the 1960s.
Choosing his words carefully, Parker said, “She may not be very open, many times, to other opinions. That goes along with a philosophical viewpoint that collaboration is overrated.”
Her more outspoken critics call it arrogance. Her supporters say it’s anything but.
“She can speak specifically in an instant about what’s happening in a classroom — what the classes look like, what work needs to be done, who needs to be in front of those youth,” said John Deasy, the superintendent of Prince George’s County schools who recently took a job with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“And then she can jump to a level about what it means five years from now, and what it means to our economy. And that conversation can happen in 15 minutes flat.”
Rhee’s older brother, a Colorado real estate broker, calls it commitment.
“It can come off as arrogance to some people, but she’s very thoughtful,” Erik Rhee said. “She’s not closed-minded, but she’s likely already thought of the points you’re bringing up, and she’ll have already discounted them and will make clear why she doesn’t hold those points to be accurate.”
Whatever it’s called, it’s a direct affront to the unions. Sitting at a desk strewn with spreadsheets, before a computer signaling a near-constant stream of e-mails, Rhee sighed and defended her style.
“We have all these adults who are paid a lot of money who are fine with incremental change, or focused on politics and making people happy,” Rhee said. “And I just don’t have any patience for that. I don’t have the patience for it.”
Parker, who taught in D.C.’s public schools for 27 years, proves a tough audience for the inspirational speeches. He runs through a litany of chancellors, each one with high-minded ideas cast aside by the next person to come along.
“Now here comes Rhee saying we need to pay teachers more but we need to fire bad ones. Whether or not the chancellor needs to stay,” he said, “is going to depend upon her ability to move forward with real reform. Firing teachers is not real reform.”
Rhee believes it’s the place to start. True to character, she scoffed at the possibility of failure, even under a national microscope.
“That’s the unfortunate part: If it doesn’t work, the consequences will be nothing,” she said, ending in almost a whisper before betting she could find a new district to run within months. “That’s the sad thing about public education — there’s really no accountability at the end of the day.”
Rhee spoke as if her first class of students were still running amok in her memory’s classroom.
“I can’t go through another year of not improving things because we’re waiting for a contract,” she said. “We lose kids every single frickin’ day because the adults are operating in that way.”
3 Comments
Reader Comments:
POSTED Oct 12, 2008
debdessaso: "To say that I don't envy Chancellor Rhee would be an understatement. Challenging the status-quo-conscious unions is the most difficult obstacle facing those who truly are committed to educational reform in DC, both at the K-12 and the college level. Unless the unions are willing to face the fact that not every teacher is cut out for teaching--with or without additional training--the public school system will be continually locked in face-offs with chancellors, while high school students continue to show up at the doors of colleges and universities totally unprepared for the rigors of higher education. Enough already!"POSTED Oct 13, 2008
http://generationxteacher.blogspot.com/: "At the end of the day and after all the rhetoric have been said, fact remains that abolishing tenure doesn't equate to holding everyone accountable. Yes, it's a tactical maneuver (more of a scare tactic) but it may promote bias and instability-- both for the teachers and the students. There are still some avenues that have not been explored and yet the Chancellor seems to be too fast, too furious, and too eager to pull the trigger and fire. --- http://generationxteacher.blogspot.com/"POSTED Oct 13, 2008
Brian: "I have to admit that I wasn't a big fan of the way Fenty dealt with the council in terms of starting to implement Rhee's changes, and I'm no fan at all of Fenty in general. But as the more time passes, the more I'm supportive of what Michelle Rhee is doing. It seems like she's putting the strongest driving force behind improving education that DC has seen in decades. It also seems that she's fighting to get rid of this feel-good/self-esteem approach to education. Students (and teachers) who are failing, need to know that they're failing and have to improve because the real world isn't going to treat them otherwise."