Despite its recent gains on the 2013 NAEP, the District of Columbia is not a national model.
It remains the lowest performing urban district in the nation.
Its policy of test-and-punish-and-fire have produced a startlingly high attrition rate among teachers.
Churn is not good for schools or for children or for building a culture of collaboration.
Few of the principals hired by Rhee remain in the system.
The real story in D.C.: Thanks to Mayor Vincent Gray, D.C. started universal pre-K, and it is showing benefits in the early grades. A writer in the Washington Post called Gray’s work “a staggering achievement.”
As for the rest of the story, read this article that I wrote for Talking Points Memo.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would want to copy a system built on striking fear into the hearts of teachers and principals.
No successful corporation–large or small– operates in that manner. The best of our nation’s business companies boast of how they carefully select new hires, support them, and pamper them with perks to make them happy in their work.
Success in schooling grows from collaboration, love of learning, experienced teachers and principals, equitable and adequate funding, and leadership that holds itself accountable for its decisions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Fear-based management?”
Frederick the Great employed this tactic. His idea was that his soldiers should fear the officers of the army more than they feared the enemy. That way, when they got scared in battle (as any sane person would get scared), they’d run away from their officers who would certainly kill them, and run toward the enemy. Running the right way for battle was the goal.
In management literature a couple of decades ago there were lots of mentions of this technique, and I sat through more than one session with corporate managers who laughed and nodded in approval.
Frederick the Great ran from his first battle himself. His early efforts were salvaged when the French joined him against the same enemies.
How long he kept this tactic is unclear; but where is Prussia, today?
Most of his influence today comes through his support of art and music. His army and nation are gone, but his art and music live on.
Is there a moral there?
“In 2012, 92 percent of the District’s 4-year-olds were enrolled in public pre-K, along with 69 percent of 3-year-olds. Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s much-lauded program only enrolled 75 percent of 4-year-olds and no 3-year-olds. The District could skimp here, but that’s not how investments work. Instead, the District offers students more (and higher-quality) pre-K time in order to get better long-term results.”
I do sincerely hope this is something that will catch on across the country.
I do sincerely hope that this is something that actually works. But it won’t. You’ll live to be disillusioned. I won’t.
Ms. Rhee is a classic example of it’s not what you know it’s who you know.
She has a total of two years of teaching experience in a secondary school next to one that I taught in for five years in the Baltimore City Schools. By her own admission, she had great difficulty during those two years. Then she took off to write and pontificate about pedagogical theory and made a distinct impression on the people running New York Public Schools at the time, who recommended her to run the Washington School System. (Truth is stranger than fiction.)
In her tenure there she inaugurated the kiss up kick down philosophy that dominates inner city public education today. She would do things like walk into a teacher’s room for five minutes, then walk out to the principal and order that the teacher be fired. Other teachers who gained her favor, or the favor of those administrators who kissed up to her, would join the administration in kick downing toward the teachers who were out of favor. I’ve spoken to some teachers who have transferred to teach in Baltimore City, and they give fascinating accounts of Ms. Rhee’s Robespierre like swath of terror through that system.
In the current pedagogical climate, in my opinion, teacher scapegoating is the main philosophical tool. There are a host of problems with the inner city school systems, such as having kids travel all over town to find the right “magic” school- it’s a bunch of baloney- these schools, at least in Baltimore, open and close with mixed results. The magic school for a couple of years is closed down as a failure a few years hence. The system ought to go back to the simple systems from which they evolved, neighborhood schools with local involvement. Problem is, finding neighborhood cohesiveness for local involvement in the inner cities is a difficult proposition, and that quandary points to the larger problems that are behind the problems of urban education, the total social breakdown of the inner cities, including lack of parental involvement, to say the least. To castigate teachers for the ills of the inner city schools, in my opinion, is preposterous. More to blame are the millions and millions of wasted dollars on bloated bureaucracies that promote the kiss up kick down philosophy. Successful private companies would not waste money in such a shoot yourself in the foot style system.
Uh, so are we saying that we need to limit public assistance to children with married parents. I thought that was all that evangelical Christian, Focus-on-the-Family, s***. Oh God helps us if those damned Christians were right all along about family life, intact families, and responsible patriarchalism. So disgustingly Anti-Progressive.
Always glad to see you, Harlan, but as usual, your reasoning is for the birds.
Additional caveats re DC’s NAEP scores —
Rheeform’s high-stakes testing has been in operation since about 2008 but there were no significant NAEP improvements until this year, notwithstanding several years of teacher discharges. If increasing teacher motivation or replacing poorly-performing teachers was the key to improving NAEP scores, we would have seen significant increases long before 2013.
Rheeform’s high-stakes testing has resulted in DC schools narrowing the curriculum to emphasize the tested subjects at the expense of the untested subjects. The effects of this narrowing of the curriculum will be cumulative and might account for some of the increase in NAEP scores.
Standardized test scores on the DC-CAS tests (the equivalent of state-developed tests) have increased gradually since several years before Rhee ‘s tenure. Some observers attribute this increase to improvements initiated by Rhee’s two predecessors starting around 2000. Other observers attribute the increase to changing demographics — more middle-class parents moving into DC and a larger percentage of middle-class DC parents sending their children to DC schools (particularly to charters) rather than to private schools.
Of course, the DCPS officials completely ignore these caveats when trumpeting the all alleged success of Rheeform based on the NAEP scores.
Caveats, we don’t need no stinkin caveats!
Hasn’t DC been gentrifying?
Yes, it has.
I thought we HATED corporations here. That education was not a business. Are successful businesses doing BETTER than government run education systems? Hmmm.
Your logical leap took you right off the edge of the cliff. But keep posting. You’re doing wonders.
Dienne: you are correct.
Wonders indeed. Those who take logical leaps right off the cliffs of logic and fact were a strong factor in convincing me over a period of three years that Diane Ravitch and others were correct [in the main] in their critiques and suggested remedies.
They continue to persuade me that the owner of this blog and others like her are on the right track.
And that is more than wonderful, it is a miracle that some of those most opposed to a “better education for all” should provide the most convincing arguments in its favor. But one should always be open to the miraculous:
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” [Albert Einstein]
😎
Almost all corporations use fear based management, Look at Microsoft and Dell with their mandatory firing percentages. Education should not be based on what corporations do or like.
We must never forget that our “commodities” are children.
I sure hope my sarcasmometer is broken! Do I need to take it in and have it recalibrated.
? not .
But, Ellen, children are our most valuable assets.
Michelle Rhee said so herself!
In describing the DC Public Schools Ravitch writes, “Its policy of test-and-punish-and-fire have produced a startlingly high attrition rate among teachers…” Now I hope you will read this link.. once I started to read I ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT STOP and read all parts of it.. This link paints a very realistic picture of the life of a title one student. The teacher in her life MEANT everything to her despite concerns well above her young age. Now imagine that this teacher gets fired because this student and her classmates did not test well! Does someone like Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg care about the most crucial part of learning… POVERTY MATTERS??? How many title one teachers will read this and completely nod their head in understanding as they have students like this? A lot.. including myself! DO take a read…
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child
Great article in Talking Points Memo. Also worth reading is the link to the explanation about why TPM has changed its comment format: “We want comments to be spirited and free-wheeling but not insane and toxic.”
Along with Diane’s posts, I find the comments on this blog to be thoughtful, informational, and the spark for productive discussion. They support Diane’s definitions of success: “Success in schooling grows from collaboration, love of learning, experienced teachers and principals, equitable and adequate funding, and leadership that holds itself accountable for its decisions.”
While teachers may not have control over budgets, funding, and misguided leadership, we may freely share our experience and love of learning with each other. We can be responsible for sustaining the craft of teaching on a daily basis.
It is so fascinating how achievement is kept just out of reach of the students and teachers for the extra room for others to politically maneuver.
I did a brief stint grading high school-level written exams for the District of Columbia for the testing company, McGraw-Hill last year. I just had to know…and I am glad I did it.
The essay topic was about technology replacing family time and usurping traditional values. There were three different grading categories that could receive a maximum of 6, 4, and 4 points, respectively. The first was a broad category for flow, originality, style, thoroughness, effectiveness, and general quality. The other two grading categories were more technical in nature.
We probably viewed 20 sample papers on our computers to prepare for the rubric test. THERE WAS NOT ONE 6-SCORING PAPER PROVIDED to exemplify the established rubric. We were also given verbal instructions by the grading site pit-boss to NEVER GIVE A 6. NO EXCEPTIONS. This was an order from the district, and they didn’t “KNOW WHY BUT THAT IS JUST WHAT THEY WANT.”
Talk about undermining success and achievement.
What does anyone know about RocketShipED?
They’re moving into DC, claim lots of progress in California: