While former Chancellor Michelle Rhee traipses around the nation telling red states and the media her formula for saving schools, a member of the D.C. City Council has devised a plan to reform the schools she left behind.
David Catania, an at-large member of the City Council, plans to introduce seven bills to overhaul the still low-performing public schools of the nation’s capital. Catania said the public schools have been “stagnating” for the past several years, those being the years of Rhee and her deputy.
This gets complicated because the city’s public schools are supposedly controlled by the mayor. Chancellor Kaya Henderson expressed surprise when she learned of Catania’s plan. It must be a cool plan to reform schools because it was designed by a law firm.
The Washington Post reports:
“Catania produced the legislation during the past three months with the help of outside law firm Hogan Lovells, whose work has been funded with private donations. The lead lawyer working with Catania has been Maree Sneed, a former Montgomery County principal who has taught education courses at Harvard University and served on the board of Teach for America.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Duelling corporate ed reformers….
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I’d pay to see them mud wrestle with Rhee tethered to the ring.
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Well, sign ME up! With Maree Sneed hard at work, how could things possibly fail?
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“You can imagine my surprise when I sat down and got asked a bunch of policy questions that had huge implications that I didn’t have time to prepare for,” she said.
She’s the chancellor, isn’t it her job to know policy?
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Kinda like the way her former boss and still Michelle Rhee fired a principal on TV.
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Reblogged this on Unpacking Reform and commented:
This got me thinking…can cities and overstimulating environments impact child performance? Also, the rapacious onslaught of corporations going after education is alarming and flipping scary. Heroes are needed PRONTO.
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Forget war on drugs–corporations are smacking their lips, ready to feast and cash in on education reform. I’m frightened.
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Really, this is irritating. Everyone knows how to fix failing schools but educators. We have politicians who believe they have the solution when they can’t even fix the areas that they have jurisdiction over. If it was so easy to fix failing schools, don’t you think it would have been done by now. There is no magic bullet and it can’t be done in an instant, let educators figure this out and politicians and business people, mind yours.
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Private donations???? Hmmmm…..who could they be from???
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By Tim Craig,May 01, 2013
A wealthy investment banker has donated $100,000 to D.C. Council member David A. Catania’s controversial private fund to help finance outside legal advice on education policy.
The contribution by Emanuel J. Friedman, a Kalorama resident who manages a multibillion-dollar investment fund, is the first to Catania’s effort. Friedman, 67, did not return calls seeking comment.
Friedman’s donation brings the fund a third of the way toward its goal of $300,000. The money would pay the Hogan Lovells law firm for work in support of the council’s Education Committee
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And I bet there are other investors as well. But not surprised to see more corporations on the list. Education is now a big profitable industry–unless you are a teacher or on staff of a school. I am sure there are other donors, ones we all know and love.
Catina is playing the same game Vincent Gray played using education to make a name for himself. At least Catina isn’t lying the way Gray did when he pretended to be against Rhee’s agenda. It is obvious he is making a play to privatize the schools and crush the union.
There is a book about CC on the market. It was co-written by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann is of course the publisher.
Funny, Lucy’s boss, Fuhrman, has connections to Pearson and Heinemann was taken over by Pearson a few years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pearson is also donating to this cause as well. They’ve taken over Columbia TC. They’ve taken over certification in many states. Almost every text and test in the nation comes from them. I bet they have stakes in charters as well.
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“Emanuel J. Friedman”. Yikes. I’m having visions of a love child of Milton Friedman and Rahm Emanuel.
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I think they should fire all the teachers and close a bunch of schools. Again.
That’s a proven performance-enhancer, obviously.
Also. More standardized testing and more consultants who work for law firms.
I cannot believe they are planning on totally up-ending that school system again. Those poor people.
Is the continual chaos deliberate, do you think? Is this some kind of wacky management fad?
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If we keep doing what hasn’t worked over and over again, it will work… it MUST work….
Looney.
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Chiara, you have hit upon a new trend in corporate reform. It is called “failing upward.” An urban district–say, D.C. Or Chicago–is “saved” and its leader goes on to fame and fortune, then someone else is brought in to save it again. Repeat scenario.
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TFA and law firms doing education? What a joke. Unfortunately, with $29,145/student, jokes is on the students first and the citizens of D.C. second. You have to really try when you have this much money/student and you still continue to make large messes. Schneider has it on the button.
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Is the irony lost on the lawyer who states that teachers and principals need help handling funds but lawyers can make education policy. Maybe I, as a former music teacher, should represent a murderer in court because I have no clue what I am doing.
These folks are finally being faced with the same problems that we as teaching professionals have been trying to deal with for years. Low student scores, hunger, poverty, behavioral challenges etc. However, the fix has never been to close down an entire school, fire teachers and get rid of unions. A new school bldg, different teachers, lots of testing, will not change the hard facts of the students lives such as not enough food, too much noise at home, parents that work two or three jobs and have no time for their kids, and so on. We cannot control those variables. Children are not units of business, and teachers are not assembly line workers. Schools are occasionally in a state of what I call controlled chaos. If you are a person who cannot handle that kind of uncertainty every day, and be able to change on a dime depending on what you are being faced with at that particular moment, you have no right to make policy or decisions about the teaching profession. People who think they can reinvent the educational wheel need only to look at the vast wealth of educational research and tap in to the expertise of the experts, such as principals and teachers, but in their hubris, these lawyers feel that because they can, that it is right for them to do.
Give me a break.
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Saving DC Schools with Catastrophe Innovation!
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/06/05/saving-dc-schools-with-catastrophe-innovation/
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