John Merrow has been digging deep into the facts about the D.C schools, working with a veteran D.C. researcher and civil rights attorney, Mary Levy. Their article will appear in the next issue of The Washington Monthly. They decided to do the research and publish the results after reading Tom Toch’s paean to Michelle Rhee’s “reforms.”

Merrow jumped the gun when he read what purported to be new research about Rhee’s IMPACT teacher evaluation program, claiming that this test-based evaluation had been a great success. That did it for Merrow.

We have heard that D.C. is the fastest improving urban district in the nation. But, says Merrow, this claim must be qualified:

“Despite small overall increases, minority and low-income scores lag far behind the NAEP’s big-city average, and the already huge achievement gaps have actually widened. From 2007 to 2015, the NAEP reading scores of low-income eighth graders increased just 1 point, from 232 to 233, while scores of non-low-income students (called “others” in NAEP-speak) climbed 31 points, from 250 to 281. Over that same time period, the percentage of low-income students scoring at the “proficient” level remained at an embarrassingly low 8 percent, while proficiency among “others” climbed from 22 percent to 53 percent. An analysis of the data by race between 2007 and 2015 is also discouraging: black proficiency increased 3 points, from 8 percent to 11 percent, while Hispanic proficiency actually declined, from 18 percent to 17 percent. In 2007 the white student population was not large enough to be reported, but in 2015 white proficiency was at 75 percent.”

But hasn’t IMPACT been a huge success? No, says Merrow:

“Under Rhee and Henderson, spending on non-teaching personnel has swollen dramatically. According to the latest statistics from Census Bureau fiscal reports, DCPS central office spending in 2015 was 9.5 percent of total current expenditures, compared to 1 percent 4 or less in surrounding districts. Today DCPS central offices have one employee for every sixty-four students, a striking change over the pre-Rhee/Henderson era ratio of one to 113 students. Those central office dollars could have been used to provide wraparound social services for children, services that would have allowed teachers to be more effective.

“Many of these highly paid non-teachers spend their days watching over teachers in scheduled and unscheduled classroom observations, generally lasting about thirty minutes—not even an entire class meeting. Why so many of these teacher watchers? Because those who subscribe to top-down management do not trust teachers.”

Why are so many so eager to protect the reputation of Rhee’s reforms?

He writes:

“It’s all part of a fairly well-designed campaign to convince the world that the top-down, test-and-punish approach to fixing schools is just what the doctor ordered. It’s the reform that Democrats for Education Reform and most Republicans favor, despite strong evidence that it does not work.”

Merrow says this tale is like the blind men and the elephant. Each person picks a different part of the elephant and describes it differently.

I would say a better metaphor might be the Emperor Who Had No Clothes, or the futility of putting lipstick on a pig.