I am reposting this post because the main link was dead and I fixed it. Also, it was originally titled “The D.C. ‘Miracle’ turns to Ashes,” and a reader said a miracle can’t turn to ashes. So it has a new title.
A year ago, reformers were touting D.C. as their triumphant example. Those graduation rates!
Unfortunately, like every other reformer tale, it was a hoax. The graduation rate was phony. Students were walking across the stage without the necessary attendance or credits. Metrics!
“Critics view the problems, particularly the attendance issue, as an indictment of the entire data-driven evaluation system instituted a more than a decade ago when then-Mayor Adrian Fenty took over the school system and appointed Michelle Rhee as the first chancellor. Rhee’s ambitious plan to clear out dead wood and focus on accountability for teachers and administrators landed her on the cover of Time magazine holding a broom. But now analysts question whether Rhee’s emphasis on performance metrics has created a monster.”
Ya think?
And the teacher-turnover rate is 25% a year!
The national average? Only 16%. In fact, D.C.’s teacher turnover rate (across both traditional public and public charter schools) is higher than other comparable jurisdictions, including New York, Chicago and Milwaukee.
For both public and charter schools, the highest turnover is taking place at schools with the most at-risk students, with the rate pushing past 30% in Wards 5 and 8.
This is the fruit of Michelle Rhee’s work. A district that continues to have the largest achievement gaps of any urban district tested by NAEP, a phony graduation rate, and a startlingly high teacher turnover rate. Another “reform” hoax.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Terrible. I am embarrassed by those who are in charge of public education in our Nation’s Capital.
D.C. should NEVER become a state. Imagine the HORRORS with all that power centered in one place … NOT GOOD.
The Glorification of Michelle Rhee
(from the propaganda film WAITING FOR SUPERMAN – 2010)
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PART I:
28:23
28:23
Rhee’s voiceover starts here.
Soon, the drumbeat of “Dreamin’ ” from the ’70’s band Blondie (lead singer Debbie Harry) kicks in, and we get the glorification of Rhee, with the upbeat rock score underlying a montage that starts with the infamous TIME Magazine broom cover.
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PART II:
50:40
50:40
This climaxes with the infamous scene or Rhee firing a principal on camera (originally from a John Merrow PBS. Merrow later recounted how this was Rhee’s idea, with Rhee gleefully smiling ear-to-ear, asking him, “Wanna film me firing a principal?” Then and now, Merrow was horrified at this appalling sadism on display.)
X X X X X X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X X X X X
PART II:
1:22:44
1:22:44
This climaxes in Rhee’s failure to get the union to agree to give up their tenure, and pay scale based based on seniority in favor of becoming at-will employees whose salary is “merit pay” … or based on student’s standardized test scores.
The music is downbeat … “They refused to let it come to a vote.” … because this was and is a monumentally stupid idea that has never worked, and never will work.
However, the movie wants the audience to think, “The union refused to let it come to a vote because … they’re all evil and self-centered.”
NOTE: Rhee later got everything she wanted in a subsequent contract, and the results were disastrous, as this pressure to raise scores or else resulted in a massive cheating scandal covered by USA Today. Today, the job of teaching in a low-income part of D.C. has the longevity of a fast food job, with similar turnover.
Also, in that podcast roundtable linked to above, the current president of the D.C. teacher union recounts Rhee’s first speech at the press club, where Rhee said that, from now on, this will be the standard:
— teachers should work five years as a teacher, then quit for another career.
NOTE: Rhee’s own daughters went to Harpeth Hall in Tennessee, which has promotional materials touting the fact that its teachers have … WAIT FOR IT … decades of experience.
So… Rhee’s kids don’t get the five-years-and-quit teachers that Rhee thinks is good enough for the unwashed masses.
Here’s more of Rhee’s short-career-teachers-are-the-best mentality, from and interview with THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/crusader-of-the-classrooms/307080/
X X X X X X X X X X X
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: One of the other concerns I’ve heard voiced about alternative selection models is that the teachers aren’t making a thirty-year, or even a ten-year commitment.
MICHELLE RHEE: Nobody makes a thirty-year or ten-year commitment to a single profession. Name one profession where the assumption is that when you go in, right out of graduating college, that the majority of people are going to stay in that profession. It’s not the reality anymore, maybe with the exception of medicine. But short of that, people don’t go into jobs and stay there forever anymore.
(Huh??!!! I don’t know what freakin’ world this woman is living in. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, police on the beat, fire-fighters, accountants, mail carriers … … the list of life-long professions is endless.)
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: So you feel like teachers can be effective even within a short term?
MICHELLE RHEE: Absolutely, and I’d rather have a really effective teacher for two years than a mediocre or ineffective one for twenty years.
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: One thing that I’ve encountered personally in talking to a lot of veteran teachers is this idea that programs like Teach for America or the D.C. Teaching Fellows de-professionalize education. They see it as a kind of glorified internship.
MICHELLE RHEE: I’ll tell you what de-professionalizes education. It’s when we have people sitting in the classrooms—whether they’re certified or not, whether they’ve taught for two months or 22 years—that are not teaching kids. And whom we cannot remove from the classroom, and whom parents know are not good. Those are the things that de-professionalize the teaching corp. Not Teach for America, not D.C. Teaching Fellows. That, I think, is a ridiculous argument.
—————-
Put yourself in the shoes of a university student mulling the possibility of going into teaching. Are you going to spend and/or incur debt in a range of $100,000 – 300,000 for tuition/room & board/other expenses, then face this kind of mentality?
“Merrow later recounted how this was Rhee’s idea, with Rhee gleefully smiling ear-to-ear, asking him, “Wanna film me firing a principal?” Then and now, Merrow was horrified at this appalling sadism on display.)”
If Merrow found it appalling, he sure had a strange way of demonstrating that.
First, if he really found it appalling, why did he satisfy Michelle Rhee’s perverse “pleasure” by airing it on PBS?
Second, why, if he found it appalling did Merrow remark that it was “Great fun following her for three years on the News Hour…all twelve segments are posted on the News Hour…including the one where she fired somebody…she let us film that”
Remark begins at 3:45 in this video
“She LET us film that” conveys something quite different than
Merrow later recounted how this was Rhee’s idea, with Rhee gleefully smiling ear-to-ear, asking him, “Wanna film me firing a principal?”
It’s good that Merrow has changed his tune on Rhee, but that does not give him the right to rewrite his own previous role in Rhee’s rise.
“MICHELLE RHEE: I’ll tell you what de-professionalizes education. It’s when we have people sitting in the classrooms—whether they’re certified or not, whether they’ve taught for two months or 22 years—that are not teaching kids. And whom we cannot remove from the classroom, and whomparents know are not good. ”
The second whom should be “who”.
After all, you would say “parents know THEY are not good (or she or he is not good)” not “parents know THEM are not good (or her or him is not good)”
Rhee was an ivy league grad, by the way (Cornell and Harvard). I sincerely hope she was not an English major.
Why are we not surprised? We could see this coming; after all, if something sounds too good to be true, it most likely isn’t.
stole my line
So many midyear exits!
12:00:50
NNAMDI
Why did the D.C. State Board of Education decide to commission this report?
12:00:53
BATCHELOR
Yeah. There were a lot of reasons, but one was a news report that came out in May of 2017 that told us that nearly 200 teachers in the D.C. Public School system had left the system at some point over the course of the last school year. That means they made midyear exits. Myself and five other of my colleagues on the State Board wrote a letter to the Council Committee on Education urging them to hold a standalone hearing on the issue of teacher turnover.
Honestly, I know it sounds “conspiracy theory like”, but I think the idea is to nudge the poor people out of DC to neighboring PG Co (corrupt “Charterville” MD) and Montgomery Co (the area that borders PG Co) in MD so that they can continue with gentrification of the city. Anyone with the financial means to live in the DC area sends their children to private school. They don’t really want to pay for the education of poor children so they just disregard their needs and hope that they move along……along with anyone else involved in the system (teachers, support staff etc).
And so it is everywhere. Standards-and-testing based Rheeform has been an utter failure. It has failed by its own preferred measures–test scores. It hasn’t increased these, and it hasn’t closed achievement gaps. And yet suddenly the data that show that to be true don’t seem all that important to those who insist that we be “data driven.” One would think this ironic except that the data deformers never, really, had much understanding of data. They understood neither that what they were looking at, in those test scores, was invalid data nor that they were drawing invalid inferences from that flawed data about matters like teacher and school quality. These weren’t and aren’t scientifically minded people. These are numerologists.
The term “hocus pocus” is, etymologists think, derived from the Latin mass–Hoc est corpus meum, or “this is my body.” Education Deform is not science. It is a theology. It is hocus pocus. It is the application of a magical formula to problems with causes other than those that the formula can address. The big problems–a) that we have extreme underlying systemic poverty that undermines many kids’ chances of success (a matter of the basic hierarchy of needs) and b) that kids differ, and a one-size-fits-all school system cannot identify these differences and build upon them–are not addressed by Deform, which is based in magical thinking.
Mrs. O’Leary’s Coup: Why a Charter School Bill Lost Its Bite via @capitalandmain – https://capitalandmain.com/why-a-charter-school-bill-lost-its-bite-0718
Anecdotal charter perspective:
12:10:56
NNAMDI
Emma Quigg, public charter schools are also included in this reports. Are the rates of teacher turnover described in this report an accurate reflection of what you saw at your school, BASIS D.C. Public Charter School?
12:11:09
QUIGG
So at my public charter school we actually a 50 percent turnover rate last year, my junior year of high school. And the years before that it was about the same. So in the report it said around 25 percent, I believe, but at my school that just was not an accurate reflection of what was going on.
12:11:28
NNAMDI
Tell us about your personal experience. How were you most affected by teachers leaving?
12:11:33
QUIGG
Yeah. So there was a lot of ways that every student was impacted by the constant turnover of teachers and admin. One of those ways was a classmate of mine had a really hard time finding letters of recommendation for college, because when you’re constantly coming into a classroom seeing new people, year to year you’re going to school with people, who don’t know who you are, it’s really hard to form those relationships. On top of that, the example I always like to use is my Spanish class. I’m pretty sure I learned more from Duolingo than I actually did from the five plus years of Spanish that I took.
12:12:07
NNAMDI
Duolingo is an app.
12:12:08
QUIGG
Yes. Duolingo is an app. It was just every teacher, when you have somebody coming in who doesn’t know the students’ backgrounds, what they know, they have new expectations and it’s really hard to learn from that, because it’s a learning curve not just for us, but for the teachers as well.
“For both public and charter schools, the highest turnover is taking place at schools with the most at-risk students, with the rate pushing past 30% in Wards 5 and 8.”
I know ed reformers don’t think this matters but I think it matters a lot. I think children value consistency and reliability. I don’t understand how cavalier they are about children’s relationships. Not just with teachers! With other students. This is important to them, and “adults” should understand that, because it’s important to adults too.
What if we tried this with them? They have to switch jobs every 9 months and lose all their relationships. Would they like that? Of course not.
I can’t help noticing all of these people stay in ed reform jobs for years and years and it’s all the same set of people. They seem to value relationships and consistency. Why don’t the unwashed masses get those things?
Schools aren’t just educational service providers. They’re wrong. It isn’t like switching cell phone plans, an example they actually use at their echo chamber events where they give each other awards. That isn’t what this is.
And I don’t agree with “turns to ashes”. I’m afraid that veers close to the droning ed reform narrative of “failing schools”.
Good things happened in some of those schools- charter or public- and some of those kids did great. I know you know that and you’re baking it in, but I really don’t want to adopt their grim, relentless negativity.
Betsy DeVos cannot find a single public school success in the entire country. Arne Duncan couldn’t either. That’s ridiculous, and has much more to do with her promoting her ideology than the students she claims to serve. It is unfair to them – our students- and it’s also not true.
“And I don’t agree with “turns to ashes””
That caught my eye also. How can something that never happened, i.e., that supposed ‘miracle’, turn to ashes?
Give me another metaphor
No need for a metaphor. Just say the miracle never occurred.
the verdant mirage melted into the reality of the parched desert from whence it came.
Thanks for the very apt metaphor, Roy, excellent!
Walk on water
Birth to virgin
Rhee-form fodder
That’s for certain
Duane
How about this?
“DC miracle turns to asses”
I like Roy’s metaphor!
There was Rhee. She had a broom. She said to the teaching profession, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!” History poured some clear, cleansing water on her and she melted like the wicked witch she was, leaving a frighteningly steaming, toxic puddle.
It is truly funny, bordering on hilarious, to read Duane complaining about how one uses language and critiquing it.
Glad to make you laugh!
I chuckled at the comment but I won’t forget it.
How about this usage: Sukenzeeggs!
“The DC Miracle”
A line satirical
There were scant traces
When it blew up in their faces
Here are Secretary DeVos’ speeches:
https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches?src=hp
Read thru those and try to find a single positive statement about any public school in the country. She never gets any pushback for any of this from the echo chamber. Apparently they’re fine with the US Secretary of Education misrepresenting the work and value of millions of public school students and tens of thousands of public school employees.
Because it advances The Agenda. They’re going under the ol messaging bus! “They” being “our students”. Gotta break some eggs to make a privatization omelet and our students and schools are the eggs. Not their schools- just ours. They’ll all say it’s the schools they’re after. But that’s ludicrous. “Schools” are NOT, in fact, “buildings” or “seats”. They are full of our students.
Can someone point me to an example where “liberal” ed reformers have broken in any substantive way with the Trump Administration?
Because I can’t help but think that some kind of trade-off is being made here. That the Trump Administration does nothing but promote charter and private schools, so the collateral damage to public schools is worth the cost.
There are only two prongs to “ed reform” 1. “choice” and 2. “accountability”
“Choice” is number 1 for a reason. That “choice” completely excludes any effort expended or investment in PUBLIC schools seems to escape their notice.
In what world won’t public school students suffer from a federal government that is OPPOSED to their schools? Couple that with the 25 or so state governments that are captured by this “movement” and who, exactly, is advocating for our students? Outside teachers unions, I mean, and thank goodness for them because without them making noise and occupying state houses and such no one would lift a finger.
Who decided public school students don’t get advocates in government? How is that fair to them?
I hate to say this, but test scores don’t matter that much. Each student is different with his or her own strengths and needs. The true job of schools and their teachers is to figure out students weaknesses and ways of learning, then help them to succeed. Those tasks are not as difficult or strange as they sound. Lots of teachers know how to do them well. If only the “big bosses” got out of the way and stopped focussing on test scores, we might finally reach the high quality education and student success our country deserves and is capable of attaining. (Pardon me for adding that I was a successful teacher and principal for many years.)
Thank you, writerjoney! Exactly!!!
please do not hate to say it. Enjoy saying it.
yes
“If only the “big bosses” got out of the way and stopped focussing on test scores, we might finally reach the high quality education and student success our country deserves and is capable of attaining.”
Excellent.
And that would make the big bosses a lot less important. How would they be able to justify their salaries and existence in that scenario?
The ranks of administration have swelled under the reform regime. Restoring a degree of autonomy to the teachers is a threat to them. It also makes it more difficult to quantify student and teacher success, which makes administrative jobs more difficult. They’d have to understand education in order to be successful. An MBA wouldn’t cut it, anymore.
What miracle?
“But now analysts question whether Rhee’s emphasis on performance metrics has created a monster.”
Hmmmm, no, not “now” but ever since her Rheephorms were implemented. It was known before she even got the job that what she proposed and did would have devastating effects on not only the students but also the staff.
A miracle in Washington DC would look like the virgin Mary appearing to a paper shredder in the Oval Office?
How about on a pizza pan?
Or in a Micky D’s large Chicken McNuggets box
Today’s White House miracle:
Trump turns indictment into exoneration
Turnover is a stat that is really indicative of success or failure. When teachers encounter what they perceive as failure, they are likely to choose another path early in life. Of course, the reform movement wants this to happen all the time. Many reformers are familiar with the high turnover rate in private schools, which hire kids fresh out of college who are trying to decide what to do. Some of these young adults are good instructors if the students are behaviorally geared toward learning. Most of the loud voices for ed reform have experienced this and think there is nothing wrong with half the staff being one and done teachers. Since most private schools are not a part of the community, but have their own community, these reformers do not understand the value of community schools.
I have been to both places. I understand. Community is all there is. Otherwise we are all lost.
In the tough schools, there is an eternal battle between the kids’ will to disorder and the adults’ will to order. The kids are usually the stronger party, by virtue of their greater numbers and their boundless youthful energy. The teachers who do manage to survive are the ones who have found some tricks to protect themselves from the worst forms of disorder –to make the disorder benign and friendly at least. If they can’t manage this, they either quit or get PTSD (who cares about these shattered teachers? Who admits that they exist?). This is well shown in the French film The Class –it shows a class that, despite its disorder, is a best-case scenario for a conventional tough school because the talented teacher has managed a good rapport with his difficult students. It is very difficult for most teachers to survive for long in these tough schools, Reform or no. I know I would have great difficulty surviving in one. The 25% turnover rate in DC is not Reform’s fault.
KIPP and Success have boldly tried to change this dynamic. They try to give adults the upper hand. Their harshness stems, not from sadism or racism, but from the knowledge that any relaxation could quickly cause reversion to barely controllable disorder. Most of the people who attack KIPP and Success don’t understand the reality of tough schools. They blithely assume that there are kinder, gentler, easier ways –PBIS, restorative justice, etc. –but most of these “better ways” turn out to be mirages –approaches that take herculean effort just to attain meager, precarious results. There’s a lot I dislike about KIPP and Success, but their effort to give adults meaningful control of the school is one innovation I commend.
I think allowing academically-disinclined kids to enter vocational tracks earlier would make teaching academics in tough schools more tenable.
KIPP and Success succeed by getting rid of the students they don’t want
I’m leery about using the example of “will to disorder.” Troubled schools are often troubled because of poverty and grinding need. I teach at a “troubled” school. The vast majority of the kids are well behaved. Some don’t know how to behave and need to learn. Some have far more important things to think about–like where they’re going to sleep tonight.
But “will to disorder?” Not so much.
Exactly, TOT–“Some don’t know how to behave & need to learn.”
That’s part of what we taught in E.C. SpEd, & a good # of those kinds went on to be successful in a regular K class in 1 or 2 years (E.C.E. started at age 3.) And we had “playtime/socialization” for 1/2 hr.
(we had half-day classes 4-5x/week) daily–‘the work of children is PLAY”–Vivian Gussin Paley).
&, these days, the consideration that “Some have far more important things to think about–like where they’re going to sleep tonight.”
Indeed.
& now children of immigrants have insecurity & terror; will they even come to school?
Ponderosa,
Have you ever taught Kindergarten or first grade?
You think the model for teaching at risk kindergarten and first graders is to rid the school of the kids who can’t do the work, using targeted punishment and humiliation tactics that make 5 and 6 year olds internalize the charter’s belief that the child is not worthy enough be in the school? That makes young kids act out – either externally or internally. Please don’t equate that with behavioral expectations for teens which is a very different matter.
This ended up as a long post, but there’s just so much to say about the impact of the reformer’s initiatives. I hope you’ll take a moment to read it:
I taught grades 3-8 special ed kids in Brooklyn, NY for two decades. Severe problems regulating their emotions. These kids could and would get extremely violent in a split second. Brooklyn, Washington DC, Oakland, Milwaukee, Chicago, etc…none of them has anything over the other. The problems are the same regardless of geographic location.
“The 25% turnover rate in DC is not Reform’s fault.”
Only partly true, ponderosa. No doubt the problems are endemic to the communities served, but the reform movement exacerbated the problems in a big way, IME.
When I started teaching, pre reform days, the teachers were given a great deal of autonomy. The only two constants were:
1) A well defined discipline code. Every teacher and student knew the rules and we were very consistent in enforcing them. Not boot camp…just a solid school wide discipline code.
2) Do your best to meet the kids social and academic needs and be able to demonstrate those efforts.
We assessed our kids and taught them on their skill level, regardless of their age. No value judgments. We used remedial reading, writing, and math programs when necessary.
Teachers attended multiple workshops specific to the population we served. Anger management, dance, theater, movement, art…there were a lot to choose from and we were encouraged to use what we’d learned throughout the school day.
The first period of every day was spent in a semi-circle, having discussions which involved expressing yourself, listening, taking turns, and basic social skills. It was a very important part of the school day.
I had a small basketball hoop with a little blown up basketball which was set up in a corner of the room. If the kids allowed the lesson to progress and took part in it, we’d use the last 10 minutes of the period as a foul shot competition (2 and 3 point line with agreed upon extra points for certain trick shots). This was a very, very effective tool.
We were all familiar with proactive and in the moment techniques for dealing with violent behavior. Confronting/Contracting was my favorite. We were taught Life Space Crisis Intervention skills. There was a crisis room for the kids who couldn’t contain themselves. This was a very structured environment.
We were not entirely successful with every kid, nor were expected to be. These kids had some serious problems. But we definitely did our jobs and the school ran well. The kids felt safe there. It was a very good program which included both mentoring and innovation.
The reform movement took almost all of that away. Kids had to achieve on grade level and perform well on standardized tests for that grade, regardless of their skill levels. Every minute of every period had to be accounted for, academically. No time for that “touchy feely” stuff. No time for the basketball shots. No remedial academic programs. Everyone had the same curriculum. A general ed curriculum…in a special ed setting.
The pressure was immense on everyone, from the kids to the teachers to the admins. Kids would be left back if they “failed”. Their self esteem went down the toilet and the violent tendencies returned with a vengeance. Teachers lost their jobs if the kids didn’t achieve to a grade level set by the reformers. Entire schools were dissolved and replaced by charters if the standards weren’t met.
This is lengthy, but I could go much, much longer. The reform movement took away almost all of our tools and replaced them with a bludgeon. It was catastrophic. Most of us could see no other reason for this movement other than the idea that they wanted us to fail and be replaced.
“Most of the people who attack KIPP and Success don’t understand the reality of tough schools.”
Sorry…but that’s all that my colleagues and I experienced. And the teachers in general ed, as well. Many of us are not big on the KIPP and Success programs. Both get rid of their problem kids. It’s a big part of their “success” (if you want to measure “success” using test scores as the pinnacle). And, although the boot camp process might be apropos to some middle school kids, it can be a disaster for the younger kids who need the exact opposite.
“I think allowing academically-disinclined kids to enter vocational tracks earlier would make teaching academics in tough schools more tenable.”
Here, we are in complete agreement. So many of the kids I taught loved to use their hands and did not like to sit at a desk for any extended period of time. I’m 100% behind well funded vocational programs, both within the academic school day and as full time programs in a high school setting.
Gitapik, feel free to post chapter 2 & 3… It is so refreshing to hear real stories from the trenches– here, a case study of how ed-deform policy affected your school. I particularly related, as my younger sister’s 1st yr of SpEd teaching [in ’80’s] – while waiting for pubsch assnt – was in a state-subsidized priv Bkln sch for severe LD/ED. She had always been eerily gifted in relating to disturbed kids – autistic, ED, hard-core delinquent – but rubber met road in that school: the first thing she learned was various holds for restraining-while-comforting. The moves she showed me reminded me of those water-safety holds that allow you to rescue the drowning while not letting them pull you under.
That stuff stimulated her: she was able to use her gifts to help. What got her down in that school was the horrendous lack of funding. I remember specifically an antique boiler whose radiators sent up a cloud of coal dust when they worked [she had asthma…], & when not working, all wore coats/ vloves/ hats indoors in the winter — & their lovely aquarium de izens froze to death.
Sounds like your sister got a real dose of, “So is this REALLY your calling?” I can relate.
But it honestly was so much better for everyone involved before the reformers came in with their plans to rebuild the airplane in mid flight. They really didn’t gave a clue but they did have the power. And wield that power they did. In spades.
It meant the world to me when I found out about Diane and this site. Sanity and truth speaking to power.
That’s my job. Standing up for sanity against billionaires who love disruption.
Ponderosa: “The 25% turnover rate in DC is not Reform’s fault.” It would be nice to have some historical data on the DC turnover #. (Better? Same? Or worse? – Since NCLB early 2000’s; since Rhee 2010).
But let’s say it was always 25%. Is that because of “tough [behavior] schools?” We can probably assume that most DC schools have a majority-poor student body. Are all poor schools “tough”? And if so, is it only the rare teacher who finds a way to make it work? My info is scanty & anecdotal: I’ve been entertained at public functions by bands & chorales from poor Newark schools with obviously great music programs. I have a handful of friends who taught in poor Newark schools for their entire careers. Didn’t retire early, nothing but good vibes & funny stories – no breakdowns.
Getting back to DC: I googled around re: teacher salary ranges & housing options. Compared to NYC or Newark, tho their salary range is similar to other East Coast urban hubs v-a-v apt rental prices, they have far fewer housing options. Unlike NYC or Newark, they are not surrounded by a massive sprawl that includes middle-class nbhds w/n city limits [NYC], or nearby middle-class urban towns where many live in apts [NYC & Newark]. Patching thro your twenties on a beginner teacher salary in an expensive area is never easy, but it looks harder in DC. This alone could explain high teacher turnover.
And getting back to your statement: the post doesn’t say DC’s turnover issue is due to bad reform policies. It says that ed-deformers top-down-mandated radical disruption to the system because they “knew” what was needed to improve things. They didn’t improve things.
It is time to shed the façade of the politically correct perception of so-called “failing schools”. It is no coincidence that virtually all of these “failing schools” are located in impoverished inner city neighborhoods filled with black and brown students from mostly dysfunctional single parent families. (If anyone can name even one “failing school” located in an affluent community filled with well educated, professional parents please let me know)
These schools are not “failing” because of lazy, burned, out incompetent teachers who are protected by no-good unions. Nor are these “failing schools” filled with mostly well prepared, cooperative, self-motivated students eager to learn and willing to work hard who are simply being held back by their incompetent teachers.
These “failing schools” are always found in failing communities with failing families who have lost all faith in education as a form of economic salvation. The children from the failing underclass bring an assortment of behaviors that are completely counterproductive to school success.
Students are frequently absent, they do not take school seriously, they struggle to conform to a structured school environment; too many are uncooperative, combative, rude, profane, vulgar, and at times exhibit dangerous behaviors. The group dynamics of the ghetto culture observed in classrooms are particularly troubling and extremely difficult to manage for many beginning teachers. It is these very behaviors that triggered a flood of well meaning parents to seek the charter solution.
Teacher turnover rates in so-called “failing schools” have been exacerbated under test and punish reform because of the intense pressures to produce academic miracles under conditions that make such demands impossible to meet. The very unreasonable Common Core standards and companion tests have unfairly reinforced a narrative of so-called “failing schools” by ramping up academic pressures in communities and there children needed just the opposite. A simple and compassionate back to basics program would not be have been a “soft bigotry of low expectations” but instead a stepping stone for kids who needed help not the “hard bigotry of unreasonable standards and inappropriate testing”.
And yes racism, generational poverty, dependence, drug and alcohol abuse, housing policies, and low wage jobs are all reasons for such conditions and behaviors in these
so-called “failing schools”. However, none of these reasons makes teaching in one of these schools any easier, nor do these reasons motivate teachers to stake their careers in such places. Teachers burn out because of bad (i.e. uncooperative) student behaviors and unreasonable pressures for academic miracles.
The worst-behaved school I ever taught at was a middle to high income school. The parents and students thought that they could do no wrong, and the behaviors were, as a result, awful.
I could go into 100 stories about the two years I spent there and the horrible behaviors I witnessed, but let’s just go with one. During a school dance (which was done during the school day for some reason), students began dancing very suggestively (this school was grades 7-9). The administration annouced that if the suggstive dancing continued, that the dance would be cancelled and that students would go back to class.
The dancing continued. The dance was cancelled and the students told to return to class. At the beginning of one hall, about 30 kids blocked the entrance and told the students not to go to class. One of hte kids shouted, “There’s more of us than there are of them (teachers).” There was a near riot.
This was a middle to high income area. The vast majority of students were white. The test scores were fine–this was not a “failing” school in that sense. But the students WERE being failed, because there were not consequences. I’m not talking punishing for dumb things like not tracking the speaker or whatever. This was no consequences for really awful stuff, like drawing a picture of me blowing up.
Don’t assume that schools with discipline problems are simply that way because of poverty or minority status. ANY school can struggle if there aren’t decent administrators, or if students and parents run the school.
I wonder what Steve Nelson would have done in this situation.
Good illustration of kids’ non-angelic side (which my fellow liberals often think or pretend doesn’t exist).
The students staged a peaceful protest that disrupted traffic to call attention to what they perceived as unfairness. What a beautiful act! What a beautiful, teachable moment! Teenagers almost always perceive and fight for fairness. Hindsight is 20-20, but I would like to think that if I had been there, I would have made a speech and turned the whole thing into a directed debate about social democracy. I would have first lauded the students for standing up for their freedom of movement, with the caveat that I didn’t agree with the idea of that particular sort of movement being inoffensive and reminding them that offending others is hurtful and therefore unfair. I would have noted the Civil Rights Movement and thanked them for being nonviolent in their protest, and I would have thanked the school for being nonviolent in response. I would have noted the Bill of Rights and asked them to think of other ways to protest, like petitioning. In other words, I would have turned the dance into a U.S. history class. There are great injustices in this world, and I want my students to have deep knowledge of how to right wrongs. Aren’t the young ones grand! They give me hope.
“…my fellow liberals….”
What a laugh, Ponderosa. You’re not a liberal, you’re a totalitarian. You expect whole classrooms full of budding young people to shut up and obey you. What’s liberal about that? If you want a glimmer of what liberalism is all about, read LCT’s response to you (which is beautiful, LCT!).
Dienne, I prefer the term “Stalinist”.
Very funny, Ponderosa, lotsa humor in this post. My first reaction to reading that comment was: funny how a neo-Stalinist Puritan claims another is a totalitarian. Reminds me of a wonderful verse in Jim Lauderdale’s new song, Listen. “You think you know everything, but you don’t know lots of things.”
It wasn’t a peaceful protest. There was a lot of shoving and students falling. Luckily, no one was hurt, but it was not peaceful.
I support peaceful protest from students anytime. This wasn’t. And there were a lot of other times when kids at this wealthy school were given the go-ahead to be nasty to teachers and other students, just because, “Well, MY child couldn’t have done that!” or, “That doesn’t happen at ________________________ (name of school).”
The point that you all seem to have missed was that these were the sorts of problems that someone would say would happen in a “tough school” that needed “no excuses discipline,” but was wealthy and white. Making generalizations about race and poverty is just wrong. It was the worst school I ever taught in, and all of the other schools I have taught (and the one in which I’m currently teaching) were “at risk,” and were FAR better behaved than the wealthy one. I’d rather walk on my lips than teach in a wealthy school again.
TOW,
I was responding to Ponderosa’s query. I understood and completely agree with you that teens are a handful in every neighborhood, not just low income ones. The fact is that privileged kids sometimes act like nothing sticks to them. I should have written that first. I apologize. Now, if the protest wasn’t peaceful, that is a different story. It is appropriate to punish students when they disregard anyone’s safety. Safety first. I would have called their parents and issued stern warnings. If anyone had been harmed, there would have been consequences.
On the bright side, if it’s ashes Rhee finally has something for which she can use her famous broom.
D.C. “Miracle” Melts Away!
What a World!
One of the things that bothers me the most about the reformers is their lack of accountability.
“Accountability” was one of their cornerstones when it came to the teachers and school wide admins. If the kids didn’t meet the criteria, we were in danger of losing our jobs. Entire schools were in danger of being closed and replaced by charter schools.
But where’s the “accountability” when the reformers’ initiatives are shown to be ineffective and damaging to the lives of so many people?
The post we are responding to evidences some refreshing acknowledgment and accountability. Granted, it took investigative reporting by NPR to get things kicked off, but that was immediately followed by internal investigations, new rules, & a downward correction in grad #’s the following yr, for which the DC ed system is taking tons of flack. We also see the #2 man on DC BofEd Mark Batchelor responding w/concern to a news report that 200 teachers left midyear, & pressuring DC State BofEd to commission a full report on teacher turnover.
We are accustomed to reports of interest-conflicted red-state govt actors who forcibly sweep any attempt by citizens to call out lack of ed-deform results under the rug, & continue playing footsie w/their fave campaign-coffer-stuffers. The DC ed council/ BofEd response gives one hope – we see govt actors getting a reality check, & responding appropriately.
But perhaps the bigger message is how much we need an investigative press to bring govt actors to public account.
“But perhaps the bigger message is how much we need an investigative press to bring govt actors to public account.”
No question about that. The media has played a huge part in the public’s perception (or lack thereof) of public vs charter schools. See SomeDAM Poets’ post regarding Merrow.
I am heartened to see some accountability within the ranks of those who are running the system NOW, but those are not the people of whom I speak. They’re the pawns. I’m talking about Gates, the Waltons, DeVos, Bloomberg and Klein, Emanuel, Coleman, Rhee, etc. What about GW Bush, Obama, and Arne Duncan? These are the people who initiated, rolled out, and then perpetuated the disruptive agenda in the first place.
I see no “accountability” within those ranks. And I’m not naive enough to be holding my breath for any in the near or distant future.
Bloomberg, Emanuel, Bush & Obama at least were accountable to the ballot box. And so were the appointed stooges on your list– they got swept out of office with their godfathers. The rest of that crowd are a giant leech on society that needs to be burned off with legislation.
BTW
A miracle is defined to be a positively surprising and/or unexpected event, OR the product of such an event. It could be almost anything you can imagine, and that product could certainly turn to dust, ashes, crap, whatever. Now, a ‘miracle’, meaning a hoax, a sham, an illusion, delusion or whatever, OR a product or representation of such, could really be absolutely anything you can imagine. And I haven’t even gotten to poetic license in titles. I don’t think I will.