WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama just got elected promising to bring change to Washington. Michelle Rhee is already on the job.Ms. Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, is trying to revamp a dysfunctional school district with wide disparities in student performance and a perception that tenure protects substandard employees. Her top goal: reduce performance disparities between wealthy white students and poor minorities in a system where about 85% of the students are African-American.
Michelle Rhee has closed 23 schools and fired more than 250 teachers as schools chancellor in Washington, D.C.
The school system is doing "an abysmal job," said Ms. Rhee, who has been on the job for 17 months. According to Department of Education data, about 60% of the district's high-school students finish in four years with a diploma. By comparison, nearby suburban districts have a graduation rate of 78%. More telling: In some Washington, D.C., high schools, only about 6% of the sophomores can read or do math on grade level.
While she is realistic that children in her school district come to school with "significant challenges," Ms. Rhee said it is "complete crap" that those students can't perform at a high level because of their environments. "It's easy to blame external factors as the reason why poor minority kids aren't achieving at the same level. It's a false premise. You have to put supports and mechanisms in place around those kids, but I refuse to allow the adults in the system to use that as an excuse."
Ms. Rhee, 38 years old, is Korean-American and the single mother of two young daughters who attend school in her 46,000-student system. She graduated from Cornell, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard before teaching in a Baltimore elementary school. She founded the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that recruits and trains teachers to serve in urban schools.
In Washington, she has closed 23 schools and restructured 27 others. She fired more than 250 teachers and about one-third of the principals at the system's 128 schools. She has gotten legislative authority to reclassify hundreds of nonunion central-office employees in a way that makes them easier to remove.
In her first year, she said, "the one-year gains were greater than the prior four years altogether." The number of elementary-school students reading at grade level improved 8%; in math, the improvement was 11%. The number of secondary students on grade level has risen 9% in each category.
Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty "did not hire me to make the adults in Washington, D.C., happy," said Ms. Rhee. "He hired me to fix the schools and educate their children."
Ms. Rhee's visibility shot up during last month's final presidential debate when, before nearly 57 million viewers, Sens. John McCain and Obama argued over whether she supported vouchers to give parents an alternative to public schools. (She said she doesn't have an official position on vouchers, although she doesn't believe they are the solution to the school system's problems.)
After months of rapid change, Ms. Rhee has begun to run into obstacles. Contract negotiations with the local teachers union, which would be her largest overhaul to date, have broken down. One option in her proposal would allow her to give raises that would bring salaries up to $130,000 a year to teachers whose students score well on tests. In exchange, teachers would give up their right to tenure. Teachers already on the job can choose that proposal, or another that pays less but allows them to keep the protection from being fired as easily.
"When I put this plan together with my staff I said I'm going to be the hero of Washington, D.C., teachers," she said, explaining that between bonuses and salary increases some teachers could nearly double their salaries. "In this economy who's getting raises anywhere near as much? It is absolutely unfathomable that there is a real possibility this contract won't move."
Local teachers union president George Parker said it is unfair to base salaries on student test scores when such factors as lack of equipment or lack of parental involvement contribute to poor student performance. "It is not about us having incompetent teachers," he said. "You can't fire your way into a successful school system. You have to build one."
Some parents agree, like Washington's shadow senator, Paul Strauss. Mr. Strauss, who holds an elected position established in 1990 to help lobby Congress for full voting representation for Washington, D.C., said he likes the emphasis on rigorous academic standards, but hopes the classroom focus isn't on only teaching students how to take assessment tests. That is a "problem, but I see it as a national problem," he said.
Ms. Rhee said criticism that she doesn't get teacher input isn't accurate. "I think it would depend on the teacher that you ask," she said. "There are a lot of teachers in this system I hear from every day who love what we're doing."
Ms. Rhee said she also hears from her constituents at home -- her fourth- and first-grader daughters. Recently, Ms. Rhee didn't renew the contract of a principal at the girls' school. She said school parents began quizzing one of her daughters, who told the adults that it was within her mother's powers to make the decision.
"I think they will be better people in the end for having had a mother do this," said Ms. Rhee. "But along the way it is tough on them. Adults say completely inappropriate things to them."
