WASHINGTON -- Here in the nation's capital city, something remarkable has happened: Students in the public schools, long regarded as among the nation's worst, have shown dramatic improvement on standardized tests over the last few years. Here's something even more remarkable: Local voters seem indifferent, if not outright hostile, to the reforms that have produced those academic gains.If anything points to the difficulty of bringing permanent change to the nation's underperforming classrooms, the controversy surrounding schools chancellor Michelle Rhee does. While officials here have been working for several years to improve the schools, the impressive gains of the past two years are largely the result of her efforts.But voters haven't warmed to Rhee; according to The Washington Post, her approval rating hovers around 44 percent. And her unpopularity may help to end the tenure of Mayor Adrian Fenty, who has encountered rough sledding in his re-election campaign.Fenty, who was elected mayor in 2007, made a daring proposal to put the city's troubled schools under his purview. When he won that authority, he selected Rhee to run the school system.Tough but visionary, she has wrestled with the teachers' union to fire bad teachers, hire good principals, close underused schools and streamline a top-heavy administrative bureaucracy. She chides teachers who talk about the burdens of teaching students from dysfunctional homes. An alumna of Teach for America, she champions merit pay.Rhee has been criticized as arrogant, out of touch and elitist. She has certainly committed her share of political mistakes, making some enemies needlessly and failing to clearly explain some of her more controversial decisions.But she gets results. And if she leaves, it's unlikely her data-driven reforms, which emphasize classroom accountability, would continue. Her successor would learn one lesson from her departure: Don't shake things up.Already, Vincent Gray, Fenty's opponent in the Democratic primary (scheduled for Sept. 14) has called for slowing down the pace of change in the schools. That seems unwise since, as Rhee readily acknowledges, the district's schools still don't measure up to the national average.One of the more striking features of the controversy over school reform is Rhee's alienation from black voters, who account for more than 60 percent of the local electorate. Fifty-four percent of black voters say they are less likely to support Fenty's re-election bid because he chose Rhee for the chancellor's post, according to The Washington Post.You'd think that, instead, black voters would be building monuments to Rhee. Nearly 85 percent of students in local public schools are black, so black kids benefit disproportionately from the academic gains.But, as other would-be school reformers have learned, there is a price to be paid for tangling with schoolteachers. Though it has barely begun, President Obama's Race to the Top program, which emphasizes weeding out poorly performing educators, has already frayed traditional alliances between teachers' unions and Democrats.Schoolteachers exert outsized influence here because, along with civil servants, they are the backbone of the black middle class. While the civil rights movement has given black college graduates far more professional opportunities, teachers are still linchpins of churches, clubs and other social networks.And those networks are roiling over Rhee's firings of more than 200 teachers and several principals for poor performance. She also negotiated a new contract with the teachers' union that weakens job protections, making it easier to fire bad teachers in the future.Those are just the changes necessary to eliminate the lazy, the incompetent and the ill-equipped -- teachers whose presence in the classroom is especially detrimental to impoverished children who start school behind. It's too bad those kids don't have a vote.(Cynthia Tucker can be reached at http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker.)Eve vs Unknown, Philip Braunstein, Addictive, Moshic and Zidane, The SOS All Stars, Junior Gong and Assasin, Muskel, Soldier Ants, Babyland , Vasci and Millboy featuring Thomas, Nic Chagall presents Encee, Grimey, Phunktastike and Solila, Teste, Nobodyknows, Ramos, Chris Todd and Axis , Lou, Chung Yea Kyung, Mix2inside
OpinionCynthia TuckerD.C. SCHOOLS CONTROVERSY SHOWS IT'S HARD TO SHAKE THINGS UP
WASHINGTON -- Here in the nation's capital city, something remarkable has happened: Students in the public schools, long regarded as among the nation's worst, have shown dramatic improvement on standardized tests over the last few years. Here's something even more remarkable: Local voters seem indifferent, if not outright hostile, to the reforms that have produced those academic gains.If anything points to the difficulty of bringing permanent change to the nation's underperforming classrooms, the controversy surrounding schools chancellor Michelle Rhee does. While officials here have been working for several years to improve the schools, the impressive gains of the past two years are largely the result of her efforts.But voters haven't warmed to Rhee; according to The Washington Post, her approval rating hovers around 44 percent. And her unpopularity may help to end the tenure of Mayor Adrian Fenty, who has encountered rough sledding in his re-election campaign.Fenty, who was elected mayor in 2007, made a daring proposal to put the city's troubled schools under his purview. When he won that authority, he selected Rhee to run the school system.Tough but visionary, she has wrestled with the teachers' union to fire bad teachers, hire good principals, close underused schools and streamline a top-heavy administrative bureaucracy. She chides teachers who talk about the burdens of teaching students from dysfunctional homes. An alumna of Teach for America, she champions merit pay.Rhee has been criticized as arrogant, out of touch and elitist. She has certainly committed her share of political mistakes, making some enemies needlessly and failing to clearly explain some of her more controversial decisions.But she gets results. And if she leaves, it's unlikely her data-driven reforms, which emphasize classroom accountability, would continue. Her successor would learn one lesson from her departure: Don't shake things up.Already, Vincent Gray, Fenty's opponent in the Democratic primary (scheduled for Sept. 14) has called for slowing down the pace of change in the schools. That seems unwise since, as Rhee readily acknowledges, the district's schools still don't measure up to the national average.One of the more striking features of the controversy over school reform is Rhee's alienation from black voters, who account for more than 60 percent of the local electorate. Fifty-four percent of black voters say they are less likely to support Fenty's re-election bid because he chose Rhee for the chancellor's post, according to The Washington Post.You'd think that, instead, black voters would be building monuments to Rhee. Nearly 85 percent of students in local public schools are black, so black kids benefit disproportionately from the academic gains.But, as other would-be school reformers have learned, there is a price to be paid for tangling with schoolteachers. Though it has barely begun, President Obama's Race to the Top program, which emphasizes weeding out poorly performing educators, has already frayed traditional alliances between teachers' unions and Democrats.Schoolteachers exert outsized influence here because, along with civil servants, they are the backbone of the black middle class. While the civil rights movement has given black college graduates far more professional opportunities, teachers are still linchpins of churches, clubs and other social networks.And those networks are roiling over Rhee's firings of more than 200 teachers and several principals for poor performance. She also negotiated a new contract with the teachers' union that weakens job protections, making it easier to fire bad teachers in the future.Those are just the changes necessary to eliminate the lazy, the incompetent and the ill-equipped -- teachers whose presence in the classroom is especially detrimental to impoverished children who start school behind. It's too bad those kids don't have a vote.(Cynthia Tucker can be reached at http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker.)Eve vs Unknown, Philip Braunstein, Addictive, Moshic and Zidane, The SOS All Stars, Junior Gong and Assasin, Muskel, Soldier Ants, Babyland , Vasci and Millboy featuring Thomas, Nic Chagall presents Encee, Grimey, Phunktastike and Solila, Teste, Nobodyknows, Ramos, Chris Todd and Axis , Lou, Chung Yea Kyung, Mix2inside