A visit with education’s fearless reformer

Jay and Dave – the heroine you speak of is not Michelle Rhee. She is perceived as a despot in DC – for good reason. And true, despots have “changed the world” but not for the better.

Instead of reading just the national press, I suggest you follow recent stories on Rhee in the Washington Post and other local papers. You’ll get a much different picture. Even the Time piece is not very flattering. She comes off as arrogant and disdainful and lacking in basic social skills. I fear sincere people like you are imposing on Rhee your dreams for a miracle cure for DC and education in general.

I was hopeful at first, too. So were a lot of people in DC. She seemed so smart and sure of herself. Unfortunately solving such a big problem takes more than self-confidence and hero-worship, and counting on miracles.

Dave, I hope you’re wrong. Every once in a great while someone with the right idea and enough strength of character changes the world.

After six years of mayoral control and the Bloomberg/Klein administration’s misinformation to the public, there is sufficient data to prove that their reforms and mayoral control have proved ineffectual and have produced no significant improvement in student achievement.

The Bloomberg/Klein administration claims of a 12 percent increase in Reading and a 19 percent increase in Math scores on the New York State Assessments are inflated. These results include the scores obtained in 2002-2003 well before the implementation of Klein’s reforms. Without the 6 percent increase in Reading and the 15 percent in Math in 2002 – 2003, the figures read a dismal 6.4 percent rise in Reading and only 4.2 percent in Mathematics.

The only independent check on student achievement in New York City shows a completely different picture from that claimed by Klein. The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress administered by the US Department of Education, considered the gold standard in testing, show that student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003 with virtually no improvements for Black, Hispanic and low income students. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/dst2007/2008455.pdf

There is a lot to adminre about Michelle Rhee, but in the end she must ultimately fail and I would guess that even she knows that, which makes me wonder why she took the job (I understand it was with reluctance).

History is filled with stories of superhuman reformers like Jamie Escalante (”Stand and Deliver”) who made a difference and a lot of news for a little while. The problem is that these people don’t change the system, and the drones who profit from the system know that all they have to do is wait until these lone sparks die out.

The public schools are utterly and irredeemably corrupt. Their mission has been so twisted by the teachers’ unions and other interests that they no longer really even resemble places of learning. The public has gotten used to this, and being none-too-bright (perhaps as a result of being “educated” in the public schools) it keeps buying the lie that all we need to do is spend more money, much to the delight of the people within the system.

Michelle Rhee’s time will pass. When she goes, everything will quietly revert to normal, and the people who profit from the miserable status quo will continue profiting.

On the day that Washington DC decides to totally dismantle its public schools and replace them with a private, market-based competitive system, I will believe that things will eventually change for the unfortunate victims, namely the shortchanged kids of Washington DC.