An Unlikely Gambler

bookworm 2768 says, "Engish teachers who send home notes that have been misspelled and are gramattically incorrect and yet sit secure in their teaching positions and other professionals who often do the bare minimum are something we should all be ashamed of." Should we deduce, from the grammatical errors and misspellings in her/his post, that she/he is an English teacher?

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A certified teacher, I graduated at the top of my class and am heavily involved as a volunteer with the young people in my community. Nevertheless, since graduating over two years ago, I have not been able to get a full-time teaching job in Ohio to save my life. Meanwhile, as a substitute teacher, I am surrounded by educators who have grown comfortable putting forth minimal effort while threatening to strike over minor benefits adjustments in their contracts. I am a hardworking, highly dedicated teacher, and I would relish working for a district that rewarded those traits. Rhee is not an educator and may not be the best person for the job, but I admire what she is trying to do.

There are a number of high profile School Chancellors/CEOs/Superintendents. To name a few, there is Rudy Crew in Miami/Dade, Joel Klein in New York City, Paul Vallus in New Orleans and Michelle Rhee in Washington DC. All of these individuals are responsible for dealing with school systems which are faced with enormous difficulties.

The Washington Post recently (8/25/2008) published a story on Ms. Rhee (www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/25) entitled, Better or Worse, It's Rhee's School System Now.

Ms. Rhee was hired by the mayor of Washington, Adrian M. Fenty and is directly responsible to him. He has gone on record as staking his political future on fixing the schools in the District of Columbia. A number of mayors have taken on the direct responsibility of fixing the schools in their cities with the belief that schools create jobs. Mrs. Rhee has established as a goal for her administration to establish D.C. schools as "a world-class system." This will be a daunting task because of the following:

* According to a Manhattan Institute Report, November 2001, High School Graduation Rates in the United States, Washington DC schools graduated 59% of its high school class.
* USA Today reported on April, 1, 2008, that there were 2,364 dropouts in the 2007 graduating class or 58.2% of the class graduated.
* The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAED) reported that the Washington DC 4th and 8th grade scores were lower than any other students in the United States.
* Washington DC schools spend $14,400 per pupil. That is more than any of the 50 states.

In order to improve the DC schools, Ms. Rhee "has closed 23 under-enrolled schools, overhauled 26 academically ailing schools and fired 150 people she considered poor performers including nearly 50 principals and assistant principals, most of them black women over the age of 40." (Washington Post)

She has run into opposition from the teachers union, parent groups, the DC Council, and education activists. Rhee, who is of Korean ancestry, has faced racial discrimination charges over the firings. In addition, she has been criticized for not being responsive to the demands of parents and community representatives. But according to the Washington Post article, she attended 370 community meetings.

Principals, work on year-to-year contracts, and according to Rhee were not rehired based on comments from parents, teachers and from reviews from her staff.

All heads of school systems, face enormous challenges, but if schools are not serving students, there needs to be some sort of immediate action taken.

Children in Washington, DC deserve to have their schools improve.

There are a number of high profile School Chancellors/CEOs/Superintendents. To name a few, there is Rudy Crew in Miami/Dade, Joel Klein in New York City, Paul Vallus in New Orleans and Michelle Rhee in Washington DC. All of these individuals are responsible for dealing with school systems which are faced with enormous difficulties.

The Washington Post recently (8/25/2008) published a story on Ms. Rhee (www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/25) entitled, Better or Worse, It's Rhee's School System Now.

Ms. Rhee was hired by the mayor of Washington, Adrian M. Fenty and is directly responsible to him. He has gone on record as staking his political future on fixing the schools in the District of Columbia. A number of mayors have taken on the direct responsibility of fixing the schools in their cities with the belief that schools create jobs. Mrs. Rhee has established as a goal for her administration to establish D.C. schools as "a world-class system." This will be a daunting task because of the following:

* According to a Manhattan Institute Report, November 2001, High School Graduation Rates in the United States, Washington DC schools graduated 59% of its high school class.
* USA Today reported on April, 1, 2008, that there were 2,364 dropouts in the 2007 graduating class or 58.2% of the class graduated.
* The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAED) reported that the Washington DC 4th and 8th grade scores were lower than any other students in the United States.
* Washington DC schools spend $14,400 per pupil. That is more than any of the 50 states.

In order to improve the DC schools, Ms. Rhee "has closed 23 under-enrolled schools, overhauled 26 academically ailing schools and fired 150 people she considered poor performers including nearly 50 principals and assistant principals, most of them black women over the age of 40." (Washington Post)

She has run into opposition from the teachers union, parent groups, the DC Council, and education activists. Rhee, who is of Korean ancestry, has faced racial discrimination charges over the firings. In addition, she has been criticized for not being responsive to the demands of parents and community representatives. But according to the Washington Post article, she attended 370 community meetings.

Principals, work on year-to-year contracts, and according to Rhee were not rehired based on comments from parents, teachers and from reviews from her staff.

All heads of school systems, face enormous challenges, but if schools are not serving students, there needs to be some sort of immediate action taken.

Children in Washington, DC deserve to have their schools improve.

Since schools are all about "the children," then those of us who are actually teaching those children should be receiving the higher salaries...it seems, we reward those the highest who are the furtherest away from the classroom. It has nothing to do with tenure or unions. It is about respect.
This article reinforces all the stereotypes about teaching and teachers. In a time when "change" is the new buzz word, before we can actually improve our public schools, we need to stop usingteachers as the scape goat.

If the DC schools have high percentage of poor teachers, the questions needs to be asked...Where did they go to school? Who hired them? Who was responsible for evaluating them before they received tenure? These people did not wake up one morning after 10 years of teaching and, by magic, become incompetent.

Yes, Ms. Rhee, teachers should work from 7 am to 7 pm because after all, they don't have their own children or lives. Sounds more like Maoist China than an advanced industrialized nation with decent work-life balance. I have news for you. Teachers should make six figures without working 12 hour days, get it? Obviously you don't. Who are you to decide that I can't see my own child or have a life?

Yes, Ms Rhee, teachers should work from 7 am to 7pm because after all, we don't have children or lives either. Sounds more like Communist China than working in an advanced industrialized nation. And by the way, I don't work from 8 to 3. I work from 7 am to 3 and THEN I go home and do another three hours of school work. Most teachers are competent but many parents aren't. Parents are the child's first teacher.

teachteacher.




Most

I'm a licensed teacher not teaching at this time, but working with schools through a university center. I would love to be in the classroom, but can't even get a response to my applications. I'm willing to take an extreme cut in pay (to be expected, only working 9 months out of the year) and risk getting a pink slip at the end of my first year. I'm not one of those "who can't do." I was in the top 10% of my high school class and received all A's in my Master of Arts in Teaching program. At the university level, I see how tenure restricts change and the unions keep staff on that should perhaps be let go. When we expect schools to have results like a business (requiring all students to be proficient), we need to run them like a business. I hope Chancellor Rhee can change the DC school district... and that the rest of the country takes note!

How many people who criticize the education system have tried it? We would welcome people to join the profession. There are many jobs available in my state. They can't get enough candidates. It won't take that long to get qualified and around here you can get emergency certified even without a teaching degree. You can even substitute to try it out. You would really gain some perspective doing that. I actually think every parent, government official, etc. should spend at least 1 day in the classroom so they can better understood what we are up against. Join us!

For the first time in long few months of election coverage I find myself inspired by an article in Newsweek!
Kudos to Rhee for standing up for an education system COUNTRYWIDE that is mired down by the poor abiliites of so many of our teachers. The adage of "Those who can - do and those who can't - teach" seems to hold true for so many people in the profession of education today. Engish teachers who send home notes that have been misspelled and are gramattically incorrect and yet sit secure in their teaching positions and other professionals who often do the bare minimum are something we should all be ashamed of. The standards of education in this country are falling badly and instead of reinventing the wheel in 'how' to teach the children perhaps a good look should be taken at 'who' is doing the teaching. There are many wonderful individuals out there who devote their lives to educating the next generation but surely they cannot believe that teachers who fall below standards should be allowed to hold their jobs. The potential for damage caused by a bad teacher impacts so many young lives and yet it seems to be not PC in our country to question the ability of those who teach. I wish the best of luck to this dedicated person who is taking on the system and trying to change it in defence of the American Education system

I???m one of those people the corporations try to attract by offering incentives. Rhee would love to have me in the classroom; I fit the model of the kind of teacher everyone wants. The uber-successful, highly-degreed and qualified teacher who loves working with kids. My kids are successful and do well on standardized tests, but they also have a zest for learning and natural curiosity. One day I will be an administrator, if I choose to stay in education. I love it, but there are still quite a few people out there like Rhee, administrators with a narrow focus and unhealthy disrespect for teachers in general. They pick one initiative and believe it???s the end all, and usually through the implementation of that initiative we can see their prejudices all too clearly. We can also see their prejudices cloud their ability to make wise decisions. I don???t have to put up with people like Rhee. I can get a job in my area pretty much any time, as my name is out there as an expert in the field. I still get calls from headhunters, even in this crummy economy. One thing Rhee will find out is people who are truly qualified do not suffer fools gladly and hold a little bit higher standards than working with people who have allowed themselves to become irrelevant while purporting to be the opposite.

This is the best article I have ever read in Newsweek; typically I loathe their blather on politics. I would give up my current career and work for Rhee in a heartbeat. From my own experience as a student, I do not think parent involvement has much to do with success in school. My parents, who divorced while I was in high school, never knew or asked about any of my schoolwork, nor did they go to anything related to school, e.g. conferences and open houses, and I graduated near the top of my class and went on to a BS and MS at one of the best schools in the nation (in engineering, so pardon my unrefined English skills). The teachers were the ones who made the difference.

I do not think that just because a teacher dedicates his life to the students, he should receive tenure; he can still be a crappy teacher. The students??? performance should be the key metric. I can hear you saying, ???But what about when the teacher can???t teach because he has to spend all his time disciplining the students???? I think the answer to that argument is two-fold. First, the educator has to have respect from the students. I think that needs to start at an early age, pre-school, and kindergarten, and continue through high school. Obviously the school principal, who was beat up by several grade school aged children, as another commenter wrote, did not have the students??? respect. Secondly, I think that parents all too often side with their children instead of the educators, which leads to the educators??? hands being tied; this is probably why the principal was beat up. I hope that you can see that these two things are interrelated. I think that they feed off each other, the lack of respect and the parents who side with their children, and spiral out of control into the school system that is prevalent across the nation.

Oversimplified, imagine if you owned a business. I hope that you would want that business to be successful. In order to make it successful, you would probably lay-off your poorly performing employees and reward your best performing employees. These incentives would probably attract even better employees, too. Why can???t we do the same for the schools where we measure students??? performance as success instead of money as in a business?

I applaud what Rhee is doing. I hope she is successful, and I hope other school districts follow in her style.

This isn't about firing bad teachers, it's about getting rid of teachers who are dedicated to their students. Teachers with tenure and who have dedicated their lives to their students.

As much as Newsweek loves the idea of Rhee, the reality on the ground here in DC is very different. She isn't working to combat any of the problems faced by our students like poverty, absent parents, lack of parental involvement in education or schools. As a parent of a child who attended Green School Elementary in Southeast DC, I can tell you that my child never had a bad teacher or administrator. But with 18 kids in her class and only 3 (including her) who could sit in a chair, stay in the room or listen to the lessons much less participate...well let's just say I have no idea how the teachers even stayed sane there. When the principal was beaten to a pulp by 2 kids in 4th grade (who'd been failed more than once), that was my last straw and my child went to charter schools. In the charter school, yuo have more active parents. More parents attended school events, attended conferences and open houses and volunteered. At Green, for 2 years, I was the only parent to attend a conference for my daughter's class. When she went to Jefferson for middle school, I was one of 2 parents to sign in for History and 1 of 3 for Algebra.

Rhee and Fenty are striving to kill the union which is what Fenty's been doing in DC since he won the election. I'm beginning to wonder what happened to the guy who stood in my kitchen in Congress Heights and told my neighbors and me about why he was running and what he wanted to do to make DC a better place for all of us. This past year has only shown him to be unwilling to be accountable for anything except firing middle level and senior managers. Until school becomes community in DC, nothing is ever going to change.

Twelve hour workdays 6 days a week? And on 24 hour call. How does anyone with a family sustain that? Even "corporate" America doesn't require such a pace. Try that with no bathroom or food breaks too since teachers can't take their students out of their sight. I'm sure people are racing to take that job-some things are more important than money.

Last line was truncated. While, I don't rely on DCPS solely to educate my child, I sure don't want to have to teach the teacher.

Anyone can put a bandaid on a wounded knee, but if the injury is a broken leg, why amputate? I gave this analogy because Manetti???s missing the point. Use Reasons, I pray that you are never on the receiving end of Rhee's downsizing or labeled too old or lacking enthusiasm to teach in DCPS.

A LOT of DCPS's problems are not due to teachers. Sure there are BAD ones who need to be eliminated, but hurting the good ones in the process and waiting for them to regenerate is like a Bad Educational Chemotherapy. The problems facing DCPS is that as a budget item and a management infrastructure, it has been basically ignored for decades. Give a teacher the right supplies and the right building infrastructure and they can turn things around, in spite of negligent parents, and forked tongue politicians. I've witnessed this, as I'm a DCPS graduate. Scratch that, I'm a PROUD DCPS graduate. We had limited resources, but kids actually came to learn, and even the knuckleheads understood, by and large, the teacher was sincerely there to help. Making teachers corporate employees undermines the true virtue of teaching. The profession isn't selected solely because they didn't qualify for anything else or because they don't want to compete. The profession is selected because wholeheartedly MANY (if not MOST) want to impact future generations in a mighty way. Rhee's union busting undermines teachers who for decades remembered sitting in college classrooms hoping to make a difference -- and by achieving seniority still want to do so. Most people I know don't stay in a job long if they don't like it. The same should be afforded to teachers. If they got seniority, it is more than an economic decision. They earned it and they kept it because they wanted to. With this nation's pool of teachers dwindling each day, you would see more DCPS teachers defecting to PGCPS or MCPS, or Fairfax County Schools and thus abandoning their seniority for better pay. That's why I don't buy Rhee and her supporters??? adage that union busting is the only way to get rid of bad teachers and keep good ones. Corporate America in recent years does not reward folks for seniority. You can spend 20 years on a job and be fired without cause do to downsizing. Is this what Rhee wants? Probably so, but Newsweek and other sanctimonious folks' comments shouldn't be paraded it under the guise of REFORM, when it is not. "Use Reason" and "Manetti", I have a child in DCPS! And the undue pressure of the teacher's livelihood should NOT be classroom fodder. No parent wants the person responsible for teaching their child 6 hours a day to be so upset and depressed about their livelihood that they can't provide good instruction. Likewise, no parent wants some non-experienced teacher in the classroom just passing through. I want a qualified, tenured, old-school, teacher for my child. While, I don't rely on DCPS solely to educate my child, I sure don't want to have to tea

I like how she is modeling what she expects from all teachers and administrators in the system. She embraces accountability and has a no-excuses attitude. She is a tough champion for all students, and especially Black and Latino students. Race issues truly do not get in her way. I am a teacher in DC's public schools, Rhee is making changes that I could see were necessary years ago. She is on the right track.

Follows-up from the DC media:: In the matter of Rhee" school closures and alterations to others to update and prepare for students from the closed school. It seems poor planning with cost overruns will prevent timely full operation of the effected schools. This is similar to a recent wonder reformer on the west coast who did not budget for 700 teachers and was $300M in debt in 3yrs. This one had the promise and excuses of Rhee, have nothing agaisnt her but have seen too much to believe this kind of stuff. Yes, I live in the effected west cost school district.