Beyond Erase to the Top: The Myth of Michelle Rhee Continues

Much to my surprise, USA Today produced a solid piece of investigative journalism reporting on the likely chance (not surprising) of widespread standardized test score fixing in DC Public Schools under the leadership of Michelle Rhee. I'm not going to expand on that piece because everyone and their mom are. Rather, me and my mom are going to address another myth of Rhee's reign that continues to be repeated: that she came in and fixed a "corrupt" and "dysfunctional" bureaucracy.

In this piece, based on this testimony by civil rights lawyer, school finance expert and longtime DCPS activist Mary Levy, Bill Turque reports that under Rhee, central office expenditures and staff increased. I have created this post with Levy's written response to the assertions made in Turque's article by DCPS Special Assistant to the Chancellor Peter Weber.

Around the time that Turque's piece came out, Richard Whitmire wrote a piece for the Huffington Post where he repeats the notion that Rhee came in and cleaned out a bloated central office full of black incompetents:

"For starters, race played a big role in explaining how the school's central office Rhee inherited was both bloated and poorly run. That dates back to former Mayor Marion Barry, who over the years padded the city payrolls with ever-more appointees, partly as a civil rights gesture for those who in the days of white-run Washington were frozen out of city jobs but also for political reasons. 'It was the political machine's way of hiring folks and securing votes,' one veteran school administrator told me. 

Not only was the central office crowded, but many appeared to have little guidance on how to do their jobs. When Rhee arrived and began trying to fire the worst of the central office staff, her initial legal advice was: here at DCPS, we don't fire people for incompetence."

For my hearty refutation of Whitmire's assertions and assumptions, see this previous post.(Also see UPDATE I below for what else Whitmire got wrong here.)

Soon after that, I read this thoughtful piece by Shani Hilton in DC's City Paper, "Confessions of a Black Gentrifier." Immediately after reading it, I had the thought that Hilton should have included more perspectives from those already living in the DC neighborhoods being gentrified. However, upon second thought, I realized that the piece was more of an essay, and I thought she did a great job exploring her and her peers' perspectives without speaking for those she didn't interview. I found it refreshing to read something about urban gentrification that didn't, on the one hand, pass judgment on the occurrence of gentrification itself or cast it as a purposeful policy, but, on the other hand, didn't take on the attitude that the gentrifiers were coming in and saving or civilizing the natives. This is in stark opposition to perspectives like Whitmire's (and it seems of Rhee herself) on the "reform" of the DC Public Schools.

Next, I read a post on Ta-Nehesi Coates's blog about the decline of the black population in DC in the context of DC Council member and infamous former mayor Marion Barry's comments on the topic. I participated in the comment thread after the post, not to disagree with Coates's thoughts and questions on the matter, but to question some of the other commenters' assumptions that life and governance in DC had "vastly improved" under Fenty's stewardship. I object to the narrative that posits that governance in DC was totally dysfunctional and corrupt under Barry and his predecessors, but competent and vastly improved under Fenty and Rhee.

I don't say that Barry wasn't corrupt, or that as a system DCPS wasn't at all dysfunctional (oh, let me count the ways--I attended and taught in DCPS). Some things in the city and schools are better, some are worse, some are unchanged. But as I argue in the comment thread, Marion Barry is not the big bad black political bogey man and the DCPS central office workers were not his big bad bogey people followers that many of their critics believe them to be. Acknowledging Barry's numerous shortcomings and misdeeds, he's not any more, or more straightforwardly, corrupt than most other corrupt urban machine politicians. However provincial and incompetent at least some of the DCPS central office staff were, they are not markedly different from any other employees of a poorly designed and run school district central office. How Barry and the DCPS central office workers seem to loom in the psyche of their critics is far more ominous and sinister than what they were in actuality.

In her usual comprehensive and thoughtful manner, education journalist Dana Goldstein offers her take on the Rhee testing scandal in DC. But even Goldstein, whose work I respect and admire, got this aspect of the story wrong. She says:

"Rhee deserves credit for . . . . . streamlining the system’s once-corrupt and dysfunctional bureaucracy."

Arrgghh! I expect Whitmire and the editorial staff of the snookered Washington Post to repeat this, but someone of Goldstein's professional caliber is the last person who should be.

Did Barry and some of his predecessors practice cronyism? Absolutely. Were there more people working in the central office than there should have been? Absolutely. Were some of them incompetent? Absolutely. Were there tremendous amounts of money and resources that didn't make it into classroom? Absolutely. However, replace "Fenty and Rhee" for "Barry and some of his predecessors," and I'll answer "absolutely" all over again. In fact, under Rhee, the central office got bigger and more expensive, with fewer resources going directly to classrooms and students. I don't doubt that it became more functional in some ways. But comprehensively more competent or less corrupt? In light of the vast sum of money the Rhee administration spent on outside consultants (see here and here), the number of non-experienced central office personnel hired, and the implications of the recent testing scandal (Rhee didn't investigate, but promoted the principal of Noyes whom many had suspected was cheating!), I don't think so.

The only real difference is that Rhee filled the central office (and the DCPS teaching corps) with less experienced, younger, whiter, more privileged, and fewer local people. The assumption that those characteristics automatically connote more competence and less corruption implies that the older, blacker, less privileged locals were inherently corrupt and dysfunctional. That is deeply, deeply troubling to me and should be to anyone who cares about the confluence of race, privilege, bias, and social justice.

UPDATE 1: After pointing out various copy-editing errors (thanks, Mom!), Mary Levy added to my critique of Whitmire:

"Barry didn’t have that much opportunity to pad the school payroll, because that was the territory of the school board members and an occasional superintendent."

UPDATE 2: I want to state clearly that I assume that Dana Goldstein's oversight is due to a lack of research and not because of any explicit or intentional cultural bias. For one, she was writing a column, not investigative journalism. The Washington Post has neglected to write about Rhee's tenure with any skepticism or rigor, and they are responsible for their irresponsible journalism. Covering this was and is their job; with the exception of Valerie Strauss and Bill Turque's work, they've failed miserably to do so.

Secondly, part of what I am getting at in this post and in the post in response to Whitmire is that it's not possible to look honestly at the recent education reform efforts, especially those in DC, and the analyses of those efforts, without considering the assumptions being made about race, class, gender, and privilege. Nor do I presume, given the work of Tim Wise and Shankar Vedantam, that I (or anyone else who is a creature of American culture) am immune to such bias.

The necessary struggle is to recognize those biases and to put them to rest using facts and reason.

Teaching Quality Series, Part IV: Class Size & The Fallacy of Trickle-down Teaching

Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and some of the other presiding education reform yahoos have started to question the benefits of smaller class sizes. DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson deserves some credit for a semi-acknowledgement of the importance of smaller class sizes in this Q&A with Bill Turque. She states that at least some kids should have smaller classes, however she repeats the notion that it's better to have a class of forty students with one effective teacher than a class of twenty students with an ineffective teacher. Now, she's not completely wrong, but I would issue several caveats to go with her generalization.

Henderson's thinking is an example of what I like to call voo-doo education policy. This theory of "trickle-down teaching" says smaller classes dilute the benefits of effective teachers and that an effective teacher's magic, no matter how thinly spread, will trickle down equally to all students before her, by sheer force of her supernatural talents and effectiveness. I would argue that that's the wrong way of looking it, that the larger class sizes get (or total student load for some secondary teachers), the more that a teacher's effectiveness will be diluted.

In my experience, teaching is not like showing a movie in a movie theater where everyone has the same experience no matter how many people are in theater, nor is learning a passive experience. Teaching can be more like being a server in a restaurant: after a certain point, the more tables you have to wait on, the worse your service is going to be, especially if each table is full, with different orders, and even different menus. I don't want my own children going to a school that is modeled after a McDonald's, nor do I want as a teacher to be the equivalent of a McDonald's worker. As my mother, a DC-based civil rights lawyer and school finance expert pleaded once, "Can't our public school leaders at least aim for The Olive Garden?"

In general, smaller class sizes help to increase the quality of education received. Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters is the guru of the benefits of small classes. Read here for a summary, or here if you want a more extensive list, of the research demonstrating the benefits of smaller class sizes. That being said, there are many factors to consider when thinking about ideal class sizes. Optimal class sizes depend on what's being taught and at what level, who's teaching, who's being taught, and how many teachers or education professionals are serving any group of students at once.

While the research is more mixed for older grades, the research for elementary is pretty clear that in general, twenty-two is the largest a K-3 class should get before the quality of education received is compromised. Even twenty-two students, though, seems large if the class includes students with special needs or other students who require more intensive instruction.

Teaching veteran and Education Week blogger Nancy Flanagan reminded me that at the secondary level, it's important to consider a teacher's total student load. An experienced and well-regarded high school AP English teacher told me he could easily manage a class of thirty to forty (so, Kaya Henderson is somewhat right here) and often has--he is very popular due to his rigorous curriculum and the attention his students receive. However, he made sure to say that it was only really feasible if he is only teaching three sections of that size. Beyond that, his workload becomes unreasonable and the students don't get the feedback or volume of work they need--he assigns fewer essays, for example, and works a punishing number of hours. Teaching AP English, requires significant out-of-class-time: for planning lectures, studying texts in depth, and giving targeted, individual feedback on writing. He also made it clear that a class size of forty is only manageable in a course like AP English, with independent, disciplined students and an advanced curriculum and only after he had been in the classroom for about ten years--larger classes would have been close to impossible when he was learning the ropes. Less experienced teachers, no matter whom they're teaching, should not be broken in with larger classes.

This leads to the consideration of whom a teacher is teaching. For example, I have limited experience teaching larger classes because, with a few exceptions, I have taught ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), either on its own or by way of social studies--what's called Sheltered Instruction or content-based language instruction. Generally, the more fluent the students were, the larger my class sizes were (though still on the smaller side), which is as it should be. However, students' literacy skills and prior education  also determines how much attention they will need; the daughter of a professor visiting from Korea will need different instruction and less intensive attention than the son of a Salvadoran farm worker with limited or no prior schooling. The greater the needs of the students and the more feedback and guidance they require in class, the smaller the classes should be.

We also must consider the difference between class sizes and the pupil-to-teacher ratio in a school building. For example, the ratio may be 22:1 in a particular school, but that doesn't mean that each teacher has only twenty-two students in her class. For one, some employees while identified as teachers, bringing down the building's pupil to teacher ratio, may not be used for actual teaching. For example, because of the over-emphasis on data-driven instruction and standardized testing, many schools are forced to fill teaching positions, not to mention use scarce resources, with standardized testing administrators and data collectors/analyzers . (Yes, all of this standardized testing mania not only deprives kids of meaningful learning experiences but keeps teachers from doing meaningful, and in some cases actual, teaching.) In addition, some employees identified as teachers may be used for tasks such as monitoring hallways or the cafeteria, or for handling student discipline--these are all jobs which should be done and staffed by other professionals.

We should also go beyond the ratios, keeping in mind that some teachers are employed as specialists, and do not teach full-size classes, for example, a reading specialist, special education teacher, or media specialist. Those teachers will often push into classes or pull students out for intensive small group instruction which will reduce the load for the regular classroom teacher. Other K-12 education professionals such as counselors, school psychologists, school nurses, and social workers also keep classroom teachers' work loads reasonable and appropriate to their expertise by using their own expertise to help students and their families to deal with broader academic, social, medical, and psychological issues. When schools lack those professionals, the number of students as well as the tasks those professionals are meant to perform all fall to the regular classroom teacher and to her administrator(s), reducing her and her principal's effectiveness.

To further complicate things, different districts make different allowances for how teacher positions can be used or designated and awards teaching positions to schools using a different formulas.

I saw the difference a reasonable class size can make to the quality of education received when we moved from Oakland, California, to Hanover County, Virginia. My twin sons' kindergarten teachers in Oakland Unified School District were both excellent, just as good as their first and second grade teachers in Hanover County. But I saw a huge difference in the quality of attention my children received. (Besides attending parent conferences, school events and looking over the work they bring home, I volunteer weekly.)

The schools serve similar populations (although at 72%, the school in Oakland has a much higher percentage of non-white students while at nearly 50%, their Hanover school has a higher percentage of free and reduced lunch students), but the difference in resources (and in the levels at which California and Virginia fund their public schools) was astounding. In Oakland, not only were their classes larger at twenty-five (and these were only the kindergarten classes!), but there was almost no other staff. The PTA funded resource teachers in PE, art, music, and library. Otherwise, there was one teachers' aide for the entire school, one administrator, one janitor, one cafeteria aide, and one administrative assistant. The school relied on a steady stream of parent volunteers and constant fundraising just to fund the basics and the occasional assembly or field trip, and field trips could only be taken if parents could serve as drivers. There was no busing at all.

In their Hanover County public elementary school, on the other hand, each class has between sixteen and nineteen students, and the school has fully funded resource teachers for art, music, and PE; reading and math specialists; special education teachers; a gifted-and-talented teacher; a registered nurse; several teachers' aides; two administrative assistants; a principal and an assistant principal; a social worker; a school counselor; a school psychologist; language pathologists; two or three janitors; and an entire cafeteria staff. County school buses transport students to and from school and there are lots of special assemblies, presentations, and field trips. Despite this "lavish" education spending, Hanover County is an extremely conservative district (represented by Eric, ahem, Cantor), socially and fiscally, and is known for its low spending.

In both schools, each of my sons had one teacher who was more traditional but more organized, while the other had one who was more creative but less organized. However, because of the smaller class sizes in Virginia, the teacher who was less creative was able to be more so without sacrificing classroom management, while the class of the teacher who was less organized didn't suffer for it because the class was smaller. Essentially, the teachers in Hanover County were more effective, not because they were more talented, but because they had smaller class sizes, adequate numbers of specialists and other education professionals, two administrators, and in general more support. As a parent, I get much more feedback and direct communications from teachers and see my sons flourish in the much more individualized and targeted instruction and attention they receive. I've often had the experience of the school contacting me about a potential issue before I have the chance to contact them, and believe me, I'm a vigilant parent.

Besides the extensive body of research available at Class Size Matters, Education journalist Dana Goldstein and Forbes education blogger E.D. Kain make the case for why the American public wants smaller class sizes. I would add my voice to that of the American public's. I acknowledge that smaller class sizes aren't a panacea. However, limiting a teacher's total student load, and assigning class sizes according to what age and level they teach, their experience, who and what they teach, and providing a supportive context with knowledgeable specialist teachers and other education professionals all make teachers more effective and increase the quality of education received.

Trickle down economics has failed us and so will trickle-down teaching. The larger the classes and student load, and the more support staff, counselors, school nurses, social workers, specialist and resource teachers' positions are eliminated, the more diluted any teacher's effectiveness will be.

No Child Left With a Meaningful Education

The best new education blogger on the block, E.D. Kain, recently wrote an interesting post highlighting this op-ed in the New York Times about student-generated (and teacher guided) project-based learning in high school.

I had been similarly excited by the approach advocated by author Susan Engel and I posted the piece on twitter, stating that education reform should be moving in the direction described by Engel, but that NCLB and the increased amount of testing being advocated by Obama and Duncan was moving us in the opposite direction.

You should read Kain's post in it's entirety, but what he says here was especially on point:

"The current testing and accountability regime does nothing to make schooling and education more self-driven or creative. Instead, it entrenches the idea that kids should teach to uniform, rigid tests and suffer teaching methods that were handed down from the top by inflexible bureaucrats and politicians.

 What Americans have always excelled at is creative problem solving, and this experiment shows that letting kids (and teachers and schools!) have more creative wiggle room, and allowing curiosity to play a larger part in education, can have amazing, if not highly testable, results."

I was in graduate school in education when NCLB and the high-stakes-testing-as-accountability movement was brewing. My professors were all against this as this approach to improving learning was completely at odds with what we were being taught would lead to the most meaningful type of learning: project-based learning such as described in the op-ed.

At the DCPS high school where I taught right out of grad school, we were pushed to do both, i.e., teach to the standardized tests du jour (yuck!) as well as have students develop portfolios which demonstrated project-based learning (yay!). In fact, we were pushed to somehow reconcile them (mix oil with water!).

Now, I'm not saying that all schools should immediately toss everything they're doing out the window and replicate exactly what's being done in that school in Massachusetts. I don't believe in silver bullets or that all approaches can work with all students.

In general--and I believe this is uncontroversial--a teacher should plan backwards from the assessment, meaning take the product you want students to produce (what should students be able to do?) and take the content you want to see demonstrated in the product (what should students know?) and you plan instruction and work backwards from there. The problem now is that increasingly the only product is a standardized test when it used to be any number of things: an essay, a debate, a collage, a poem, a piece of music, a science experiment, or yes, a test.

So now teachers are being forced to plan everything backwards from that one standardized test because the standardized tests are seen as the end all be all of what students need to know and what they need to be able to do as well as what teachers should be teaching and of how they're "performing." All other content (if it's not on the test), projects, products, ways of expressing knowledge and demonstrating skills go out the window and with them, quality teaching and meaningful learning.

Obama and Duncan's solution to this is: create more and better tests. Yes, just when the education reform pendulum couldn't swing any further in the wrong direction, Obama and Duncan decide to take the approach that is bankrupting (in some cases, literally) public schooling and, yes, replicate it.

Richard Whitmire Can't Dodge His Own Racism

When I first heard that someone named Richard Whitmire had published a hagiography of Michelle Rhee, that was funded by the same disaster capitalists who had purchased her disastrous education reform policies, I shrugged. There's already so much propaganda on this out there already, what's a little more?  It's probably nothing different from what members of Washington Post editorial staff had already written. What's another journalist taken in by Michelle Rhee? 

Then, I read that he had given a talk about The Bee Eater at the DC bookstore Politics & Prose where he insulted the attendees and refused to answer their questions. So tacky, I thought. That guy's got no class. 

Next, I read Richard Kahlenberg's sharp critique of the book in Slate. Whitmire responded rather huffily and defensively, regurgitating his questionable research. Kahlenberg responded to his response, and Whitmire again to Kahlenberg. What a Brainy Smurf this Whitmire is, I thought. Isn't this what happens when you get a book published--people read it and then write reviews? Why not just ignore them, as most other authors do? Whitmire must really be a true believer or too proud to admit to any mistakes in his work, I thought. When will Hefty come by and chuck him over towards the bushes?

Then, there was this whine-fest in Education Week where he trivialized Ms. Rhee's mistakes and called her critics "birthers." Birthers? I thought. Hahaha! This guy is getting desperate. What a dumb analogy!

Finally (or perhaps not, knowing Brainy), I came across this brazen (and I mean, b-ray-zen) piece on the Huffington Post. I stopped cringing and started seething. It is truly one of the most despicable things I've ever read about race and DC politics and DCPS. It's so awful, I could cry.

Whitmire wags his finger at education reformers, admonishing them not to "duck race issues." African American Washingtonians' "fears of experimentation" were justified. What's wrong with saying that? Well, it's not nearly the beginning or end of what he says. According to Whitmire, Rhee and Fenty should have paid heed to the "fears" of African Americans, but not because there were any actual race issues during Rhee's tenure. Racism in DC is all done now--all that racism and "experimentation" is history and happened 1960s and 1970s. According to Whitmire, black people in DC perceived racism under Rhee, but it was all in their over-sensitive, incompetent little heads.

According to Whitmire, Rhee inherited a "bloated and poorly run" central office filled with "people who had little guidance as to do their jobs." Michelle Rhee inherited all of  these "incompetent" African American "Barry appointees." Never mind that several mayors served between Barry and Fenty. Never mind that the numerous superintendents serving under those mayors also came in and went on similar firing sprees. Never mind that under Rhee, the number of central office employees rose by 20% (and they claim to be understaffed!) as direct services to students and overall enrollment fell . Never mind that at least 100 central office employees now make more than $100,000 a year. Never mind that most of the people Rhee hired to replace the vastly "incompetent" black employees were white and under the age of forty with little to no experience in education.


See, when Fenty spent vastly more money on facilities and playgrounds in the whiter and more affluent Ward 3 and when Michelle Rhee crowded central offices with underqualified and overpaid employees, it's "progress" and "courage", but under previous (black) mayors and superintendents, it's "incompetence," "a jobs program," and a way of "hiring people and securing votes." (And perhaps an understandable response to all of that nasty, isolated racism of the 1970s.)

Yes, according to Whitmire, white people saw Michelle Rhee's firings "based on principal recommendation" as, well, "logical," while misinformed black people saw them as "random." Furthermore, black Washingtonians couldn't handle that testing gains happened under Michelle Rhee, who is Korean-American, and not under her predecessor Clifford Janey, who is African American. Apparently, black residents in Washington, D.C., can't handle success happening to non-blacks. Whitmire is a hair away from crying "reverse racism!" here:

"The fact that Rhee was Korean American, and not African American as her predecessors had been, also proved to be racially troublesome, especially when the district began to show testing improvements. Rationalizing that awkward situation gave birth to a widespread belief among many black Washingtonians that the gains Rhee achieved were the fruits of the black schools chief, Clifford Janey, who preceded her"

Finally, the elections came and Fenty lost because, "the favoring-whites belief proved to be a significant wedge issue in the voting." Those silly black people with their "favoring whites beliefs" and Janey test gain "theories." 


There's so much more I could say about this vile piece. There's so much left that offends. (Please, read it for yourselves.) But mostly, it epitomizes what's wrong with the so-called education reformers' approach: that the problem in public education is not systemic or societal (or even more than one problem), but one of low quality people, in DC's case, mostly black people, who fail to teach poor children how to read. The parents of these kids are also too simple minded, too bound up in perverse race pride to recognize their saviors when they ride in on their broomsticks. When will they realize, as Michelle does, what's actually good for their own children, that what they really need is to bring in high-achieving Ivy Leaguers, so that they, too, don't become low quality people? Who cares if they don't know anything about education or teaching?

In the meantime, DC Mayor Vincent Gray has betrayed so many who worked so hard for him and appointed Interim DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson as permanent chancellor. A chancellor selection advisory panel was appointed, as mandated by a 2007 DC law, but apparently Gray and the panel members decided that democratic processes are one of those "sacred cows" that need to be slaughtered: the only candidate they ever considered was Ms. Henderson. Henderson certainly seems to be more conciliatory and thoughtful than Ms. Rhee was, which is a start, but I'm hearing that so far, that's mostly talk. The community and other stakeholders aren't being involved in decisions and there is still little to no transparency. Furthermore, Ms. Henderson continues to embrace the same wrong-headed policies that Ms. Rhee did.

Not to worry. I'm certain Richard Whitmire will soon write a piece assuring all that now that African-American Kaya Henderson is in charge, that over-sensitive and incompetent African American residents of DC will have no further complaints. According to Whitmire's logic, black folks in DC don't care about the quality of education their children receive, nor do they care about competence; they only care about blackness.

If Richard Whitmire is trying to deflect the negativity people feel from Michelle Rhee on to him (especially now that she and Fenty have stated their support for Scott Walker), he's doing a great job. If anything validates Courtland Milloy's post-election screed, this does.

As Tim Wise says,

"there are two types of racists, the overt racists, such as white supremacists, and the passive racists, who are the vast majority of us who silently collaborate with systemic racism. We don't consciously believe in racial superiority or inferiority, but we've become so used to the existing policies, practices, and procedures that we don't question them. To the extent we don't challenge this system of racism, we are collaborating with it. The second type of racist is actually more dangerous. The first type we can easily recognize, and it doesn't take much courage to condemn them. the second type is like an invisible gas: you don't know it's there until you've been lulled unconscious by it."

Which kind of racist would you say Mr. Whitmire is? I'd say he falls somewhere just between the two.

Teacher, I Mean, Teaching Quality Series, Part III: Teachers Compensation

No doubt about it: teachers' pay should start higher than it currently does. Higher pay would attract more people to the profession who might otherwise go into other fields and it would more fairly compensate those who are currently teaching.

That being said, I don't think that higher or merit pay will lead immediately to better teaching quality. As veteran teacher and Teacher Leaders Network member Renee Moore put it:

I fundamentally disagree with one of the conceptual pillars of most merit pay plans: That teachers can be motivated to achieve better results for our students through pay incentives. The majority of teachers are working as hard as we can and getting little recognition and less support. To suggest that we are withholding our best from our students and would provide that in exchange for a few extra dollars is a slap in the face of every professional educator (not just the "bad" teachers).

In addition, merely raising salaries will not attract more qualified candidates or lower the high attrition rates in public school teaching unless working conditions are also improved. Over-crowded schools, over-sized classes, crumbling facilities, lack of resources, poor leadership, inadequate support staff, too many responsibilities, and not enough time for planning and grading all hinder good teaching, no matter how much teachers are paid. (I will address the influence of those components on quality teaching in future posts.)

Salaries should be raised equally and transparently for ALL teachers and not just for teachers whose students receive higher scores on standardized tests and not because of where the teacher went to school as an undergraduate or what place in their class they graduated. It is not fair to pay someone more because they were privileged enough to be in a position to attend a place like Harvard. Moreover, higher grades or a degree from an elite institution does not make someone a good teacher. It is also unfair to pay someone more because they happen to teach students who do well on standardized tests. Furthermore, higher scores on standardized tests aren't necessarily evidence of quality teaching. Even if you believe otherwise, making the all too common mistake of confusing higher test scores for real student achievement, according to this report as well as this study, merit pay for high scores on standardized tests does not work. In Atlanta, merit pay for high test scores seemed to cause not better teaching but rather more cheating.

That being said, I am not unopposed to merit pay by other means. Rick Hess, for example, has some proposals for merit pay that are worth serious consideration. Once salaries are raised and working conditions are improved across the board, teachers who are ready for increased responsibilities or who want to work more hours, without compromising quality, should be paid more. If a teacher is taking on more students by teaching an additional class, that means he'll be working longer hours planning and giving students feedback. If a teacher leads extra-curricular activities, works on a department-wide curriculum planning project, or becomes a mentor to new teachers, she should be compensated for doing more work. Furthermore, I am not opposed to paying people more who take hard to staff or more difficult teaching jobs. While I reject the notion of market-based education reforms or of running schools like businesses, we can't ignore labor market forces.

Those with masters degrees, PhDs, and additional endorsements, such as National Board Certification, and more experience should be paid more. In general, the longer a person has been doing something, the better and more efficient they get at it, and experience especially matters in teaching. Furthermore, when potential and actual teachers invest time and money to advance their professional development, they should be rewarded for that, just as professionals are in other fields. That being said, there are many ways to skin that cat--education and experience should not be too rigidly defined. Work as teacher's aide? Teach for a year or two in a private school? Tutoring? Substitute teaching? Spent a summer in a program such as this one learning more about your content area? All those should apply in some way as education, training or prior experience.

The norm should not be a teacher working ten to fourteen hour days to do a great or even adequate job for much, much higher pay. The standard should be a forty hour work week with a reasonable amount of responsibilities, good working conditions at a fair middle class rate of pay that increases with more expertise and experience. As teachers get better at what they do and are able to take on more responsibilities or work more hours, then they should be paid more, but standardized test scores should have nothing to do with it.

Why I Stand with Wisconsin Workers

(This has been cross-posted at Rachel's, Rants, Raves and Recollections and will be part of the #edusolidarity project)

Since Madison, Wisconsin is burning as I blog, I must to take a moment to support teachers unions and unions in general. And I want to explain that support. Despite my own teaching and union/non-union experiences, I don't think I understood and appreciated the role of unions until just recently. These two pieces, one by award-winning Maryland social studies teacher blogger Kenneth Bernstein and the other by California English teacher blogger David Cohen, helped me to understand the importance of unions.

My parents and their parents before them, were not wealthy, but nor were they workers, unionized or otherwise (although my maternal grandfather's father was very active in the railroad telegraphers union in Illinois). My father's parents were the children of Eastern European immigrants and owned a stationary store in Brooklyn, New York. My maternal grandfather worked as a chemist for Montgomery Ward and then as a manager for an automotive parts company in Chicago, Illinois, and my maternal grandmother was a homemaker and worked as at the Hadley School for the Blind.

Besides being born white in America, my parents were lucky to have attended two of the best known public high schools in the country; my mother went to Glenbrook in Northbrook, Illinois, and my father to Stuyvesant in New York City. My mother had college-educated parents and the luck of her zipcode (though not if you ask her as she hated the suburbs) and my father had parents who, though relatively uneducated themselves, greatly valued education. My parents went on to attend outstanding public universities--my mother, the University of Wisconsin and my father, Brooklyn College. They met while they were in graduate school at the University of Michigan.

After finishing, they moved to Washington, DC, where my sister and I grew up and attended public schools, so that my father could take a job as a lawyer with the federal government, where he has spent most of his career--primarily as a civil rights lawyer at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and then as a litigator and energy efficiency regulation counsel at the Department of Energy. My mother had been a linguist but couldn't find a job in her field (her specialty was semitic languages--she was a generation early on that one).  After learning about my father's work at HEW and watching him in court, she went to law school and became a labor, civil rights and school finance lawyer. I imagine they could have gone to work for any white shoe law firm they wanted to, but they gladly chose civil and public service. While we weren't rich, we lived a comfortable middle class life.

Among other topics they discussed at the dinner table, I definitely recall my parents grumbling about corruption and obstructionism in unions, but they always believed in their importance. When I went to work for DCPS, I was ambivalent about joining the Washington Teachers' Union--I really didn't know much about unions. Despite some of her negative associations, my mother informed me I should join, that it was the right thing to do. Even then, I never developed union pride; for one, I certainly didn't enjoy funding WTU President Barbara Bullock's collection of fur coats and silver candlesticks.

I found my experiences with "management" much more pleasant and reasonable when I taught in public schools in Albemarle County, Virgina, a right-to-work state, but I don't think that had anything to do with not being unionized or not having collective bargaining power. And I did join the Albemarle Education Association chapter of the Virgina Education Association. I can't say they ever did anything directly for me, but nor did I have the need to ask them to. Many other teachers I've spoken to have described the organization as both toothless. I imagine they feel that way since teachers' salaries in Virginia are approximately five thousand dollars below market, being especially low where I live and have taught in Central Virginia. But at the very least, the VEA serves as a good resource for educators and lobbies to improve the working and learning conditions for teachers and students.

I always took for granted my middle class upbringing, which is becoming less and less possible, as middle class wages decrease and expenses increase. With all that's going on in Wisconsin, I have come to appreciate that my parents and I have been able to live a comfortable middle class life because of what labor unions fought for in the first place: fair compensation, safe working conditions, and a decent standard of living in exchange for a job done. Their fight increased wages and other forms of compensation, such as benefits and pensions, and improved working conditions for all of us.

That's why I attended the Rally to Preserve the American Dream in Richmond, Virginia, this past Saturday (pics thanks to Virginia Organizing  here) and that's why I will continue to fight for the working and middle classes and for the poor to get out of poverty. Does that mean I think that unions are uniformly or inherently "good"? No. Does that mean that I think that people who don't do their jobs should be able to keep them? No. But I don't have blind faith in the free market, either. Unions serve as a check on unfettered capitalism, and capitalism has certainly been recently unfettered. Unions are the only bulwark right now between fascist capitalism and regulated capitalism. Without the unions, we will have no middle or working class at all, only a few powerful rich and many, many poor.

The more progressive Democrats can't don't this alone, however. Traditionally more conservative members of the working and middle classes must stop voting against their own economic self-interest. Instead of asking "why should others get decent wages and healthcare insurance when we don't?" they need to fight for such basic themselves, like yes, Obamacare, and stop allowing themselves to be the lackeys of tax-dodging, overseas-job creating corporate interests who are doing nothing to advance working peoples' quality of life. Furthermore, while I have been heartened to see neo-liberals such as Obama, Duncan, and some DFER types speak out in support of the right to collective bargaining, they are in part culpable for the attacks on America's middle and working classes and their unions. Neo-liberals and centrist Democrats, their rich patrons, and their mouthpieces in the media have been busy embracing disastrous and crude education reform policies such as those of Michelle Rhee and thoughtlessly bashing teachers and their unions in the process. In doing so, they have weakened the Democratic party and middle and working classes as a whole, emboldening Republican leaders such as Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Rick Scott and their oligarch overlords, with their ruthless free market ideology, to make a well-orchestrated and dangerous grab for power.

It's time for neo-liberals to do what's best for children and their families by changing course on their wrong-headed education policies. To do this, they must end their collaboration with corporate-sponsored union busters. You can't do what's best for our nation's children if you're crushing their parents and teachers in the process. If neo-liberals really want our children's futures to be bright, then they must fight for a quality of work and home life that will make that possible. Unions, for all of their imperfections, do that.

Perhaps NOT Diversity University, No Longer: Wesleyan Responds!

Although I have other posts for my series on teacher, I mean, teaching quality in the queue, I'm going to take a little break (okay, it's been a long break, but my kids have been sick and there's been lots of "snow" days) to post the letter I got from my alma mater, Wesleyan University, in response to this post and open letter I wrote to them back in December. 

I must say I was heartened and stand very much corrected both by the comments made by a fellow alum on the original post and by the information in this letter. That being said, the last paragraph really disappointed and discouraged me and lends credence to my criticisms in the original post of how Wesleyan brands itself (to me, gratingly so) in self-righteousness. I'm sure that Ms. Vasiliou was just telling me what she thought I wanted to hear. But, alas:

a) it is not Wesleyan that gave me my zeal for social justice and public education--it is my family and upbringing--and I found it rather presumptuous to assume otherwise.

b) I am more troubled by than proud of the high number of Wesleyan graduates who go into Teach For America. I myself applied to be a corps member in the organization when I was a senior (and was rightly rejected), but recently I have come to see TFA as highly problematic on a number of levels--as a mechanism to improve teacher quality, ideologically, economically, ethically. I explore all of this in a commentary  I recently finished and am currently shopping around to larger publications (any takers?!?!), which is to say you'll see it on my blog in a few weeks when it, too, is roundly rejected :)

Here's the letter:

Dear Rachel,

As the current director of the Wesleyan Fund, I’d like to provide some information about two concerns you discuss in your 12/1 blog entry: Does Wesleyan help or hinder educational diversity and access? and Why does the University ask alumni for financial support?

Wesleyan’s commitment to racial and economic diversity and access is alive and well, backed up by our longstanding policy of need-blind admission with full aid support. In the current first-year class, for instance, 34% of admittees are students of color and 14% are the first generation in their family to attend a four-year college.  Of all students now on campus, 18% are federal Pell Grant recipients.  Not only do we admit applicants without regard to their financial means, we actively recruit low-income students through their schools and in collaboration with programs such as Prep for Prep, A Better Chance, and most recently QuestBridge.  (Adjusted for size of school, Wesleyan has enrolled more Prep for Prep graduates than any other college.) You may remember that Wesleyan offers scholarships to talented graduates of the local community college, and we also have dedicated scholarships for veterans in need of aid.  The Admission Office doesn’t admit students unprepared to be successful with the level of work required here; instead, they suggest to low-income students with apparent high potential that they take advantage of post-high-school “bridge” programs with financial aid that several secondary schools offer, after which they can reapply to Wesleyan. 

Acting on these principles entails high costs. About 18% of our total annual operating budget goes for financial aid. This year we will spend $41.3 million on scholarships. Wesleyan does not give merit scholarships; all of our scholarship funds are reserved for students from families requiring assistance to afford college. The university meets the full demonstrated need of every enrolled student, through a combination of grants, loans, and work-study jobs.  Under policy announced by President Roth three years ago, grants were increased, so that no student now graduates with more than $19,000 in loan debt.  Loans have been totally eliminated for Wesleyan students with family incomes of $40,000 or less (the Pell grant criterion): these students receive scholarship grants covering their full need.  Even students paying “full” tuition and board are partially subsidized by the University, because the fees charged cover approximately 71% of yearly educational cost. 

Where does alumni support come in? We make up the costs not covered by tuition mainly through contributions to the annual fund and to the endowment.  Far from being wealthy, Wesleyan operates with an endowment one-third to one-fifth the size of those at other leading colleges. Surprisingly to some alumni, third-party surveys have shown that Wesleyan graduates essentially have the same spread in income as our peer colleges.  But, while our higher-income alumni give at comparable rates to alumni from those other schools, Wesleyan is behind when it comes to mid- and lower-level income alumni giving.  Our top priority is financial aid, and we have to mobilize more of the community to make sure we have the funds that need-blind admission requires. 

It’s great that you are idealistic about education. Many other Wes alumni share your dedication.  In recent years Teach for America has been the number 1 first employer of our new graduates.  We’re proud of educators like Kira Orange Jones ’00, the regional director of Teach for America in New Orleans, and Jessica Posner ’09 and Kennedy Odede ’12, who built and are running the first free school for girls in the largest slum in Africa-- Kibera, Kenya.  Alumni like these tell us that their Wesleyan education played a large role in inspiring them and preparing them with the skills to make significant changes in society.  I hope that observation rings true with you, too.

Sincerely,

Pam Vasiliou


UPDATE I: I forgot to mention that while I was a student at Wesleyan, they phased out their teacher certification/education program. I remember my fabulous RA was one of its last participants. Anyone have more information on this? I would much rather see Wesleyan re-institute some kind of teacher training or education program or just do something on a bigger scale to get their students to think about being teachers rather than outsource that to TFA. But, then again, perhaps they do. I've been uninformed before. . .


UPDATE II: A reader just pointed out that Wesleyan University professor Claire Potter, a.k.a. the Tenured Radical, did a terrific post on TFA on her blog. I read her blog, but somehow missed this post. Hmmm, she makes many of the same points I did in my piece. Only better. Maybe I can't get mine published because it's already been said.