D.C. Schools Chief Michelle Rhee Targets ‘Sacred Cow’ of Tenure
by Kyle OlsonIf President Obama is really serious about education reform, he ought to consider putting D.C. school Chancellor Michelle Rhee in charge of the effort.
This lady is not afraid of a major challenge, as evidenced by her latest brawl with the AFT.
Rhee is courageously targeting the sacred cow of teachers unions – tenure. It’s the system that pretty much guarantees a teacher a job for life, if he or she can make it through the first few years. It doesn’t matter if they go on to become good, mediocre or bad teachers. With tenure, they are pretty much protected until retirement.
But Rhee understands that such a system can no longer be tolerated in Washington D.C. schools, which have a dropout rate of nearly 40 percent. She knows that the school district must have the power to sift through the teaching staff, keep the good ones, work with the middle-of-the-roaders, and get rid of the bad apples.
She also understands that it has to work both ways. She’s willing to develop a compensation system that would offer teachers much higher pay, in exchange for the union abandoning, or at least reforming, the concept of tenure.
We have no problem with that at all. Teachers are extremely important in our society, and good ones deserve to be paid like the vital professionals they are. While schools throughout the nation are struggling with their budgets, we’re sure that most would be happy to find the money to increase teacher salaries, if only they had to power to pick and choose what teachers to keep.
Rhee has already backed up her words with action. Earlier this year she hired more than 900 new teachers for the district, then weeks later laid off 266, citing budget constraints. But the layoffs weren’t limited to the recent hires. She made cuts based on ability, not seniority, a move that drove the AFT into court to challenge Rhee’s decision.
According to the Wall Street Journal, AFT President Randi Weingarten said Rhee “has so poisoned the environment that I am not sure that we can ever get back to a good situation here.”
That’s where you’re dead wrong, Ms. Weingarten. Rhee’s “poison” is exactly the proper remedy to get D.C. schools back on track, and restore public confidence in the district.
Families aren’t interested in a teacher’s longevity, Ms. Weingarten. They want to know if that teacher can manage to help their children reach their potential, and if not, then he or she no longer belongs in a classroom.
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65 Comments
Better watch out – these groups don't like this kind of play.
She could be a marked woman and take the repercussions from Obama on the chin.
http://www.cafepress.com/rightwingstuff
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by DNC Fail!, Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry said: D.C. Schools Chief Michelle Rhee Targets ‘Sacred Cow’ of Tenure: If President Obama is really serious about edu.. http://bit.ly/6wMODf [...]
Sigh
Rhee is the "fixer" / fiancee of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson who paid AmeriCorps money to silence several mistresses in the Walpin AG firing.
Dilema
She's about to get thrown under the bus. Now she has two strikes; the Walpin case and taking on the AFT. Look for serious pressure on DC schools to dump her.
Chemotherapy is basically using something poisonous to the body, to kill off a cancer. Ergo, Rhee's "poison" may be the cure for the cancer of union entitlements that will otherwise kill the body which is the education system.
It's about time someone makes hamburger, out of all these "Sacred Cows".
Rhee seems to have good ideas about the DC schools, but she's likely toast now that her role in covering up her fiance's abuse of federal funds has come to light.
I mean, what does it say of her ethics that she is covering for a guy who sexually harrassed volunteers in his employ? Heck, what does it say about her judgment? Does she really think he wouldn't cheat on her after the marriage.
She was co mingled with the Walpin fraud.
I suspect the Unions will tear her up.
The news has been very uplifting of late……..ACORN exposed as the criminal and corrupt organization that they are. SEIU exposed as a criminal and corrupt union thug organization closely linked to same ACORN. Global warming decades long scam(cooking the books) exposed as the fraud that it is. And now a brave new hero, Michelle Rhee taking on the powerful "we do it for the children" teachers union. And schools across the country exposed as the liberal brainwashing machines they are……mmm…….mmm……mmm…….Barak Hussein Obama
Friends, we must keep the pressure on on all these fronts and then next November, "fundamentally change America" by voting out all incumbent politicians who support these crazed organizations.
tenure is another word for Gates, i would says prof. gates but the title was given to him NOT EARNED…..
What does Charlie Rangel's tax fraud and cheating say about the House Ethics Committee???
Affirmative Tenure is the way to go
I saw a documentary no so long ago on Michelle Rhee on the work she is doing. This, in part, helped my wife and I to remove our children from our public(read union) school, and move them to a MA charter school. We never looked back. Go get em Michelle !
Wow, what a novel concept, keeping a job based on ability! I sure wish she would have been around when my kids were in school.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said Rhee “has so poisoned the environment that I am not sure that we can ever get back to a good situation here.”
The real poisoning is that of the classrooms by incompetent teachers, Mr. Weingarten.
Well, you know what they say about a house of cards…
The union mentality of "seniority rules" is killing education and business. Performance be damned.
Agreed, a beating is more than likely headed her way, if you see anyone wearing purple Michelle just run.
QUOTE : “has so poisoned the environment that I am not sure that we can ever get back to a good situation here.”
The environment the the union is talking about is their membership fund, I say posion it, drain it, and bury it under a ton of lead shielding.
And the "incompetent teachers" are typically the ones most closely tied to the union. Contracts often give union officers, like shop stewarts and executive board members special tenure or "super seniority." In other words, they are the last to get laid off and usually the worst teachers.
Take a look at the union finances for the NEA & AFT on the Dept. of Labor. They spent tons of money defending bad teachers. And taxpayers get hit again because their tax dollars are used to defend the school district trying to fire the bad teachers.
not relevant here but everyone must check out http://www.americangrandjury.com. This is the tool our founders gave us to be the "watchmen" or as justice Scalia put it the 4th branch of government not limited by the constitution.
VERY important if anyone can get this to Glenn Beck I have tweeted him, and trying to call his show is almost impossible
She is needed at LAUSD
BAH…
I call shennanigans!
The NEA, AFT, et al are all tangled up with SEIU and ACORN. She was in the thick of covering up sexual allegations against KJ. which was uncovered when Walpin was following the money trail from Americorps.
It is unraveling badly for her, and she has known about it since early this year. She is about to get the bum's rush, so she has to play though and crack some heads.
It's all appearances here folks… smoke and mirrors.
that should be http://www.americangrandjury.org
Beef. It's what's for dinner!
THAT, was the best onliner today!
Rhee seems to have some skeletons in the closet.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Exclus...
Arne's got skeletons too.
http://cbs2chicago.com/investigations/Painful.Les...
Will she REALLY persue this given her status in BHO'S "friendship circle" and BHO'S beholding to the teachers' union? Like Obama she may use words to sound good, masterful. . .and never act upon the rhetoric.
I hope she proves me wrong. . .this could start a ripple affect for all schools and a brighter future for public education.
There was a time when on a college level that tenure was a noble idea designed to protect unpopular ideas and theories. Keep in mind that it was a good thing when higher education was an open marketplace of ideas fairly and openly debated. The left destroyed that paradigm with their fascist conformity.
Union tenure which starts at kindergarten, how ludicrous is that, aren't protecting theories or ideas at that level, is simply invoked to create obstacles to firing incompetent union members.
Privatize the public school disaster. Carve out vouchers for each kid and let parents apply them where they see fit.
Sadly the public schools will live on long after those that can have jumped ship. Only when those in the worst blighted failed urban schools physically burn them to the ground will public education ever change. That's not likely to happen.
Amusing, isn't it, that latte liberals never have their kids in the public schools.
Good for her! It's about time someone challenged the protection of tenure. Crooks and thugs. That's all the unions can relate to. She has my full support!
I have been saying this for years. If we want to improve education in this country, we will have to pay teachers more, even double what the current rates are, but they should trade tenure for higher pay and COMPETE for their jobs with high quality candidates. I would bet more conservatives would consider teaching as a career and not leave the schools to the indoctrinators who teach our children to be liberal who are running the show now.
Its not poison….
… Its an antibiotic
And serves the exact same purpose!
What? Tenure isn't a great idea??? How dare she??? All good professionals are tenured…doctors, accountants, lawyers…whaaa??? You mean they're not? These folks could actually lose their jobs when they suck at them? What a radical idea.
Sounds like someone is trying to rehabilitate her image. I'm all for tenure, but she's Kevin Johnson's girlfriend and she allegedly was very active in covering for him. No mention of that in the article.
Sorry, but Michelle Rhee is corrupt. She has helped her fiance, Sacramento mayor, hide the details of his reported dalliances with a number of women, which included improper touching charges, as well as her fiance being caught in a shower with a 12 year old girl – and they weren't blowing soap bubbles at each other.
Love the taking down of tenure, though.
Look a little deeper, though. It's great lip service to take on teacher's unions this way, but I don't think it's going to last. Also, realize that Michelle Rhee is implicated in covering up her fiance's (Sacramento's current Friend of Obama and mayor) alleged wrongdoing with improper touching of women, and embezzlement of over a million dollars of Americorps (Obama favorite) money.
She's not that wonderful.
Can she be cloned? She's sorely needed just about everywhere else in the USA. South Carolina's Dept. of Education smells out loud!
[...] More…..biggovernment.com [...]
Good luck, Michelle. Requiring real accountability among uber libs is a near impossibility.
Your next target should be the home environments so many of those poor kids in DC's blighted neighborhoods come home to.
Parental accountability is a long overlooked and ignored major piece of the solution that the left wants to ignore completely.
When I came home from school with a poor grade or a note from the teacher or principal, I was far more concerned about what my parents would do than I ever was about what the school did. Today, that is reversed and our educational system is in a shambles because of it.
I understand the anger regarding her fiance but I lived in the area when Williams brought in Rhee. The first thing she did was start firing DC's central education leeches. She has been on fire trying to reform the District schools and doing a pretty good job.
Your spot on, the progressives want to keep the lower class (their words not mine) down to control them, they are nothing but an electoral base to tap when nessecary and exist in their minds keep themselves in power.
I am related (sadly) to progressive with a lot of power, these people have nothing but for contempt for anyone beneath their "Station" regardless of the flowery rhetoric they use when prentending to care.
ACORN and the rest are the same, the day the poor are no longer the poor is the day that Progressives and that is based on it lose their reasoning for existence, not their reason for existence mind you.
Michelle Rhee, DCPS, and Mayor Fenty are found by the courts to be correct and the WTU (Teachers' Union) "failed to provide any evidence" to support their allegations of illegal firings that were in fact do to the Council's cut to the DCPS budget. And, I quote Judge Bartnoff's opinon:
"At most, the plaintiff showed that a large number of teachers were hired in the spring and summer of 2009, which DCPS does not dispute. But the plaintiff presented no evidence to refute the evidence presented by DCPS that its budget included those new teachers at the time they were hired, as well as the returning teachers, that DCPS was planning for the new school year based on the budget that was passed in early June and its budget agreement with the Council Chairman, and that the RIF was instituted in response to the $21 million budget reduction enacted by the City Council on July 31."
Rhee appears to be quite corrupt in her own way. Any woman that would cover for their lover's sexual indiscretions is either morally regressive, or, perhaps in this case, a political opportunist. Either way, she cannot be trusted.
Uh-oh! Ms. Rhee makes too much sense. She should be watchful of speeding busses and invitations to meetings on the rooftops of tall buildings. As a former teacher, I wish her the best of luck. She is an administrator I know I would have appreciated.
"Implicated"……..wow that's great…. Is she indited or convicted or just being smeared???
Remember, Sarah Palin was also "implicated" in supposed wrongdoing and was then cleared.
Obama is "implicate" with ACORN and appointing radical leftist CZARS who hate America
Charlie Rangel is "implicated" as a crook and a tax cheat and a liar.
algore is "implicated"(exposed) as a fraud
Frank and Dodd are "implicated" as causing the mortgage crisis and housing meltdown.
………….need I go on?
Michelle Rhee covered up Kevin Johnson's sexual advances to a 16 year old girl at the school KJ had founded. I personally don't trust the ideas of a person who would cover up sexual predation, especially in a school situation.
You could get rid of all tenure and not make teaching any better. Principals can always fire teachers with tenure, they just have to go through due process in order to do so. The problem about having teachers untenured is that schools will hire the teachers with the least amount of experience because they cost less money than experienced teachers. You will end up with an overabundance of inexperienced teachers. Research and common sense has shown that experienced teachers teach better.
If they privatize teaching, I'm getting out of it. The abuse we would recieve from the administration would be so great that I would have to leave – thus leaving them an opening to bring in a cheaper teacher.
You really don't think the best teachers are going to stay around in a privatized system do you? No way, because they are going to cost more money – and privitized systems lay the best paid people off first. Basically no business rewards people for the they contribute to the company – they reward people according to what they do to advance their boss's careers. Take away union protection in teaching and you are going to put teachers in the same situation as business people.
" She made cuts based on ability, not seniority, a move that drove the AFT into court to challenge Rhee’s decision."
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! She based the cuts on the necesity of the teacher. For instance at one school the only French teacher was cut. In others counselors or math teachers were cut. The principals were told to cut whatever positions were unnecessary.
I believe only 5% of evaluation had to do with ability.
I;m getting tired of hearing that she cut based on ability. That is absolutely untrue, Check the past articles at the Washington Post and you will read what she says about the criteria for cutting was. AND IT WAS NOT QUALITY. Please stop repeating that as it is not accurate.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2009/10/rhee_...
Rhee: Not All Laid Off Teachers "Poor Educators"
Then she added:
"I hope to be clear to any who are making assumptions about teachers who lost their jobs, that this approach does not mean that all DCPS former staff were poor educators. Performance was not the only factor in a decision to lay off an employee. For example, if two strong educators held positions at a school that could support only one due to low enrollment, a talented educator with less experience than his or her colleague would have lost his or her job to the struggling economy."
The monopolized education system that produces poor "profit" or educational results would be wise to borrow tride and true principles from the free market. Monopolies result in inferior products and retard inovation. Our school system results prove this fact.
It's true that you can suffer from abusive bosses in any industry. But the administration will have to work in tandem with teachers under a private system to produce results or they will go out of business. The free market will reward good schools, which in turn will reward the good teachers that made the school good. Salaries will adjust to the market value, not some fixed value the union determines.
The government should allow choice for parents on where they want to spend their money, rather than forcing them to pay taxes into a government and union controlled monopoly.
Under the current monopolistic system, getting rid of tenure doesn't accomplish much, you are correct.
The goal is to produce better education, and with the chains of a government monopoly, getting rid of tenure solves nothing.
Experienced teachers may or may not teach better as a whole, it's hard to say when the more experienced teachers have been propped up by the union rather than gaining their experience on skill like the private world.
I agree with voting out incumbents as generally a good thing. We have term limits, its called the power to vote someone out, hencer your term is over sir. It never happens but….
The misery index has to get high enough for people to get interested in voting for good choices, and also for even having a good choice to chose from. With our nation and states struggling to balance budgets, change is inevitable.
The lack of tax revenue will starve government and force change. It's already beginning, look at California, City of Chicago, or the $12 trillion national debt.
Ms. Rhee should have the full support of every American. If she can change this system, it would make all the difference for public education. I commend her for her courage, and hope she garners the support she needs to make the changes that are so desperately needed, not only in Washington, but in ev ery city and town across America.
Of your mercy please remember that only 16 states permit teachers' unions. Happily, Texas is not one of them.
Mack,
Viet-Nam veteran
Voter
Reagan Republican
Texas teacher
Here is where most big-city Conservatives get it wrong. Tenure is a two-way protection. Sometimes it is all that protects a very good teacher from bad local politics.
Years ago (1996 to be exact), a liberal principal in a conservative community started pushing the GLBT agenda in a northern Utah junior high school. One brave teacher alerted the local state senator and unleashed a state-wide scandal and media furor. The principal was fired up to a high school at the end of the year, being in very tight with other liberals at the district level. A young untenured teacher was made his scapegoat and he went after every politically conservative or social conservative teacher in his 70 teacher staff. He never figured out which conservative teacher was the deep throat but tenure saved the butts of every conservative in the building. The union bosses did their best to try to out the brave teacher as well but never could.
Conservatives need to quit targeting teachers as individuals because that just plays into the hands of the unions. The unions want teachers to be individually weak and beholding to them. Tenure allows conservative teachers to be free of the union to some degree. Without tenure and with many schools closed union shops, conservative teachers would be held completely hostage by the unions. How would that better education? Or do you want only misguided liberals teaching your children?
Conservatives need to figure out how to reduce the power and influence of the unions, not further enshrine them.
Rather than going after tenure head on, conservatives should be pushing for right to work laws to include public education. Also, if teachers could purchase professional liability insurance through their state office of education and have the expectation of representation by a trained educational law attorney, a lot of teachers would quit the unions. Even very conscientious teachers fear crank lawsuits and reprisals for just doing their jobs correctly.
The unions capitalize on these fears, charging hundreds of dollars in fees, most of which go to further liberal political agendas that many teachers disagree with by accede to. I have known several outspoken conservative teachers who have had to threaten to sue the union to get proper legal representation because the union dangle that benefit over teachers' heads all the time. Teachers who advance the union agenda get full legal services no matter what they have done or are accused of doing, but not the rank and file union masses.
Most ordinary people would not know a competent teacher from an incompetent one. Some of the most publically beloved teachers are in fact the ones doing the least to help students progress; they are just really good at self-promotion. I frequently hear about parents hiring an unqualified tutor to "help" a struggling student and then express anger and frustration when the child slides even further in the subject matter. Hiring someone to "cheat" for the child does not end well. These parents never seem to understand that the best person to tutor the child is the teacher in the class where the student is struggling. Instead, they get on the teacher incompetence bandwagon because their own incompetence as parents must never be questioned.
It's all about wise, tough, effective management – Republicans have never been able to govern this way when they are in power – Katrina, war of choice, unpaid for, no-bid contracts – thank God we got rid of them and now we have a political party who is shaking things up and actually GOVERNING as if we have a government of, by and for the people. This is exactly the kind of action that Obama is undertaking now with eliminating waste, no bid contracts, bloated CEO pay, out of control corruption. Let's save this country and eliminate Republicans for good.
My older brother is a truck driver and dittohead. He tells me that the private sector schools are the only way to solve problems in education because public schools are "socialized" – which by definition means ineffective. I made up a list of all the incentive programs going on in my kids elementary school that drive success proving to him that public schools can excell and can be managed with the same professionalism and acountability of any of the private fortune 500 corporations. He was dumbfoiunded and speachless!! Vote Democrat for effective and accountable governance!!!
Why would anyone in the world work so hard to get a college degree and then go teach in a dysfunctional liberal loser city like DC. Those kids are animals!
Rhee was only a teacher for 3 years. She couldn't hack it in DC either- those kids ate her lunch!
Good parents create good students- who in turn create good schools.
Tenure is just 1 in a myriad of fixes needed in Americas public school system. Teachers need to understand that the union carrots are poisoned and withdraw from the unions. More importantly so much european crap has gotten into our schools through the Dept. of Ed. and I am terrified of Obamas 'Race To The Top' fix he has for both our nations unemployment woes and our nations education woes. It will be a socialistic/communistic coup much like socialized medicine, and one more nail in the coffin of our Republic! Check out the NEA website to see how they are already recruiting college students to join the NEA before they are even graduated and students in high school to join in student unions. Through lazy, corrupt to energetic, subversive representatives, our Republic is surely being transformed through indoctrination of unAmerican ideology. And true American education of our citizenry, us and our kids, couldn't be more urgent.
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