Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools and self-described “card-carrying, life-long Democrat,” said she was instinctively opposed to school vouchers because she was “on the side of the workers.”

In her former line of thinking, teachers’ unions oppose vouchers and teachers’ unions support Democrats, so Democrats should oppose vouchers.

Then she realized what vouchers were doing for the lives of those the teachers’ unions purport to care about.

She said she talked to parents who had researched their neighborhood school, figured out that it was a “failing school,” tried to move their child to a better school but were unable to due to enrollment caps.  Parents, unwilling to send their kids to a failing school, would ask Rhee what to do.

Using her own children as a guide, Rhee determined if she would not send her kids to a particular school, she should not expect other parents to, either.

(more…)

There is common agreement between education reformers and the status quo protectors that the most important element to a good education is a good teacher.

Teachers unions suggest that the way to retain “good” teachers is to pay them all more.  The collectivist mentality is that every teacher is equal, works equally hard and should be compensated equally.

Many reformers believe that the way to spur improvement and innovation is to reward success, hard work and hold the adults accountable for student achievement.  That, of course, flies in the face of collectivism because it incentivizes individual teacher achievement.

This is a result of organized labor having such an iron grip on many American public schools.  Weak-kneed school boards and administrators have allowed Big Labor to be the gate-keepers of reform efforts.

And worse, apathetic taxpayers allow Big Labor to call the shots.  Just ask Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty.

(more…)

From Michael Barone:

Here at The Washington Examiner we have read with interest editorials written by our friends at the Washington Post denouncing the greed of the Montgomery County teachers’ unions. Unfortunately, their editorials (and ours) don’t seem to have cut much ice with the county’s gentry liberals, who either stayed home (turnout was a record low) or did the bidding of the unions.

But the most stark demonstration of the public employee unions’ power came in the District of Columbia, where Mayor Adrian Fenty was defeated in the Democratic primary by Council Chairman Vincent Gray. There’s no Republican candidate, and Gray is as good as elected.

Four years ago, Fenty carried every precinct in the city. In office he has drawn national attention for his appointment of Michelle Rhee as school chancellor. Rhee’s reforms have produced higher test scores, stable rather than declining enrollment, a teacher evaluations system that has resulted in dismissals of dozens of incompetents, and a union contract giving administrators greater flexibility in assignments.

(more…)

Reform of public schools in the District of Columbia is the biggest victim of the recent city election.  Mayor Adrian Fenty fell victim to Vincent Gray – and $1 million in spending by the American Federation of Teachers.

The biggest winner in the election was not Gray, but rather Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, the teachers’ union that represents DC school employees.

The school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, was appointed by Fenty and was aggressive at reforming the district that had been spending the most per student but achieving some of the worst results in the nation.  She had pushed for eliminating ineffective teachers, rewarding the good ones and holding the adults more accountable for student outcomes.

All of Rhee’s efforts turned Weingarten’s stomach.  So, like a typical labor boss, she decided the problem – Rhee – had to be dealt with, which meant Rhee’s  boss – Fenty – needed to go.

Politico reported that the AFT gave $1 million “to a labor-backed independent expenditure campaign” that supported Gray’s candidacy.

(more…)

To close out 2009, the Democrats, who supposedly care so much about ‘the children,’ gave the DC children a special gift–they killed the successful voucher program–effectively banishing them back to horrid DC public schools.  As I reported on New Year’s Eve 2009:

The Democrats have officially killed a successful private school voucher program banishing more than 3,300 low-income children back to the DC schools they so desperately wanted to escape. The Heartland Institute reports:

The leaders of D.C.’s school choice movement, Kevin P. Chavous (former D.C. Councilman) and Virginia Walden Ford (executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice), today issued the following statement:

“House and Senate Appropriators this week ignored the wishes of D.C.’s mayor, D.C.’s public schools chancellor, a majority of D.C.’s city council, and more than 70 percent of D.C. residents and have mandated the slow death of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. This successful school voucher program—for D.C.’s poorest families—has allowed more than 3,300 children to attend the best schools they have ever known.

The decision to end the program, a decision buried in a thousand-page spending bill and announced right before the holidays, destroys the hopes and dreams of thousands of D.C. families. Parents and children have rallied countless times over the past year in support of reauthorization and in favor of strengthening the OSP.

Yet, despite the clearly positive results and the proven success of this program, Sen. Dick Durbin, Rep. Jose Serrano, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Secretary Arne Duncan worked together to kill the OSP. Funding the program only for existing children shrinks the program each year, compromises the federal evaluation of the program, denies entry to the siblings of existing participants, and punishes those children waiting in line by sentencing them to failing and often unsafe schools. [emphasis mine]

The final report on the OSP program was issued in June 2010.  An editorial in the Washington Post agrees that ending the program should not have happened and deserves a second chance:

(more…)

If 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.

(more…)

When we received a threatening letter a few days ago from the American Federation of Teachers over AFTexposed.com, we knew it was little more than bluster - the typical bullying that the AFT has come to be known for.

I mean, who else could loge personal threats at a “Rally for Respect” (of all things!) against the chancellor of DC Public Schools, Michelle Rhee, right in the heart of the city, and get away with it?

Needless to say, the baseless threats continue from the country’s second largest teachers’ union.

Now comes another letter from October 21, in which the union has apparently dropped its demand for us to stop using the acronym ‘AFT.’  They’re also no longer calling for us to turn over the domain registration to them.  Hopefully the General Counsel of the union, David Strom, saw how absurd and downright pathetic his demand was.

(more…)