School Reform in Political Cross-hairs
Michelle Rhee
The defeat of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary could have repercussions for school reform efforts nationwide. That’s because much of the campaign revolved around Fenty’s hand-picked public schools chief, the hard-charging Michelle Rhee.
Rhee’s high-profile shake-up of Washington’s troubled school system included closing underperforming schools and firing hundreds of subpar teachers, the New York Times reports. Teacher evaluations were revamped, and Rhee pushed for performance pay. expansion of charter schools, and money from private donors.
While students’ scores improved, Rhee’s tactics alienated some local teachers and the national AFL-CIO. The Times quotes Joseph P. Viteritti, a public policy professor at New York’s Hunter College as saying, “The lesson here is that the reform agenda cannot get ahead of the politics.”
Viteritti adds, “We saw this before in similar cases in Baltimore and Detroit where many people identified with the people who worked in the school system and they thought they were unfairly bearing the brunt of the reform.” Certain key policies Rhee adopted, like overhauling failing schools and rewarding good teacher performance, were advocated at a national level by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Filed under: K-12 Education News
Tags: Education Policy, Public Policy
