The Failure of Michelle Rhee

Michelle Rhee, the DC Chancellor of Schools (for at least the time being) is the poster child of school reform -- and as such she has been the beneficiary of enormous amounts of favorable publicity, from a laudatory cover story in Time Magazine (complete with her holding a broom) to endless plaudits from the Washington Post editorial board, to what appears to be a starring role in the new education documentary "Waiting for Superman."  (I have yet to see Waiting for Superman, although I am anxious to do so -- it is by Davis Guggenheim, the director of an Inconvenient Truth, and thus a credentialed liberal -- apparently it is going to be yet another vehicle to promote the bashing of teachers' unions -- certainly that's how right-wingers see it.) Rhee was given carte blanche by Mayor Adrian Fenty to shake up DC's dysfunctional public school system, a charge she undertook with zealous certainty.

Rhee, in the wake of Fenty's recent defeat, took the occasion of the "Superman" opening in DC to decry the choice of the electorate and to imply essentially that those who voted for Fenty's opponent, DC City Council Chairman Vincent Gray, did not care about the District's school children.    She described the vote as "devastating" to the children of the city.  Eugene Robinson did a nice job of taking down Rhee for the incredible arrogance of these remarks and for her lack of grace following the election.  

This is illustrative of why Rhee will soon be departing DC and why so many people have a hard time embracing her despite what I think is a quite sincere desire to improve the District's schools.  She is wedded to a Manichean world view in which she is "for the kids" and everyone else is standing in her way.  She is too impatient to try and build support from the ground up or to get opponents or skeptics to buy into her ideas.  And, ultimately, she had little concern or feel for the politics of the District and what they reflect in terms of the City's difficult history.

This article by the Post's excellent education reporter, Bill Turque -- yes, the Post does have some excellent reporters still -- Fred Hiatt hasn't ruined the entire enterprise yet -- gives a pretty good sense of why it is that Rhee is unlikely to remain in a Gray Administration and why the future mayor may not hold her in the same esteem as so many union-hating editorialists do.  First, Rhee seemed to have no sense that in the District's Black community there is a great deal of sensitivity in being dictated to by those who think they know better.  Until the late 1970s the City was ruled a combination of congressional committees, often in the hands of blatant racists, and by non-elected, presidentially-appointed commissioners who showed little regard for those they ruled.  Much of the time, they oversaw a legally segregated city. 

Naturally, when a list of numerous schools being closed in the District by Rhee appeared in the Washington Post before it was shared with the City Council, Gray took umbrage:

Frankly, we live in a city that has been oppressed.  In this city, more than any other, how you do something is a major factor. It is a city that has been dictated to. People are very sensitive to being left out.

Rhee had no time for such niceties.  Indeed, she seemed to bristle at the idea of any oversight by the City Council:

[City Council hearings have] "this crazy dynamic where every agency head is kowtowing. They sit there and get beat down. I'm not going to sit on public TV and take a beating I don't deserve. I don't take that crap."

At one point the City Council cut $9 million from the budget for summer school programs.  Rhee unilaterally reinstated the money, laying off an additional 266 teachers to come up with the funds, all without Council knowledge or approval.  Gray's response to Rhee in a public hearing was pungent:

We learn today that in your infinite wisdom, you in your unlimited authority, have simply decided you're not going to implement what the council said.  You're going to do something else. That is unbelievably cavalier, Chancellor Rhee.

I think this summation from Turque is worth quoting at length, because it explains, in the end, why Rhee won't keep her job and why she has worn out her welcome with so many people who possibly could have been allies:

The layoffs were bad enough, but Gray expressed particular concern about Rhee's apparent disregard for the protocols, procedures and personal collaborations that Gray considered essential to smooth functioning within his political world. In this case, the process dictated that Rhee made sure that the council wasn't blindsided by the news.

But Rhee displayed little interest in either process or political niceties as she rushed to implement an ambitious agenda. She told Gray that she wasn't trying to embarrass the council, that she just wanted to protect the interests of children.

People like to be consulted, politicians don't like to be blindsided or embarrassed, and nobody likes to be told that they don't care about the interests of children.  These are pretty simple truths that our guru of education reform could never quite grasp.  Perhaps it is Michelle Rhee who needs a bit more of schooling.

Comments

[oddjob]

Ah yes.

The challenges faced by those who are gifted with the knack of always being right (except when they're not)................

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

I hope this could lead to the discussion on education as a whole that we have almost started several times in the past. Only let's start by admitting that all of the factors we discuss will have both positive and negative sides. Yes, the Teacher's Union is unfairly bashed -- but sometimes it has also been fairly bashed. Parental involvement in school policy is a good thing -- if the parents want what we want them to want. If they want high standards and good teaching and fairness, great, but many parents want prayers, creationism, abstinence-only sex ed, and teachers fired for being gay or atheists. (And many parents who are involved in the beneficial acts of supplying schools with things they couldn't otherwise afford can use that involvement to insure favorable treatment for their kids. "Sheesh, Mr. Hastings, if you flumk Johnny Howell, his father will pull all the donations we are counting on for textbooks and toilet paper.')

In short, we need to start out by realizing that anyone who starts out the discussion with 'it's simple, all we have to do is...' is almost certainly wrong.

And maybe here's a place to start, because it is a generalization that is true, I'd argue for almost any type of governmental action. There is always a tension between bureaucracy and initiative, between corruption and creative solutions. The more you reign in a government employee with rules, and demand that she follow them, the more you eliminate the dangers of courrption and bias, but at the same time the more you rule out the chance of a creative solution to an individual problem which would be resolved unjustly if the rules were followed. (You also make the job less attractive to an intelligent, caring person, and drive them out for the time-servers and CYA types.)

The application of this to education, and the difficulty in finding an equillibium point strikes me as a place to start.

[low-tech cyclist]

A couple of thoughts:

1) That's the problem with helicoptering in a superstar from somewhere else: they aren't likely to want to develop a connection to, and understanding of, the problems that are specific to your situation. They've got their mental template, and will more or less assume it fits.

2) The phrase "getting buy-in from stakeholders" is a fucking cliche by now, but it doesn't make the doing of it any less necessary. You'd think that someone like Rhee would know the stuff they teach you in a three-week project management course.

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

I think it is a complicated problem. And I don't think teachers or teachers unions are always right. Just that the villification of both is unfair and unproductive -- and from the right has a deeply political goal of undermining and ultimately disarming the single most powerful constitutency in the Democratic Party.

l-t c,

Correct and correct. Rather than use the awful "buy in from stakeholders" management lingo, I remain partial to the "consent of the governed."

[Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle]

Sir Charles:
Thank you for putting this out there. More and more, it just goes to show you what a complete ass Rhee is(and she, unlike Duncan, has spent time in a classroom). I am curious to know what exactly she learned from her classroom experience. And how did she get picked to be D.C. Schools Chief in the first place. Did she run another school district? Because I don't remember hearing about it. Her attitudes would get her run out of any other school district in the country. Why? Because the local school board would never put up with her nonsense.

[minstrel hussain boy]

the problem with rhee that i see is that she is an autocrat trying to work in a democracy (in D.C. one has to say democracy of sorts).

in his brilliant "conservatives without conscience" john dean writes about how the last thing today's "conservatives" want is any kind of democracy. they are authoritarians to the bone.

even before my knees went bad, i wasn't much on bowing and kneeling. but, i remember, i'm an apache, and a benighted savage.

[Stephen]

It's depressingly typical that her failures are seen as exclusively being a matter of interpersonal relationships - DC just has a bunch of people whose feelings get hurt too easily. That accusation is never thrown at organizations with a high number of African-Americans.

Rhee's problems stem from the fact that she doesn't know how to run a school district. Creating a culture of fear and paranoia among teachers. getting rid of significant portions of people who, unlike Rhee, her legion of administrators and principals, actually work with kids, without warning or preparation of any kind - these are not the actions of A) someone with a clue and B) someone who "cares about the children" one infinitesimal bit more than she cares about her own self.

The USA has the highest percentage of kids living in poverty of any so-called 'developed' nation. Kids who are hungry, who are sick, who don't have stable homes don't do well in school.

Poorly educated, malnourished people who are desperate for any type of work they can get, however, do make a good pool from which to draw easily-replaced legions of servants. People like Limbaugh, Gingrich and the rest of the GOP's old white men probably get so excited at the way America is turning into a third world hellhole that they don't even need Viagra before they're able to start humping whatever poor soul has most recently decided that money is more important than dignity.

[Crissa]

I think it's strange, mostly because if you don't know Rhee isn't a local, nor black, her rhetoric sounds pretty much congruent with that community.

Stephen, is it true that results have gotten worse under her work than economic changes would dictate? If that isn't true, how is it true that she doesn't know how to run a school system?

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

Rhee has done some good things and shown an ability to make things happen to some degree.

School scores have improved under Rhee (although they remain pretty bleak) and the basic administration of the school system has gotten better. She got rid of a lot of dead wood in the central administration office, which was a good thing. A huge amount of waste was occuring there.

Fenty has also overseen an enormous improvement in the physical plants of the schools, which were scandalously bad under Barry. New schools have been built and old ones renovated in an impressive fashion.

So I will actually give some credit to both of them.

But their youthful arrogance and their love of top down, autocratic style leadership means that they will not be around to really solidify these gains or institutionalize them in any deep way.

[minstrel hussain boy]

i think one of the most telling things came from tip o'neil who said

"republicans don't want to govern, they want to rule."

[Stephen]

Crissa, for me it isn't about test results. I believe that standardized testing is a horrible way to measure educational success. So I'm not very concerned with DC's test scores.

I do think that someone who spends significant time bashing educators and especially their unions, whose newly-instituted scoring system for teachers is so out-of-touch with reality that nearly a quarter of them are immediately branded failures, this person does not know how to run a school district.

Superintendents/Chancellors who come into a school system already having decided that the teachers are a bunch of lazy, stupid bums - or that large numbers of them are abusing kids, as Rhee has claimed - are not what we need. They're ideological hacks - at best. Mostly they're just skilled at self-promotion and know how to glom onto the hot trend.

[Austen]

A. since when do right-wingers support unions? that's political cynicism. there is no love between conservatives and unions, but school reform isn't a conservative talking point, so they'll support the status quo whatever that happens to be. foul.

B. The difference that Rhee has made here in DC is palpable. it's opportunities for kids to have real teachers and be able to open real doors.

as for the "culture of fear and paranoia" in the teachers: well, perhaps having some performance based criteria for the teachers to be afraid about could be good. they've been complacent enough to watch schools and kids fall apart in front of them. they need to care about something enough to be motivated. And if they perform well, why should they be scared?

and as for standardized testing and graduation rates as poor medians of success: i would agree, but then challenge you to find a better median for such a large sample size as the entire population of the public schools systems of the US.

i also agree about top down autocracy, but in a city where, just previous to Rhee's appointment there was several million dollars embezzled in the DC school district by multiple culprits. and that is de riguer here in DC. trust in civic and political circles doesn't go far. so this top down approach ends up being one of the only that gets any kind of results.