Education reform continues in D.C.
By: Jonetta Rose Barras
Examiner Columnist
July 16, 2009
After a week of smut, lowlife dramas, allegations of contract and grant fraud, and other unpleasant vagaries of politics in the District, there is good news. Public education reform is working.
Hallelujah!
"We are showing better than steady progress," D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee told me during an interview earlier this week. "We're really happy."
There is reason to be.
In 2006, only about one-third of DCPS students were proficient in either reading or mathematics. Today -- two years after Mayor Adrian M. Fenty took over schools with the blessing of the D.C. Council -- nearly half of students in elementary schools, who took the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams, demonstrated proficiency in those subjects. Middle and high school scores also have inched up.
Naturally, everyone would be more excited if the number of children scoring at proficiency was much higher. (I'd like most to be at the advanced level). The mayor and Rhee conceded that there is still a very long way to go. But the results of their efforts are worth celebrating, especially when evaluated against the craziness with which they had to contend during the past year.
The Washington Teachers Union stood in the way of a proposal that not only would have provided higher salaries to its members but also could have seduced to the District better trained and more professional teachers. Rhee's pay-for-performance plan remains a key and unresolved component of contract negotiations, which are moving far too slowly. Interestingly, PFP is a central part of the agenda being advanced by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Still, the council has offered little support to Rhee and the mayor. It introduces emergency legislation for everything, including an investigation into how a surplus firetruck came to be donated to a town in the Dominican Republic. But it won't do anything to help the chancellor in her battle against unions as part of the effort to improve the quality of public education for District children.
Council members claim to be stalwarts of education reform. Don't get spun.
In fact, legislators have morphed into a local board of education, micromanaging Rhee and her agenda. The chancellor has spent needless hours answering lame inquiries, explaining reports to members too lazy to read the documents or justifying proven academic strategies. (The council also attempted to muck up the structure of the state education office; a line-item veto by Fenty put an end to that.)
Considering the obstacles, the progress of reform is remarkable. Rhee said next year she will roll out a "new teacher and learning framework." By 2012, she intends to completely close the achievement gap between white and African-American students.
But none of that can happen unless parents continue to provide support and the council either gets out of the way or gets with the education reform program.
Jonetta Rose Barras, hosts of WPFW's "D.C. Politics with Jonetta," can be reached at Rosebook1@aol.com.
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