By Aisha Ali
Part two of the DC Public Schools series
DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has swallowed yet another dose of harsh criticisms from parents, city elected officials, union members, and students when concerning her “Renew, Revitalize, Reorganize” (RRR) plan.
Chancellor Rhee hopes that by modeling DC Public Schools after high-achieving/performing schools and their principals, she will in turn, be successful at restructuring failing schools, creating more logical feeder patterns, and realigning present configuration feeder patterns. However, in doing so, Chancellor Rhee has managed to anger countless individuals representing several groups: teacher and principal/assistant principal unions, and teacher training agencies/organizations.
One teacher organization with which Chancellor Rhee cut ties is the Teachers Institute, a non-profit teacher training organization. Chancellor Rhee has denied a renewal of contract with the Teachers Institute. According to The Washington Examiner, Chancellor Rhee notified the Teachers Institute via email Friday, June 6, that its contract would not be renewed and that “an upcoming inspector general audit will report.”
Board Chair Richard Spigler confessed to The Examiner that he was perplexed by the chancellor’s current set of decisions to deny a renewal of contract without indicating her reasons for taking such actions. Previously, Spigler said that he and the organization had been advised to proceed with its future plans under a verbal notice given by Chancellor Rhee. However, the actual email not only denies a renewal of contract, but also contradicts the initial verbal notification. It also lacks any detail as to why the contract was denied, which left Spigler puzzled, according to an Examiner article.
When discussing his beliefs on why the chancellor and her administration failed to provide an elaborate explanation of its current actions when involving its RRR plan, Spigler answered: “They don’t feel it’s appropriate to brief us.”
However, Spigler is not alone in his confusion and frustration with contradictions and lack of forewarnings on behalf of Chancellor Rhee and her administration.
Leaders from the teachers and teacher’s aides unions were surprised by the chancellor’s decision to fire 250 teachers and 500 teacher’s aides who failed to meet a June 30 deadline to become a professional, certified teacher according to the District’s educational guidelines and requirements. Chancellor Rhee announced this plan Thursday, July 3. According to schools spokeswoman, Jennifer Calloway, DC Public Schools began sending out dismissal/termination letters to the 750 educator recipients beginning Monday, July 7.
According to a Washington Post article, DC Public Schools has maintained a slapdash tradition of employing unskilled, untrained, uncertified teachers and teacher’s aides. Hence, these particular schools comprised mostly of a staff with inferior teacher capabilities, struggled to meet the standard requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act that requires all educators possess the specified credentials for their taught subjects.
In a statement provided by Chancellor Rhee’s spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson, Rhee said she believes that by dismissing these 750 educators, the school system will comply with the No Child Left Behind Act and therefore, guidelines and requirements enforced by the DC School Board. Chancellor Rhee’s spokeswoman reassured the public that these dismissals, although in vast quantity, would not interrupt the progress of the upcoming school year, especially since they were not expected to meet the June 30 deadline to become certified and therefore, were not assigned classrooms for next year.
"We have thousands of highly qualified, dedicated teachers and paraprofessionals serving DCPS students everyday,” Hobson said. “Unfortunately, complying with federal law is not optional and we thank those DCPS employees who have worked diligently to meet the requirements."
Chancellor Rhee discussed the future initial qualifying requirements for becoming a teacher: teachers are required to have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree in their anticipated subjects and must pass an exam demonstrating their proficiency in the projected subjects they are to teach. Teacher’s aides are required to have a high school diploma, associate’s degree preferred, and must be capable of passing an exam to demonstrate their proficiency of subjects in which they are expected to assist teachers.
However leaders from the teachers and teacher’s aides unions oppose such actions of the chancellor. In an interview with The Post, George Parker, President of the Washington Teachers’ Union, said: “There are some very good teachers who are included in this group, and students are going to be without their services.”
However, these educators who were uncertified were provided more than 2 years to become certified and therefore, meet the basic requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act. According to findings by The Post, in 2005 the union representing teacher’s aides reported that an estimated half of its 700 members were teaching without the proper credentials and needed to become certified. Simultaneously, Superintendent Clifford B. Janey reported that approximately 1,100 teachers or 25 percent of the education workforce was uncertified. Superintendent Janey threatened to fire these uncertified educators by June 2005; however, the deadline was extended to one year, particularly since DC Public Schools would be unable to replace such a vast quantity of educators at one time.
Chancellor Rhee employed this same approach as she had extended her initial deadline to one year after starting her role as chancellor in June 2007. Now, two years later after two public threats by Janey and Rhee, various forewarnings and reminders, and resources such as the Teachers Institute, 750 educators have now exhausted the patience of DC School Board officials. The time is now for DC Public School reform.
Before this round of terminations occurred, Chancellor Rhee took the axe to yet another set of education leaders, assistant principals. Chancellor Rhee fired 22 assistant principals during the week of Thursday, June 18. According to The Washington Post, this was the second round of her administrative terminations; her first round included 24 principal terminations a month prior.
Individuals belonging to both the administrative and academic support staves were fired.
Chancellor Rhee was forced to fire some of the principals due to conflicting ideals of Rhee and these principals when concerning exactly in what direction the future of their schools should go.
Aona Jefferson, Executive Vice President of the Council of School Officers, a union representing both principals and assistant principals, argued that the chancellor’s total of 46 dismissals of principals and assistant principals within a couple of months surpass the number of administrative leaders fired within any previous year.
“They were given no evaluation in some cases,” which is a clear breach of contract established between the Council of School Officers and the DC school board. “All persons have the right to know why they were not reappointed and on what basis were the decisions made," Jefferson told The Post.
However, in a public statement, Mafara Hobson, Chancellor Rhee’s spokeswoman, wrote in an email: “Both principals and assistant principals serve at the will of the chancellor. The decisions were made based on the chancellor’s consultation with principals and instructional superintendents.” According to The Post, administrative leaders do serve on a “year-to-year” contract basis and under DC law can be fired without cause or an explanation.
After DC Council granted Chancellor Rhee the authority to re-rank hundreds of employees in the central office in March of this year, Rhee dismissed 98 individuals. When Mayor Adrian M. Fenty first sought ways to renew the District’s public school system, appointing Michelle Rhee as chancellor, Rhee asked for the same authority to dismiss ineffective educators at will. Mayor Fenty granted Chancellor Rhee this right and hence, the current results: out with the outdated and ineffective in with the new and innovative, but most importantly, skilled.
As for the Teachers Institute? Well, a denial to renew its contract should not come as a surprise since Chancellor Rhee was advised from top school officials to investigate the Teachers Institute for a misuse of funds, fraudulent practices, and wasteful uses of awarded grant funds, which initially had been exposed by Chancellor Rhee’s assistant, Richard Nyankori.
According to The Examiner, records indicate the Teachers Institute had a $3.1 million contract for professional development of educators with DC schools that dates back to 2004. Chancellor Rhee had been questioning the Institute in regards to its startup funds and how millions of its public dollars had been used.
So, with millions spent and a collective number of 750 uncertified teachers and teacher aides still uncertified and providing inferior education that has placed DC Public Schools far behind other public school education systems that are deemed as America’s worst schooling systems: New York, Los Angles, Chicago, to name a few, exactly towards what has the public funding the Institute has received been going? Professional development?
To find out more information on the Teachers Institute, please use the following link:
http://www.examiner.com/a-914919%7ETop_officials_ask_for_probe_into_consulting_group.html
To view the other sources used to compile information for this article, please see the following links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/18/AR2008061802824.html?hpid=sec-education
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070303441.html
http://www.examiner.com/a-1433334~D_C__contract_for_teacher_training_not_renewed.html
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