Cleaning house a decade late
0 Comments | Examiner, The; Washington, D.C., Jul 26, 2010 | by Jonetta Rose Barras
Raise your hand if you want your child or grandchild taught by a poorly performing or under-performing teacher.
Just as I suspected: no hands.
So, why the brouhaha over recent news that 241 D.C. Public School teachers have been fired?
Those teachers were fired after receiving poor evaluations or failing to secure requisite licenses. Another 737 deemed “minimally effective” are next, if they don’t get their acts together. Conspiracy theorists, of which there are many in the nation’s capital, have posited that Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty concocted the scheme for the terminations three years ago when she arrived.
Let’s hope so. That means they actually had a plan and now are busy implementing it
We’ve known for decades DCPS was infected with lousy or marginal instructors. Parents and education advocates were pleading for change as far back as 1989. That’s when the Federal City Council- sponsored Committee on Public Education surveyed the system, held a series of ward-based town hall meetings and issued its sweeping indictment of the DCPS. Among its many recommendations was the implementation of pay-for-performance as a method for enhancing the teaching corps. That didn’t happen. Consequently, during Superintendent Clifford Janey’s tenure, there still were hundreds of teachers who lacked the certifications that demonstrate subject- matter expertise. Instead of being fired, they simply were put on probation.
Rhee and Fenty are not the creators of the city’s abysmal public education system. They are the people finally doing something about it.
“How much longer do the children of Washington, D.C. have to be subjected to poor teachers,” Rhee asked me rhetorically during an interview, after I mentioned critics of her actions. Those critics include the Washington Teacher’s Union, which has promised to fight the terminations.
The WTU and others in the city have attempted to ensnare Rhee in politics or process: Did she talk with 100 people? Say please ..
house cleaning