DCPS: Chancellor Rhee, Mayor Fenty May Be Following a Consultant’s Plan

 

According to The Washington Post , there was a rally by parents of District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) students against Mayor Adrian Fenty’s and Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s plan to close schools and convert central office employees to at-will status. There was an interesting quote in the article:

Jeff Smith, executive director of D.C. Voice, questioned the sincerity of the administration’s interest in what parents say.”Instead, people will think that they’re just really looking for approval of a predetermined plan,” Smith said.

Mayor Fenty hired the consulting firm of Alvarez and Marsal to review the finances of DCPS. The managing director of Alvarez and Marsal, William Roberti, ran St. Louis Public Schools for a year.

It was billed as the next big idea in education, a way forward for struggling school systems everywhere. Plagued by falling enrollment and dismal test scores, the St. Louis school district hired a big-name New York bankruptcy firm to turn things around for a one-time fee of $5 million.

 

During his 13 months as superintendent of St. Louis public schools, former Brooks Brothers chief executive William V. Roberti closed 21 schools, lopped $79 million off the school budget, privatized many school services and laid off more than 1,000 employees. He stepped down in June at the end of his contract, proclaiming that the district had made “tremendous strides” toward putting its affairs in order, reversing decades of financial mismanagement.

The result of Alvarez and Marsal’s work were that administrators were hired for six figure salaries, while teachers in the classroom did not receive a raise, and parents were upset about school closures.

Three months into a new school year, many teachers, parents and students in St. Louis were asking what they have gained from the whirlwind unleashed by the gruff, straight-talking retail executive. Student enrollment continues to decline, teachers complain about poor morale and low pay, parents are unhappy about school closures, and voters are up in arms about high salaries paid to top administrators.

In DC, where Alvarez and Marsal is working, Rhee has also hired high salaried administrators causing an increase of a deficit in the DCPS’s budget.

[Pamela] Graham [DCPS Chief Financial Officer] attributed some of the deficit to what she called Rhee’s improper hiring and promotion of 132 employees. “The practice of overriding process and procedure in hiring new employees must not continue,” Graham wrote in the Nov. 21 memo.

There are other similarities. Roberti in St. Louis, found unused supplies in warehouses and a worse deficit than expected among other events.

Rhee has also found supplies in a warehouse (see also a Washington Post article on this point).

JOHN MERROW: When teachers complained about not receiving textbooks on time, she paid a visit to the central warehouse.

 

MICHELLE RHEE: By the time I got onto the second floor, I thought I was going to throw up. I actually felt nauseous because of what I was seeing. It was boxes and boxes of glue and scissors and composition books, binders, boxes of unopened trade books, class sets of novels, things that teachers not only are dying for but spend their own money on.

DCPS could also be facing a worsening financial condition.

In October, Fenty and Rhee asked the council to approve a one-time expenditure of $81 million to cover a projected $35 million shortfall and the cost of restructuring the central office.

 

Yesterday, Rhee told council members that she had not informed them that the shortfall had increased by $66 million because she does not agree with Graham’s analysis and wanted to meet with her before giving the information to the council. “We don’t believe that a lot of that information was accurate,” she said.

Because DC has hired Alvarez and Marsal, it is possible that Fenty is implementing Alvarez and Marsal’s plan (possibly adapted from its St. Louis experience).

This could explain Rhee’s and Fenty’s decisions without consulting parents or the DC Council. For example,  Fenty’s plan to close 24 schools (there was a heated meeting in Ward 5 over the plan).

Also, it could explain the news making breakfast meeting between Fenty and the DC Council. Here is one exchange between Council Member Jim Graham and Mayor Fenty.

Graham explained that he thought a Ward Council Member should be part of any decision made on school closing in their Ward. “I thought I’d have a bigger role,” he said to Fenty.

 

Fenty was quick to respond. He leaned across the table and stretched his arm toward Graham and told him that Council Members don’t dictate police deployment, “But that hasn’t stopped you from sending hundreds of emails, calling assistant police chiefs, calling me, to get more cops in your Ward. I suggest you put the same energy in to the schools.

 

It was the most forceful Fenty had been. He didn’t raise his voice, but he made a point that resonated with everyone in that room. It was a moment, that defined the change of temperature in the room. And it as about to get a lot hotter.

 

As Graham recoiled back in his seat, he fired off one last shot across the bow.” Don’t plan on selling any buildings…” Before he could even finish his thought, much less his sentence, Fenty said in a firm tone, “Let’s not start threatening people, I don’t think you want to threaten me.”

 

At that point every council member began talking, asking for clarification of what Graham had said. Voices were raised by several council members “That came out wrong,” one of them said.

 

Then Graham rose from his seat, walked over to Fenty and whispered something in his ear, then returned to his seat.

The possible implentation of a consultant’s plan should be monitored. Apparently, the employee unions may already be aware of the possibility.

“Have you heard? Reform of D.C. public schools has been hijacked. Mayor Fenty and his posse of consultants and contractors have hijacked the reform process,” a female narrator says in the ad.

Related links:

For more information about William Roberti’s (of Alvarez and Marsal) work for St. Louis’s public schools, see the following: Demolition Man and Trouble with the New Math.

DC considered Alvarez and Marsal in 2004. See the article, Can D.C.’s Search Make the Grade? A quote from the column that could provide information about Chancellor Rhee’s and Mayor Fenty’s method of making decisions.

As it happens, one of the men who turned Washington down, Carl Cohn, described in detail what he thinks needs to be done. Cohn told The Washington Post, “It has to be made clear to everyone that this is about the kids. Then you bring in a take-no-prisoners company that addresses the fundamental issues of operation, of people not doing their jobs.”

On this point, see an article at Education Week for a critique of Chancellor Rhee.

DCPS: Michelle Rhee’s Best Interest of the Students Policy

According to the Washington City Paper, Michelle Rhee is making policies with the goal of being for the students.

At a D.C. Council hearing on Nov. 2, Rhee said this to councilmembers: “I am convinced that we must not let the rights, privileges, and priorities of adults to take precedence over what is in the best interests of students. We cannot allow children to languish while we try to remediate adults. We cannot forsake their futures for adult issues in the present.”

This week, Rhee offered the following reason for proposing the closure of several schools.

“Currently, we are not affording our students quality programs they deserve,” Rhee said. “We must provide initiatives and school programs that not only serve kids well but also appeal to parents. With this initiative, we believe, we’ve laid out a plan that will achieve the highest level of academic performance for students. In order to do this, we must move toward a more effective use of our resources.”

For one parent, the initial reaction to Rhee’s closure proposal was shock:

But parents and students who might be affected by the closures focused yesterday on what the changes would mean for them.

Jill Weiler, who advocates for parents at Bruce-Monroe Elementary as a member of the community group Telling Stories Project, said parents at the Ward 1 school were shocked that the mayor apparently reneged on an agreement not to close the school. She said the mayor spoke to parents this summer.

“He said it’s a new day in D.C. We have a partnership; we make decisions together. . . . It was such a celebratory night,” she said.

Now, Weiler said, parents “feel terribly disappointed, discouraged and betrayed.”

DCPS: Michelle Rhee Selects James Sandman to be General Counsel

According to the Legal Times blog, James Sandman will be the General Counsel for DC Public Schools.

College Board: The SAT–A Square Peg Being Forced into a Round Hole?

The SAT, a test from the Educational Testing Service, measures a person’s ability to solve multiple choice puzzle-type questions (click here for an example) within a fixed time period. The problem is that this skill is not used in the bulk of college work.

The SAT has been found to correlate with first-year college grades. But psychologist Claude Steele pointed out that the test has been found to measure only about 18 percent of the things that it takes to do well in school, and thus is not a very good predictor of how a student will do in college. “The SAT is not going to get you very far with predicting who’s going to do well in college,” he told FRONTLINE.

This skill at solving puzzles within a timed context is not a focus in daily schooling or closely related to college study. The academic tasks of college are (in general):

• to be attentive to schedules to arrive at the proper class at the right time as well as ensure that long-term projects are completed by the deadline date,
• to coordinate the activities of non-academic student life with academic responsibilities,
• to possess the academic background to understand the coursework (for example, knowledge of pre-calculus to progress to college calculus),
• to behave appropriately in the class: listen to a lecture, ask questions of the instructor, write notes,
• to be able to study without prompting from others,
• to write term papers, in grammatically correct English, on an assigned topic,
• to complete a end of course examination-more likely in essay format.

None of these tasks are related to the SAT’s puzzle-type questions. Also, according to The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (fairtest.org), the test is designed to be separate from high school curricula, the foundation for college study.

A direct descendant of the racist anti-immigrant Army Mental Tests of the 1920s, the SAT was first administered in 1926 but did not become a largely multiple-choice exam until after World War II. The test is designed to be independent of high school curricula (unlike the SAT’s main competitor, the ACT). It includes questions attempting to measure reading comprehension, vocabulary, basic writing techniques, algebra, geometry, statistics and probability. The SAT does not include advanced mathematics topics nor does it attempt to assess higher-order thinking or reasoning skills.

In order to train the skill of solving the SAT’s puzzles, there are SAT preparation courses. These preparation courses provide the training for students to learn how to answer SAT questions. Students who are not able to afford preparation courses will be at a distinct disadvantage to those who are thoroughly trained for the SAT’s method of asking questions.

Overall, the SAT’s testing methodology is being forced into the college admissions process where it does not belong. [Note: Fairtest.org addresses this issue in its SAT Factsheet.]

Because of my concerns about the SAT, I have a link to the excellent work of The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (fairtest.org) in the blogroll.

Post Script:

There has been discussion on whether preparation courses are necessary to help a student increase the student’s score on the SAT.

A Cornell Daily Sun editorial supported the deemphasis of the SAT I in Cornell’s admissions because of the advantage available to those who can afford the SAT preparation courses .

We support Cornell’s decision to de-emphasize the importance of the SAT I, particularly because it innately favors candidates from higher incomes who can afford tutoring, and is not a good indicator of one’s academic achievement.

A College Board executive, Laurence Bunin, senior vice president for operations, disagreed with the editorial’s assertion in a letter to the editor, stating that students do not need the preparation courses to prepare for the SAT.

Your editorial states that the SAT “favors candidates from higher incomes who can afford tutoring.” That statement is both wrong and misleading. The SAT cannot be “cracked” or “gamed” with expensive, short-term test prep courses. Research proves that these courses do not improve scores more than the free and low-cost practice tests available online or in bookstores. Expensive test prep courses only serve to give affluent parents and students the illusion of [control] over a scary process. In fact, the best preparation for the SATs is developing good study habits, taking rigorous high school courses and becoming familiar with the SAT by taking sample practice tests.

The editorial also incorrectly states that the SAT is “… not a good indicator of one’s academic achievement.” In fact, dozens of independent research studies prove that the SAT, along with high school grades, is the best single predictor of success in college.

However, Glenn Elert, author of The SAT: Aptitude or Demographics, states that a Federal Trade Commission study demonstrated that scores can be increased through coaching.

In 1976, the Federal Trade Commission responded to ETS’ long standing wish for a government investigation of the coaching schools. Their claim was that the aptitude the SAT measured was acquired over years — promises of significant results (over 100 points) in six weeks were false advertising. In Effects of Coaching on Scholastic Aptitude Test Scores the College Board reported that:

Despite variable factors from one study to another, the net result across all studies is that score gains directly attributable to coaching amount, on the average, to fewer than 10 points — a difference of such small magnitude… that it is unreasonable to expect it to affect college admissions decisions. The magnitude of the gains resulting from coaching vary slightly, but they are always small regardless of the coaching method used or the differences in the students coached.

Unfortunately for ETS, the plan backfired. The test preparation schools were not cited with fraudulent advertising — ETS was. The initial FTC report found that coaching courses, on the average, raised scores more than 100 points on both the verbal and math sections. “Contrary to [the] explicit claims of ETS/CEEB,” said Albert Kramer Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, “coaching can be effective…”

I disagree with Mr. Bunin because of the SAT’s reliance on puzzle-type questions. Mere preparation with a few old SAT tests will not do unless one is also trained in how to recognize what the test-maker is looking for in a particular test question.

For example, I do not believe that merely studying hard in school or taking practice SAT exams by oneself, as Mr. Bunin suggests, would necessarily allow a student to solve a question like this.

For more information:

PBS.org-Frontline’s “Secrets of the SAT” program

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing

DC: Catholic Archdiocese Converts 7 Parochial Schools Into Public Charter Schools

According to The Washington Post, The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has decided to convert seven of its parochial elementary schools into public charter schools.

The schools selected for conversion are:

Assumption and Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian in Southeast, Holy Name and St. Francis de Sales in Northeast, and Immaculate Conception, Nativity Catholic Academy and St. Gabriel in Northwest.

Four others will remain within the Archdiocese and become part of a resource-sharing consortium:

Sacred Heart in Northwest, St. Anthony in Northeast, and St. Francis Xavier and St. Thomas More in Southwest.

St Augustine’s Parish School raised enough money from donors and was removed from the conversion list:

St. Augustine in Northwest had been slated to convert to charter, but parishioners and other African American Catholics reached out to donors and came up with a plan to operate as a parish-supported school, which [Archbishop Donald] Wuerl approved.

Misc: Teaching The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Remains Controversial Due to the Persistence of Anti-Black Racism

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is usually taught in junior level high school classes. The book always generates controversy because of the copious use of the “N” word and the social power Huck (White adolescent) has over Jim (an adult Black man who was enslaved and, thus, subservient to Huck).

Usually the scenario is this: there is one or few Black students in a class that is predominantly non-Black (including the instructor). The subject of Huckleberry Finn comes up in the curriculum, forcing the Black student to endure multiple utterances of the “N” word by White classmates in discussing the book (but, without doubt, the “N” word still retains all of its negativity in the present day).

A related scenario has recently occurred in Texas, where the sole Black student in the class did not agree with the teacher writing out the whole “N” word (rather than using the abbreviated phrase “N-word”) in preparation for reading Huckleberry Finn.

Ibrahim Mohamed, 17, was the only black student in the class during the lesson in which students were to discuss hurtful statements and how context can affect a word’s meaning. Birdville school district officials said the exercise was part of a new curriculum designed to put such powerful words in proper context and was not meant to offend anyone.

But the teacher “badgered” him after denying his request to remove the word from the chalkboard or replace it with “N-word,” and she continued to say the slur during class, said his mother, Tunya Mohamed. The teen said he felt singled out when the teacher asked if the word offended him and said, “It hurts — doesn’t it?”

In many ways, given the omnipresence of institutional racism, Whites and Blacks have different interpretations of the same event. The teacher viewed the “N” word dispassionately (as the “N” word does not affect the teacher personally). The Black student viewed the “N” word personally as the student’s Blackness is a daily topic.

Here, the teacher in this case may not have meant to cause the student harm. But in failing to recognize that the sole Black student in the classroom could feel insulted by the use of the whole “N” word, the issue escalated into a problem quickly.

Given the persistent racial situation in the U.S., I fully expect the controversy arising while reading of Huckleberry Finn in a classroom to occur again.

DCPS: Mayor Adrian Fenty Seeks to Create “At-Will” Central Office Postions; Labor Unions Oppose Mayor’s Legislation

[Note: The text of Mayor Adrian Fenty's legislation is here. Mayor Fenty explains the reason for the legislation in his press release.]

The Washington Post reports that the legislation would provide power to Chancellor Michelle Rhee to fire 545 central office workers.

According to The Washington Post, there is opposition to Fenty’s legislation from the Washington Teachers’ Union, as well as other labor unions. Though, there are some parents that support the legislation.

DC: Victor Reinoso Gains Support of DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray; Confirmation Hearing to Be Held Oct. 2

According to the Washington Post, DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray supports the confirmation of Victor Reinoso as Deputy Mayor for Education.

Reinoso’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for October 2, 2007.

10:00 AM, COUNCIL CHAMBER, ROOM 500, ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE MEETING, COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE, Vincent C. Gray, Chairman

MEASURES IN THE COMMITTEE
[...]

4. “Deputy Mayor for Education of the Department of the Education Victor Reinoso Confirmation Resolution of 2007″, PR 17-0319. To confirm the Mayoral appointment of Mr. Victor Reinoso as Deputy Mayor for Education for the Department of Education.

DC: Candidates Selected for the Positions of Chief Academic Officer and Special Education “Czar”

According to the Washington Examiner, positions have been offered to two candidates, one within the District of Columbia State Superintendent’s Office, the other within the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS).

Kimberly Statham, currently the state administrator for the Oakland Unified School District, was hired as the chief academic officer, according to D.C. State Superintendent Deborah Gist. Statham’s salary will be $170,000.

Phyllis Harris, currently the special education coordinator for the Oakland Unified School District, has been offered the job as special education “czar” for Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Should Harris accept the position, her salary would be $200,000.

DCPS Chancellor: Rhee Seeks Authority to Layoff Central Office Staff

According to the Washington Post, DC Public Schools (DCPS) Chancellor Michelle Rhee is drafting legislation to restructure the DCPS central office for the DC Council.

Specifically, Rhee would like to have the authority to fire central office staff without having to reassign them to other jobs.

As the initial piece of her strategy, Rhee has begun drafting legislation that would ask the D.C. Council to suspend personnel laws so that the chancellor would have the authority to terminate employees without having to reassign them to other jobs. Rhee also has been meeting with council members to lay the groundwork for their political support, members said.

This is a risky area, hopefully Rhee will succeed. In another Washington Post article, “Worn Down by Waves of Change,” Arlene Ackerman, first Chief Academic Officer under then-Superintendent Julius Becton, who later became DCPS Superintendent was warned about false support.

Shortly after Arlene Ackerman arrived in the District as Becton’s chief academic officer, a stranger — a man standing in the receiving line at a reception in her honor — squeezed her hand so hard she thought he would break her fingers.

“They say they want you to fix it, but they really don’t,” she recalled the man telling her. “When you get to the point where you are really fixing things, you will know. You will know because you will get all kinds of unbelievable push back.

Rhee’s predecessors also faced the problem of controlling the central office of DCPS, according to the Post.

Even Washington Post columnist Colbert King wrote about the difficulty of controlling the central office of DCPS.

But the central office’s chief enemy, for whom its most hostile behavior is reserved, is the reform-minded superintendent. In the battle against change, the central office, which consists of an unknowable number of human parts, remains undefeated.

Mr. King offers caution, sounding similar to the warning Ackerman received.

But a warning, chancellor: Gird yourself for unbelievable blowback. The central office fancies itself not to be messed with.

I hope Rhee is successful in creating a functioning DCPS system which serves the students effectively. Given DCPS’s large student population, it is in interest of everyone that lives in the DC metropolitan area that DCPS has a properly functioning school system.