Thursday, August 26, 2010
CP: Rhee Recruiting Diversity
I'm getting a late start on the blog today (sorry, other concerns), but I though perhaps we could discuss this article in the City Paper on Michelle Rhee and what she's up to when not holding press conferences, or fending off attacks for axing teachers. The article is subtitled Michelle Rhee's campaign to diversify DCPS means wooing white parents, so you can basically tell where this is going. It's an interesting piece, and definitely worth a read. I believe that Housing Complex's Lydia DePillis recently called Michelle Rhee the most powerful figure in the DC real estate market. Could she be right (at least as far as residential real estate)?
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17 comments:
Sigh. The City Paper's such a rag. Rhee's targeting middle-class residents with children. There's no question whatsoever that that demographic is more diverse than the very poorest residents who have traditionally made up DCPS' population.
White, Hispanic, mixed-race, and yes, black.
This whole mentality that anything middle-class folks care about is "for whites" is unbelievably corrosive and, frankly, disgusting. I saw a middle aged black man wearing an orange safety vest, and riding his ten-speed in the bike lane yesterday. Someone needs to tell him he was "acting white."
Heard Wells' opponent, Kelvin Robinson on WAMU yesterday talking about how we need to "stop spending all this money on dog parks". After all, think of all the heaps of city funds that've been lavished on dog parks over the last four years. And black folks don't even *own* dogs. Or if they do, they certainly don't *walk* them!
Utterly ridiculous. Folks like this should be hooted off the stage of public discourse.
Oboe,
yeah that was basically my thinking. I don't believe Rhee is so much about courting the white parents as she is about courting the middle class parents. Who seem to be a little more likely on average to volunteer and get involved. Plus, they probably read to their kids at home (something less educated parents might not do). So it totally makes sense to court those kinds of parents. The article views it through a racial lens, but the author ultimately ends up defending Rhee.
I'm going to have to listen to that WAMU interview. It sounds like a fun one.
I'm not the biggest Kojo fan (I think he too often shows a kind of glib affinity for the powerful over the powerless, but that may say more about me than him) but I thought he and the Tom Sherwood were actually in top form.
The Gray / Fenty conversation was also surprisingly good. I haven't really heard Fenty doing any kind of long-format speaking, but I thought he was actually pretty well-informed and sharp. Certainly much more so than I'd assumed given his press coverage.
Two things came across: first, I don't think the election of either man will signal a major change in the city, and second, they really, really, really don't seem to like one another.
:)
Since class is the trending topic so far...
I posted this on the CP site this morning:
Interesting article. I'd argue that the decrease in percentage of african american kids in DCPS is mostly the growth in charter school enrollment between 2007 and 2010. Charters in DC are nearly 100% non-white, and probably 95% african american.
I wish more discussion about DC schools would be more about class and less about race! In general, schools fail because too many children in the neighborhoods live in poverty and have bad home/community lives. It's much more about class than race. There is a very small black middle/upper class in DC these days, and an almost nonexistant population of poor whites, however, so I can see why people focus on race.
I want to read the article and make an informed comment but i just don't have the energy. The school lottery for my dsughter was too exhausting, and my wife did all the work. Interesting to note that since i opened the pug i am now poor and mostly white.
tonyt
It's too bad Ms. Rhee took such an adversarial stance. It made her a media darling but could very well contribute to Fenty losing the election, in which case she will be gone, her work to effect change will be for naught, and the children of DC will once again be pawns in a political game.
I say it could hurt Fenty because most of the teachers will probably vote against him. The other day at my daughter's school on Capitol Hill, Mr. Gray dropped in accompanied by Councilman Barry. I can only imagine what message that was intended to send.
It's too bad Ms. Rhee took such an adversarial stance. It made her a media darling but could very well contribute to Fenty losing the election, in which case she will be gone, her work to effect change will be for naught, and the children of DC will once again be pawns in a political game.
I respect where you're coming from, but Fenty/Rhee made a decision that the most critical pieces of reform had to be implementing some form of personnel evaluation and accountability at every level at DCPS.
I don't think there was any way to do what the administration--and frankly, the mainstream of current thinking on public school reform--felt had to be done in a "nice" way.
If they'd tried, they'd have been skewered by both the entrenched interests *and* the supporters of reform.
Even if Fenty loses, whomever Gray brings in is not going to renegotiate the teacher's contract, or re-hire any more than a small number of folks who were fired. So in the end, Rhee would have effectively "taken one for the team."
oboe, I totally agree with you.
I don’t like that the City Paper is kind of insinuating that Rhee is all about the white population. We know that the population in Wards 5 and 6 class shifting to the 30 something having kids or soon to have kids, not just white but mixed couples, two decent incomes. This is a new dynamic to these wards. Also, it is this group of people that are, for the most part, more responsive than the current parents/grandparents to showing up to PTA meetings and other community meetings. I take this as Rhee seeing an opportunity to make DCPS better and she is jumping on it. How can you fault her??
The new residents of these wards that I mentioned, live, work and play in DC. They don’t have the money or care to send their kids to private school across town or in MD. I like where we live and hope that if/when we have kids, we can send them to a DCPS and know that the education will be good as well as the facilities (just like public schools in West and Upper NW).
This is coming from a black man, my wife and I own a place in Trinidad.
-Likes to fight at The Pug
my comments were based on only reading the first page. I didn't like where it seemed like the article was going. I'll read the rest though.
-Likes to fight at The Pug
Oboe -
Rhee has been here for more than three years. THe new contract was only recently approved by the DC teachers.
I think the point Anon was trying to make is, if she hadn't come in here posing for pictures with a broom on the cover of Time magazine, she might have gotten pretty much the same deal a year or two earlier.
As to whether it matters if Fenty loses because of her - any time a political appointee gets their boss defeated, it always matters and there are always consequences.
DC needs more brooms in hands to sweep up 30 years of mess under Barry.
I want the DC schools to get better. Much better. But no one should have to lose their job, the administrative structure of the school system shouldn't have to change, and parents shouldn't be challenged to get more involved.
Jesus.
Pork, how can you say "no one" should lose their jobs and the administration structure didn't need to change? DCPS has been one of the worst systems in the nation for decades. Change is absolutely needed and reducing the bloated central office, improving the teacher corps, and limiting the power of the school board were steps in the right direction ad far as I'm concerned.
This is why I'm voting for Fenty. Gray isn't comfortable with forward thinking and improvement b/c it means some people may lose their jobs.
Anon:
I'm assuming Pork was being sarcastic.
I thought the article wasn't that bad. It stated an unfortunate reality in this town. Simply stating that reality doesn't make it any better or worse.
Interesting commentary on the article at CP, though. Including criticism of shutting down Hine Jr High.
Hine was a terrible school. Ridiculously outdated and inefficient facility. Grossly underutilized (tiny student body in a massive facility).
On some of the most expensive real estate in town.
Being next to Eastern Market and trendy restaurants did nothing to help the students. But it did ridiculously inflate the value of the land.
Converting that underutilized outdated unneeded school into a tax-producing, job-producing mixed use development is sortof the very definition of good government and smart use of resources.
I think the point Anon was trying to make is, if she hadn't come in here posing for pictures with a broom on the cover of Time magazine, she might have gotten pretty much the same deal a year or two earlier.
I disagree. Rhee could have attempted a more conciliatory approach in imposing the reforms, but it would have made absolutely no difference in how she was received by a *large* part of the entrenched teaching bureaucracy. The opposition would have been just as large, and just as fierce. Criticism of the "tone" was just one small part of the pushback.
What the high-profile "broom" posturing did was raise the profile of the DCPS reform effort to national status. There's been a huge amount of donations coming in from foundations and companies nationwide. The attention it's attracted has helped the Dept of Education reform efforts as well, giving them a figurehead.
In other words, it's solidified her *support* both locally and nationally, whereas her opposition was always going to be solid and coherent.
Folks may agree or disagree with the reform movement as a whole, but I don't think the posturing and broom-wielding was a strategic mistake.
Jesus Christ, it never, ever occurred to me that anyone might have trouble realizing I was being facetious to make a point. Wow. I mean, wow.
@ Hillman, I've seen your defense of the decision to close Hine Jr. High. It was underenrolled because developers decided the plot of land was too valuable to be used for a school. Coincidentally, the strong support realtors had always shown Hine turned in another direction. Inexplicably, principal after principal was fired--one whole school year Hine went without any principal leading the team in the building. A grade was eliminated, so 1/3 fewer kids were rattling around that astounding big, ugly gift of the 1960s. So that's one way to look at it--the neighbor, led by its developers, withdrew support and Ward 6 elected officials and Rhee chose to kill it.
Here's how I look at. The original school on that plot of land, the Wallach School, was designed by Adolf Kluss, architect of Eastern Market but better known for designing beautiful buildings that would attract children of all social classes. It was built, while the Civil War was raging, to promote multi-social class, multi-racial education in the Union's capital. The site has been a school site for all those generations since, until Hillman's generation came along. I liked what it said about the neighborhood that we gave such pride of place to a school (and the original Carnegie library built to stand across from the public school there). I am sorry this generation decided to go a different direction, for mixed retail and parking, our gift to coming generations.
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