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Education

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Courage under fire

   Michelle A. Rhee is the chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system, and the founder of The New Teacher Project. Her parents immigrated to the United States from South Korea in the 1960s. She was raised in the Toledo, Ohio metropolitan region, graduating from Maumee Valley Country Day School in 1988. Rhee graduated from Cornell University in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in government and from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with a master's degree in public policy.

   Rhee taught in Baltimore, Maryland as a recruit of Teach for America for three years before founding The New Teacher Project, a non-profit organization which works with needy school districts to recruit and train new teachers. She founded the program in 1997, and it has since expanded to forty programs in twenty states, recruiting more than 10,000 teachers. On 2007-06-12, Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty announced that he had chosen her to replace superintendent of D.C. public schools Clifford Janey and become the schools' new chancellor. Washington has had a New Teacher Project presence through DC Teaching Fellows for several years before Rhee's appointment. Rhee initially rebuffed Fenty's offer, but relented when promised wide latitude and significant authority in decision-making as well as strong mayoral support for her proposed initiatives.     

   The teachers' union in Washington, D.C., criticized Rhee in the spring of 2008 over the firings of several administrators and school principals, including her own children's principal at the Oyster-Adams Bilingual Elementary School. Some alleged that the firing process was not transparent and fair. Others complained about Rhee's closing of several D.C. schools without her holding public hearings. Rhee and supporters have responded that personnel decisions are based on the judgment of the chancellor and that closures and restructuring are necessary to effect reforms.  [Wikipedia]

2000 Times Editor in Chief

    The situation in the D.C. schools can be found in many other school districts where indifference prevails among parents, students and the school district electorate.  Urban communities are prime for such conditions because of factors common to urban life.

    In my considered opinion, the primary factors appear to be associated with the convenience of isolation.  It is ironic to observe that, when large populations are centralized in their residence and livelihood, the more distant become the citizenry and the less cohesive the interests of families not disposed to the burdens of communal living. What communities that do exist seem to tolerate isolation as a privilege guaranteed by any reference to freedom.

   This notion, the freedom to elect isolation from the burdens of close proximity, stand at odds with the progressive elements within a society. If this idea of isolation were taken to its extremes, compulsory education, as we know it, would not have a leg upon which to stand. The wisdom of our law makers saw to it that the issue of educating the young of our nation could not be left to the vagaries of parental discretion.

   For reasons similar to the laws that prohibit the exploitation of children in the workplace, laws are also instituted to assure that our nation's children have access to education.

    Because parents have primary control over the actions of their children, passing laws regarding access to education does not guarantee that education will be achieved.  It only legislates that children must attend a school until a given age.

   If parents exercise little, or no, control over the actions of their children, those students are left to the mercy of the school system.  It is here where the isolation of the home environment from the school comes into play.

    Let us examine the nature of a typical problem home environment.  In the worse case scenario, we have a home with a single unmarried parent. This parent may be a typical school drop out, content to live off welfare and those social services that are convenient to isolated urban living.  In the extreme case, we can imagine a parent who has become resentful of the education system; and, who desires to defend past decisions on her (or his) part by denying an alternate path to her own children.  "If this life is good enough for me, it should be good enough for my kids."

   At the risk of being insensitive to the needs of many disadvantaged families, I would single out this category of parent as deadhead parents. A neighborhood of deadhead parents sends a neighborhood of marginalized children to school.

   When a neighborhood of marginalized students dominates the classrooms of a school, that school becomes an opportunity for employing deadhead school administrators and deadhead teachers. These deadhead school staff well understand that performance will never be required of them from the homes of deadhead parents.  

   Gaming the school system will allow these deadhead "educators" potential tenure into a profession that fails to deliver accountable results.  In the long run, society pays the high costs; and, the return on taxpayer investment becomes a multidimensional problem.  

    The solution for this complex problem is being attempted in our nation's capitol, where Ms. Rhee has taken on the system in a most effective fashion. Opposing Michelle Rhee are the deadhead school administrators and their deadhead staff and teachers.  When the news of this social revolution reaches the deadhead parents hiding out in their fortress of solitude, the cries are likely to be heard nation wide.

   When that day comes, responsible parents and educators must stand unified to make their voices heard; and, to restore excellence to our education system. Somewhere along the way, in this process, the circle between deadhead parents and their children will be broken.   When these children acquire the education that will qualify them for responsible paying jobs, the process surely will be self correcting.  It has happened before; it can happen again.