She has shuttered 23 schools, fired more than 30 principals and given notice to hundreds of teachers and administrative workers.
Just a year on the job, District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is making bold changes as she tries to accomplish what six would-be reformers in the past decade could not: rescue one of the nation’s most dysfunctional school districts.
The hard-charging schools chief is unwavering in her belief that she can succeed.
“My goal is to make DC the highest performing urban school system in the country,” Rhee said as she prepared for the start of classes on Monday.
It is an audacious task for the founder of a teacher-training organization who had no experience running even a single school when she arrived.
Rhee is an unconventional choice in other ways. The Korean-American is the city’s first schools chief in nearly four decades who is not black. And at 38, the Ivy-League educated Rhee is one of nation’s youngest leaders of a big urban school district.
She wants to fix a great injustice: the inability of US public schools to educate students equally — particularly in the nation’s capital.
Like many urban schools, Washington’s are struggling to educate students amid poverty and violence. Students also have suffered because of entrenched cronyism, which has led to incompetent bureaucracy and fiscal mismanagement. Although the district is among the nation’s highest-spending school systems, its students rank near the bottom in reading and math proficiency. Schools have leaky roofs and broken fire sprinklers. Bathrooms are decrepit, with broken toilets and missing stall doors.
Not surprisingly, enrollment in the 49,000-student system is shrinking as parents move their children to charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated.
“People want Michelle Rhee to succeed because no one knows what’s going to happen if she doesn’t,” said Mary Levy, who has been involved in the schools since her children enrolled in the 1970s.
Levy is wary, though. She has seen school chiefs arrive with great fanfare only to leave in exasperation. Army Lieutenant General Julius Becton was tapped in 1996 by a presidentially appointed board.
He quit after 18 months.
“I consider it the most difficult job I ever had,” said Becton, who fought in three wars and was awarded two Purple Heart medals.
Urban education experts like Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, blame the mess in part on a long-running power struggle among local politicians, Congress and community activists.
This time will be different, Rhee believes, thanks to Mayor Adrian Fenty, who made school reform his top priority when he was elected in 2006. Fenty quickly seized control of the schools, doing away with the school board. He also won the power to hire and fire the superintendent. He tapped Rhee, founder of the New Teacher Project, which trains teachers to work in urban schools.
Rhee is convinced a motivated teacher can help even the most disadvantaged student achieve. She said her belief is shaped by three years of teaching in Baltimore.
So far, Rhee has streamlined Washington’s central office by firing nearly 100 employees. She dismissed 36 principals she considered ineffective, including one at the elementary school her two daughters attend. She also sent termination letters this summer to 750 teachers and teacher’s aides who missed a certification deadline.
Rhee’s approach has its critics. The decision to close 23 under-enrolled schools was particularly controversial; some parents accused her of rushing the process.
Even the DC Council, which approved Fenty’s schools takeover plan, has balked at not being consulted on decisions and has held up money for school repairs.
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