Union Leader To Michelle Rhee: 'Work With Us'

WASHINGTON -- Michelle Rhee, former District of Columbia schools chancellor, is starting a new advocacy group that will work with parents, students and teachers, as well as politicians, with the stated goal of improving U.S. schools. Perhaps unsurprisingly, American Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten said Monday evening that her union and others should be part of that conversation.

"Improving our schools -- and preparing our children for college, career and life -- is too important to be reduced to a choice between who is right and who is wrong," Weingarten said in a statement. "This is not a matter of whether we move forward on improving schools, but rather of how we do it, and we invite Michelle Rhee to work with us to give our kids the great schools they deserve and need."

Rhee's new organization, Students First, will emphasize teacher-performance evaluations, as well as ensuring "excellent" schools are available to all students, according to the organization's website studentsfirst.org.

Last week, Rhee was named to Florida Governor-Elect Rick Scott's transition team. Rhee said the work she'll do with Scott, a Republican, will be "totally aligned" with Students First.

In light of these new endeavors, Weingarten said she hopes Rhee will collaborate with unions more than she did in her role as D.C. chancellor.

In October, Rhee resigned as chancellor after her boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, lost his bid for reelection in a primary in which Rhee's education policies played a role.

Read the full statement from Weingarten below:

We wish Michelle Rhee well and hope she learns, as we have, that promoting education reform through conflict and division will not serve the interests of children and their educational needs.

The many school districts that have improved student learning build on respect, and on the hard work that teachers, management, parents and the community have done together. In places like Baltimore; Pittsburgh; New Haven, Conn.; Hillsborough County, Fla.; Norfolk, Va.; and St. Francis, Minn., there is a strong culture of labor-management collaboration, shared responsibility for student success, and an intense focus on identifying and meeting every student's needs."

Michelle Rhee likes to say that teachers unions are the problem, but the leading states and countries in educational outcomes--such as Finland, Singapore and South Korea--are heavily unionized. They build on what works, such as preparing teachers well, developing robust curriculum and engaging parents. And they do so through collaboration, not conflict or scapegoating.

Comments

[hawkseye]

10:01 AM on 12/08/2010

Attracting the best teachers to a school district requires good pay and working conditions. Just like any other job.

[bayblues]

11:00 PM on 12/07/2010

so those folks here who diss merit based tenure and pay for teachers in public schools - please tell me again why america is way below many third world countries on the average high school math and science competence evaluations?

[lynnewrites]

02:01 PM on 12/08/2010

so here goes-- for the millionth time--merit pay cannot work because teachers are at least smart enough to understand that it will/could never be equitable--NEVER --NOT POSSIBLE--we are dealing with humans here not cars on an assemlby line---
test scores--well now we are forced to spend all of the time cramming the little darlings full of low level crap in order to satisfy state testing madness so no time to develop the necessary higher level thinking skills cuz those are too hard to quantify --so why aren't you asking---HOW WERE WE ALWAYS ABLE TO ACHIEVE GREAT THINGS BEFORE? COULD IT BE THE NCLB weirdness??? could it be the total lack of support for families of meager means??? Could it be that rather than doing what the professional in the biz have always asked for--namely super small class sizes and enough proper materials---the power-mad freaks that are now running away with our education system just keep shouting about how educ. doesn't need any more money while they are shoveling it out the back door into their own corporate pockets (cleverly diguised as caring charter schools)---it is all smoke and mirrors and our system is not failing from within.!! ask yourself what is different now from when we were last scoring in the top of the world---NCLB---Power-mad people who are not educators infiltrating the entire system with the blessings OF BOTH PARTIES,

[bayblues]

11:51 PM on 12/09/2010

thanks - i learnt a bunch of things i didn't know about.

[sizogee]

04:37 PM on 12/08/2010

We have to pay teachers more and ensure their job stability.

Those of you who disagree - please tell me again why america is way below many third world countries on the average high school math and science competence evaluation s?

(It works either way!)

[bayblues]

11:54 PM on 12/09/2010

Almost - but not quite. We have to pay **good** teachers more and ensure *their* job stability. The ones who suck need to be let go of and undeserved job security is precisely why they stick around with temerity and the poor kids suffer.

[Swedenworks]

10:42 PM on 12/07/2010

Randi Weingarten is the Obama of education or maybe just the equivalent of the democrats. Say you work for the people and then just sell them down the river ( out of weakness or because they no longer stand for anything?). Her teaching experience lasted all but six months. She was groomed for the position from the get, and she, like Ms. Black and Rhee, don't not deserve to be a voice in reform. She was a partner in the education fiascos in NYC, runs her union caucus with an iron fist, and has sold out her membership for no real reform.

[nfsbrrpkk]

10:33 PM on 12/07/2010

Rhee started a 501(c)(4) to destroy special interests and unions as she promotes her own “special interests.” Her enormous ego and narcissistic personal traits make her unfit to lead her own for-profit front organization. She will be marginalized and her for-profit motives and ties to "special interests" deserve investigative reporting.

[The Educator]

07:33 PM on 12/07/2010

Unless there is a hidden agenda, Randy Weingarten is appeasing the enemy. Let's face it, Rhee's options were limited as she is a lightening rod for controversy and would have met with fierce teacher, union and parent resistance if she took a position in the trenches similar to what she held in Washington D.C. Hence, she shrewdly chose the "Student First" venue as she now wants to cash in on her "Waiting for Superman " fame and will generate much misguided funding from the naive, non-educators and corporate interests. This will also give her a much overpaid salary. She will rub elbows with the non-educator crew and milk the media for all its worth as nothing is more important to Rhee than her public and media image. First Student is a charade and will have minimal or no impact on education reform in this country, although she will continue to espouse the poison policies she has advocated in the past. It is time to tune Michelle Rhee out of the picture as she is history.

[researcher]

07:00 PM on 12/07/2010

“........ enlighten me. You took the time to type a completely content-free comment; take a couple more moments to explain to me what point I'm missing, or why my point is inaccurate.”

“Below-average teachers ARE doing something wrong, and if they're not doing their job sufficiently well, they SHOULD be afraid they're going to be fired.”

You used the term below average that is how you and most of america miss the point. You are not alone you have lots of company.

There will always be half the teachers below average even if you hired the top teacher from every state and put them in the same school to teach. Get past this average idea that pay for performance is based upon. One must look for special causes of variation on both the bottom of the distribution and the top distribution of teacher performance. Most variation is systemic and the teachers are only one significant variable that accounts for test scores of students.

It gets more complicated than that because measuring teacher performace by student test scores has a bundle of misconceptions built right into it. Ie teachers teaching to tests, fudging the data. Then we have random variation from test to test. Studying Deming for five years then maybe you will understand. Maybe not.

I know of no university that understands this as pay for performance helps to take us to third world. It will fail every time if measured correctly with unbiased data.

[raechel]

09:27 PM on 12/07/2010

Come on, you're splitting hairs. We know there are poor teachers -- we all know it from experience, but we also know it from extensive research that's been done. We know the impact a poor teacher can have on a student. Yes, we all think teachers should be better prepared (better educated, if you will), but in the meantime, we have to get rid of the bad teachers because their impact is too harmful to ignore. We wouldn't say "oh, I guess we need to train doctors better" when faced with an incompetent doctor, would we?

If educators really care about what they're doing, and I know some do, then the proof will be in where they put their energies. In making sure they're comfortable and there's no conflict, or in tackling with passion and a sense of urgency the problems that have made our education system such a failure.

And anyone who has this to say: "it's not possible to succeed because the parents aren't doing their job" should quit. If it's not possible for you to succeed, then how can you justify walking away every month with that paycheck?

[Neaguy]

06:13 PM on 12/07/2010

Is this union leader naive? Rhee doesn't want to work with unions. She wants to get rid of them.

AFT needs new leadership. Randi can't frame an argument for better reform.

[teacher39years]

06:46 PM on 12/07/2010

Rhee touts "Teach for America" as the solution to getting rid of "bad teachers". Teach for America gets millions of uncontested grant money from the Federal Government and "Non-Profit" Foundations (Think Jeb Bush and the Walton/Walmart Foundation). Teach for America candidates enter the classroom after five weeks of training and agree to do a two year stint in a low-income school. By insuring turnover, costs are lowered. Lower costs put more tax into the hands of the politicians that appoint people like Michelle Rhee.

[raechel]

09:32 PM on 12/07/2010

It's politics. Like all large organizations, its mission has become to continue. The people at the top are rarely reformers, because they're the ones who benefit from things the way they are. I want to see someone from that union stand up and say "I know what we can to do to make our education system the best one in the world. Let's get rolling."

Then and only then will I believe that teachers care more about their mission than their comfy paychecks.

[popman]

06:09 PM on 12/07/2010

Why should Rhee work with the Unions?

Unions are for unions and protecting their dues paying members. Teachers

Quality Education is not the the primary union goal, children even less. Power and money are the unions primary objectives to achieve political influence to keep the dollars flowing.

Rhee would only get in the way for the unions to achieve more power and money, since her goal is to better education for children.

[Neaguy]

06:14 PM on 12/07/2010

Incorrect. Rhee is clueless on education. She has a distorted view of how to measure learning.

She is obsessed to the point of serious misunderstanding about how to reflect learning. She thinks it is nothing more nor less than a test score. She ignores all the better measures.

[popman]

06:19 PM on 12/07/2010

Based on your screen name can I be assured of a non biased opinion ? LOL

She seems to have done an excellent job in DC so much so they gave her to boot for making the powers that be look pretty foolish.

[teacher39years]

06:08 PM on 12/07/2010

The people that actually work with the children are not considered "enlightened" enough to think "deep thoughts" about Educational Reform. That honor belongs to the Politicians and Corporate Interests, some of which hide behind "Non-Profit" shields.

[mulegino]

06:02 PM on 12/07/2010

One thing I'm dead set against is corporate meddling in public education-period.
As a matter of fact, well paid teachers defended by organized labor and who do not depend on corporate patrons are one of the few groups not beholden to furthering corporate interest at the expense of the public welfare.
I consider corporate meddling to be just another aspect of the corporate agenda, wherein corporations and mega-billionaires get their hands on the formation of future citizens (!) which is frightening enough- get advertised as philanthropists- yeah, right! and further their corporate agenda of controlling or seriously influencing the curriculum to produce exactly the kind of graduates they want produced- a small cadre of managerial elitists, entertainers and artists, etc., and a huge crop of poorly educated pupils whose intellectual formation will suit them only to cheap labor.
Can you imagine Walmart's ideal graduate?

[Venicelady]

10:20 PM on 12/07/2010

"Can you imagine Walmart's ideal graduate?"

Ugh- I shudder at the thought.....

[bcmom]

05:36 PM on 12/07/2010

The teacher's union has done nothing for education but keep unqualified teachers teaching for years. I remember in high school we had a teacher who was a nut case, yet they kept her teaching. Something has got to change and it has to be drastic. Our next generation is going to pay for our lack of a stiff spine to change the education system in this country. The time is now not later.

[teacher39years]

05:49 PM on 12/07/2010

You probably had 25 or 30 more teachers that did their job and you can't remember.

[Neaguy]

06:16 PM on 12/07/2010

50% of teachers quit within 5 years. That's some turnover.

And, teacher firings are higher in unionized v. non unionized states so your argument is without factual back up.

It's pretty scary to contemplate your assertion that something has got to change. You don't even know what it is, but we've got to change it. A recipe for disaster.

[Andy Clark]

08:24 PM on 12/07/2010

that's the recipe the country is currently following, my friend. sad, but true.

[researcher]

05:12 PM on 12/07/2010

Why pay for performance does not work from a statistical point of view in less than 250 words. The distribution of data will represent a bell or normal curve. If we draw a line down the center of that bell shaped curve about half of the teachers performance will be on one side and about half on the other side with some right in the center or average.

Pay for performance tells those below that average line they are doing something wrong and they need to shape up if they want a raise or even to keep their jobs. The 40% above that magical line will be told they need to improve; the top ten per cent will be told they are doing fine; reward time, but they fear falling below that top ten per cent.

With education they are going to use test scores and those scores can go through some form of random variation so the same teacher using the same teaching methods will most often show a variation in their students test scores. Then we have the systemic causes of variation that the teacher has little control of and with each class those systemic variations can often be huge.

Bottom line pay for performance is fear based and that fear will often give instant results but long term has negative side effects. Now they might tell you they are holding these other variables constant don’t believe them they are playing with statistics.

[JDoorjam]

05:18 PM on 12/07/2010

You're saying that... what? we shouldn't be able to measure teacher performance and fire bad teachers because it will hurt their feelings?

Below-average teachers ARE doing something wrong, and if they're not doing their job sufficiently well, they SHOULD be afraid they're going to be fired. I care more about the education American children are receiving than I care whether bad teachers feel like they have job security.

[biology guy]

05:34 PM on 12/07/2010

and there you have it folks... completely missed the point

[teacher39years]

05:35 PM on 12/07/2010

Restructuring Teacher pay is one of the criteria that states must address in their Race to the Top applications. Duncan took $4.3 billion from the 2009 Stimulus to fund this program. Although Duncan and Obama are proud of their "bipartisan support " for this program, corporate interests and privitizers are licking their chops at the opportunity to get a cheap labor source . They've even tried outsourcing. Duncan said that the best thing to happen to New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina because it gave Charter Schools a chance to replace public schools that were destroyed.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/4994/filipino_teachers_recruited_to_virtual_servitude_in_louisiana/

[InfinteShibumi]

05:09 PM on 12/07/2010

Good luck with that Randi, but don't hold your breath.

The moment billionaire Bloomberg and former investment banker Joel Klein decided Rhee was the "it" girl (wholly unproven as she was), the media PR campaign propelled the newly ensconced chancellor into she-can-do-no-wrong national territory. She was on the cover of Time before she'd even had a chance to raise test scores (the first of which credit was stolen from her predecessor, Supt. Clifford Janey). Later, huge pieces in The Washington Post, whose company board includes Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. No surprise there. Cover on Newsweek? No surprise there--the mag is owned by the Washington Post Company. The Washington Post was an unstinting and biased supporter -- nay ballast -- for outgoing mayor Adrian Fenty. Any editorial written by Jo-Ann Armao will suffice. Rhee's presence in "Waiting for Superman?" No surprise there--the director is a friend of Bill and Melinda Gates. Rhee and Gates on Oprah? No surprise there....

[InfinteShibumi]

05:11 PM on 12/07/2010

Correction: Klein was not an investment banker. That was Rahm Emmanuel, another story entirely...

[teacher39years]

05:19 PM on 12/07/2010

Klein was hired by Rupert Murdoch ,(owner of Fox News, Star Magazine, Wall Street Journal, New York Post) on the same day that Murdoch Purchased an Ed Tech Company. We'll be hearing lots more about the "crisis in Education " and "bad teachers " in days to come.

[JDoorjam]

05:19 PM on 12/07/2010

.......... what's your point? Do you have any actual, legitimate criticism of Rhee, her methods, her philosophies, and her outcomes, or are you just upset that rich and powerful people appreciate her work?

[EmmaNYC]

05:28 PM on 12/07/2010

Rich and powerful people? The rich and powerful people don't appreciate her work. It's the rich and powerful vultures who do. They're the ones looking to make a hefty profit by siphoning off education funds away from children and classrooms and into shares and boardrooms.

[InfinteShibumi]

05:33 PM on 12/07/2010

It's just another boys' club afterall.

Rhee was catapulted before she had even had a chance to prove herself. She was lauded as being the first to raise test scores in DC--she wasn't. She was lauded as the first to fire teachers--she wasn't. She continued to use Janey's system (without giving him credit for it) before adopting a proposal as uniquely her own (but actually verbatim a proposal being used elsewhere).

She closed schools unceremoniously without taking the appropriate time to meet with their respective communities. When she did" schedule school town halls"--they were held the same time on the same day--guaranteeing she could not attend them, or entertain questions from the parents whose questions were pointed at her. Not surprising for a person who has publicly on various occasions denounced the viability of collaboration and consensus.

How's that for a start?

[mulegino]

05:04 PM on 12/07/2010

People need to challenge the educational bureacracy's paradigms.
The administration/superintendent racket is one of the best games in town; actually it's more often than not a revolving door of incompetence, insiderism, skewed results which hide the true squalor and mediocrity of a public education establishment that is failing miserably at what should be its true goal- the intellectual and cultural formation of the human person with a view towards the inherent dignity, worth and transcendental vocation of living life as a creative and productive human being.

Instead, with some notable exceptions, we get administratively top- heavy day care institutions with their pavlovian bells and whistles- their standardized tests, their propagandistic socialization into a politically correct barren landscape of mediocrity, dilapidation, aesthetic emptiness, alienation from nature and a kind of wearing away of those characteristics of childhood which are the germs of creativity and intellectual curiosity- innocence, wonder, and benignity. It replaces these with fear, intrusiveness, cynicism and propaganda.

The indispensible element of education is the desire to learn, and it cannot be instilled in a child through bureacratic fiat.

As Ezra Pound wrote, “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.”

[teacher39years]

05:23 PM on 12/07/2010

The more politicians and corporate interests become entrenched in Education in the name of "Reform", the more Education becomes like trying to make a U-Turn with the Titanic.

[mulegino]

05:29 PM on 12/07/2010

I agree. Teacher and students should have a dialogue that is personalist in orientation, instead of the clinical and anti-septic "GROUPTHINK" imposed top-down by people who know a lot about self-promotion and political ambition, but little or nothing about learning.

[Joseph Palermo]

04:56 PM on 12/07/2010

Michelle Rhee is only using the "children" as an excuse to tear apart unions

[teacher39years]

05:08 PM on 12/07/2010

Her success in the classroom and concern for children is doubtful. The children are the pawns in the game.

http://www.examiner.com/ward-5-in-washington-dc/dcps-chancellor-michelle-rhee-talks-about-taping-students-mouths-video

[freducate]

05:34 PM on 12/07/2010

Yup. And to play the game, both sides need pawns.

[JDoorjam]

05:21 PM on 12/07/2010

Michelle Rhee is a life-long educator. She doesn't give a crap about unions one way or another unless they're helping, or hurting, her educational aims.

I'm tired of people who think it's much more important that incompetent teachers are totally protected for life by ironclad tenure rules than that we have the very best teachers possible in the classroom, and a method to get rid of those who are failing our children.

[teacher39years]

05:54 PM on 12/07/2010

Three years as an untrained teacher, in a classroom. putting masking tape on her students' mouths hardly makes her a "Life -Long Educator"

[InfinteShibumi]

06:03 PM on 12/07/2010

Not life-long. A basic wiki search will confirm this.