School reformers like to talk, so they conference a lot. They like writing even more, so they dash off torrents of commentaries on improving schools.
But in all that talking and writing there is one topic that rarely gets raised, especially among white school reformers: race. Just too uncomfortable.
That aversion to raising race issues is unfortunate, because in the year I spent researching the school reforms carried out by Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., race issues were players nearly everywhere I looked.
For starters, race played a big role in explaining how the school's central office Rhee inherited was both bloated and poorly run. That dates back to former Mayor Marion Barry, who over the years padded the city payrolls with ever-more appointees, partly as a civil rights gesture for those who in the days of white-run Washington were frozen out of city jobs but also for political reasons. "It was the political machine's way of hiring folks and securing votes," one veteran school administrator told me.
Not only was the central office crowded, but many appeared to have little guidance on how to do their jobs. When Rhee arrived and began trying to fire the worst of the central office staff, her initial legal advice was: here at DCPS, we don't fire people for incompetence.
"What do you do with them?" Rhee asked. The answer: "We send them to the schools." And we wonder how D.C. schools got so bad?
Race also explains the sensitivities felt among black D.C. residents about firing anyone. In D.C., as in many urban areas, the black middle class was built on the stability of school jobs. Parents in affluent, white neighborhoods of Washington generally approved when central office workers were fired because they cost the city millions with bungled paperwork or a teacher was fired for harming students with bad teaching. The other side of the city heard a very different message: Not only was Rhee firing people they knew and liked, but she was disrespecting them by calling them incompetent.
When Rhee dealt with a budget cutback by laying off 266 teachers, she refused to abide by D.C. tradition of laying off the last hired. In white neighborhoods, firing teachers based on principal recommendations sounded logical; many on the black side of the city concluded the firings were random. As one black Washington Post columnist put it, "roulette wheel" firings.
Race played a huge role when Rhee changed the leadership at a Georgetown middle school favored by the city's black middle class, many of whom sent their kids there via out-of-boundary applications. In an attempt to diversify D.C.'s racially and economically isolated school population (rarely do such school districts stand a chance of success) by swapping in a principal of a mostly white elementary school from the immediate neighborhood (to encourage middle class parents to give D.C. schools a try), the middle school parents waged a resistance movement that suggested Rhee favored whites.
The fact that Rhee was Korean American, and not African American as her predecessors had been, also proved to be racially troublesome, especially when the district began to show testing improvements. Rationalizing that awkward situation gave birth to a widespread belief among many black Washingtonians that the gains Rhee achieved were the fruits of the black schools chief, Clifford Janey, who preceded her.
Based on my book research, that belief had little factual basis. Janey's most significant accomplishment, bringing the highly regarded Massachusetts standards to Washington, was not nearly enough to explain Rhee's gains, which came from aggressive staffing changes. Regardless, the Janey theory was broadly embraced among blacks.
There's no question that Rhee did a poor job managing racial relations. Both she and Fenty naively assumed that showing demonstrable results in the schools justified reforms ranging from closing schools to firing teachers. So wrong, so very wrong.
Neither of them, especially Fenty -- whose job this should have been -- adopted a proactive stance to explain why some teachers were being fired and why so many principals got shuffled in and out. Other voices filled in the void, leaving black voters believing that Rhee operated in a roulette style that disfavored black teachers.
Not all the racial lessons from D.C. spin negative. For the first two years of her term here, Rhee (perhaps unintentionally) managed to triangulate racial politics. In the book, I profile a dramatic turnaround at a middle school overseen by a Rhee-appointed African American principal and his same-race deputies. The inevitable protests that arose when they moved out nearly all the teachers who weren't working out went nowhere: black leaders helping black kids.
On primary day, Sept. 14, 2010, Rhee's foes overcame the triangulation. Based on my interviewing and polling, the belief that Rhee fired teachers for no apparent reason and favored whites was a significant factor in the racially lopsided voting that favored Fenty's challenger.
Neither Rhee nor Fenty saw this one coming, which is perhaps understandable. After all, only 7 percent of the district's students are white, and most of those depart after elementary school. And yet, the favoring-whites belief proved to be a significant wedge issue in the voting.
The best advice I got about race issues came from Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson (Michelle's fiancé) who came to D.C. to knock on doors to campaign for Fenty and Rhee. In African American communities, said Johnson, the issue of respect is never far from the surface. "If we don't trust what's being done, then this potentially becomes another experiment on our community."
That doesn't mean racial issues make urban school reform politically impossible. Urban political and education leaders such as Johnson will continue taking political risks with Rhee-style reforms. They're that hungry for turnarounds.
Reformers can continue making intellectual contributions to those urban reforms, but only by confronting that third rail, learning lessons on triangulation and always, always explaining reforms thoroughly before you carry them out. The fear among African Americans about being used as "experiments" is both understandable and justified.
Ducking the issue, however, is a sure ticket to irrelevancy.
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you might look here: http://realeducationreformdc.blogspot.com/
Leaders who are elected or appointed to go into racially isolated, economically depressed, historically underserved areas should be specially trained in how to manage the perceptions and feelings of the community as they make their tough choices and do what is necessary to clean house.
If you can't do both, your time in office will only be marred by misunderstandings and distrust.
When the data from testing is disaggregated, it is the black students that are causing schools to NOT make AYP (see the other story posted on HP today about 82% of school "not making it").
NCLB/RTTP are quickly making DRASTIC racial divides in our schools based on large numbers of black students who are NOT making AYP verses the non-black students who do. Most of this is tied to Socio-Economics as well.
What a mess.
I don't know one black person who chooses to live in a ghetto environment for its wonderful resources. They are usually there because its all they can afford. Poverty is not a choice, it is a socio economic blight on communities. Now, since most of America is broke, they understand how easy it is to slip into poverty and how incredibly hard it is to get out of it.
Poverty is no excuse not to want better for your children. Just because someone is not highly valued on the social scale with degrees and monetary status does not mean they do not have value or a sense of worth.
You especially can't talk to folks like their stupid and expect them to be responsive, even if what your trying to do may help. This is not about pride, this is about knowing when your being gamed and as such, being highly suspicious of those who talk "at" you and not "to" you.
We also know what many white people in this country don't want to know - we need winners and losers in this country. Our kids have been targeted as the losers? How? No charter schools are going into middle class, white neighborhoods. Urban schools have been neglected for the last 30 years by the states and the fed yet their expected to compete on the same level?
All of the latest "educational theories" are tested in urban schools. All of the text book publishers push for new books every 2 years as well as new curriculums. You don't have that in wealthy districts. You don't have a push to get rid of senior teachers in wealthy districts either.
Folks are tired of so called "changes" that they see little benefit in. We're told have longer days of school - kids are already there from 7:30 for breakfast until 6:30pm for after school. You want mandatory year round instruction but you can't even properly weatherize bldgs so they are usable in blistering heat. Most of them are aged and horribly rotted. You hire young teachers and don't give them mentoring and wonder why they leave. The senior ones who have been in the community are trusted and your trying to drive them out because we "pay them too much". It's all
A teacher with a good class is safe. One with a bad class is gone. In neither case does the actual competence of the teacher (which is likely to be higher with more senior teachers) a real factor.
REALLY? because it seems to me thats all we talk about.
Teachers can't be school reformers. Disqualified. Didn't anybody tell you?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SXu-IBM6k3I/AAAAAAAAEXE/Q2KYO8ce_9Q/s1600-h/TradeDeficitGDP.jpg
Which caused this...
http://www.sott.net/image/image/s2/58749/large/Union_percent_1950_2010_442x33.png
both of which contributed to this...
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3220
Things most likely won't change anytime soon for teachers because of this...
http://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.asp
The budget problems in states go back to the master of the bait and switch...
http://zfacts.com/p/1195.html
and all the while kids welfare is ignorned...
http://www.photius.com/rankings/child_well_being_in_rich_countries_2007.html
Is anyone buying this nonsense?
The "acting white" is not reflection on black parenting but the roots of racism in America what victims of racism did in terms of behavior to survive the oppression. I am highly educated as a result of having black parents.
The President's visit to the Boston Pilot School, today, illustrates another problem. "Reformers" cherry pick a few schools, and invest heavily in them so a few kids can get a respectful, holistic, 21st century education. They do so by creaming the easier-to-educate kids, and dumping the rest in neighborhood schools, creating even greater concentrations of harder-to-teach kids. Too many "reformers," do not understand that highpoverty schools that serve everyone are not comparable to high-poverty selective schools. So, they take away the autonomy of kids and adults in neighborhood schools. They then impose non-stop test prep and curriculum narrowing that just makes things worse. "Reformers" used to call that "earned autonomy." People who understand neighborhood schools, like poor parents of color, know it as "bait and switch."
"Reformers" can't engage in conversations on these sensitive issues until they learn to listen. I'd also say in regard to Rhee, any person who doesn't understand the importance of the concept of "respect," especially in poor communities, is not qualified to be an educator. That's just one more way your book inadvertantly showed how Rhee was not remotely close to being qualified for her job as chancellor.
I agree with much of what you have written; however, I believe it to be much more difficult for a reformer to overcome race issues than your posting implies.
It often seems that reform is often rejected, a priori, as a racial insult, and that any reformer not recommending large financial expenditures is automatically dismissed.