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D.C. Schools Chief Michelle Rhee Fights Union Over Teacher Pay

The chancellor's efforts to enact a merit pay system could ripple across the nation.

U.S. News & World Report

D.C. Schools Chief Fights Teachers Union

In her quest to revive Washington's public school system, Chancellor Michelle Rhee is pushing innovative but con­tentious ideas, one of which has garnered her national at­tention: whether teacher pay can be tied directly to stu­dent performance.

"So far, nobody has really been able to do it on a large scale," says Jay Greene, senior fellow at the Man­hattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation. "She is a pathbreaker in pushing it as far as she has."

The repercussions of Rhee's succeeding, even in an incremental fashion, are far-reaching. If she is able to pay District of Columbia teachers based on the aca­demic achievements of their students, she could revolutionize the way public school systems are run across the country.

The idea is simple. Teachers are evaluated based on a combination of their students' test scores, aca­demic gains, and classroom observations from third-party evaluators. The system rewards successful teachers with a higher salary while flushing out in­effective ones and weakening tenure.

Rhee's original proposal for Washington's schools would have allowed educators to choose between two pay models. In exchange for giving up tenure and sur­viving a one-year trial period, teachers could make up to $130,000 in merit pay based on their effec­tiveness. Alternately, they could keep tenure and ac­cept a smaller raise. All new teachers would be placed on the tenure-free track.

The Washington Teachers' Union has scoffed at the idea, and a year later, Rhee and the union are still grappling over a middle ground. From the union's perspective, there is no fair way to evaluate teach­ers based on student performance, and it would never place tenure in jeopardy.

Tenure—an old-school job security benefit based on years of service and meeting certain require­ments—is a thorny issue. Rhee cannot hire gifted teachers without firing others, but she cannot fire teachers because tenure protects them. "She wants to get rid of tenure in ex­change for more generous compensation, which I think is exactly the right strategy," says Greene. "We don't want a lot of mediocre teachers who are all paid a mediocre salary. We want to have some really excellent teach­ers [whom] we reward with excellent pay." But Rhee needs cooperation from the union, and Greene, for one, doesn't ex­pect her to get it. "They need her not to succeed," he says. "I think even the national union will pour in money . . . to pre­vent tenure from ending in D.C."

Gains in achievement. Rhee may not get the sweeping reform she prefers, but the idea has influential supporters, includ­ing the Obama administration and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who announced this summer a $297 million Teacher Incentive Fund to reward teachers and principals nationwide for increases in student achievement.

Rhee, however, is quick to point out that linking teacher pay to student performance is not the cornerstone of her reform agenda. That title goes to finding a way to accurate­ly evaluate teachers' performance. "You have to be able to evaluate teachers based on their effectiveness in obtaining gains in student achievement and then make the determi­nation about whether they should continue to be employed by the district based on whether or not they are producing results for kids," she explains.

When Rhee took control of the school system in 2007, D.C. was widely regarded as the lowest-performing and most dys­functional school district in the nation despite receiving the most funding per pupil. At that time, only 8 percent of eighth graders were at grade level in mathematics. And district data showed that only 9 percent of ninth graders could be expected to finish high school and then graduate from a four-year col­lege in five years or less. "We were the only school district at the time that was on a high-risk status with the U.S. De­partment of Education," says Rhee. "School reform is hard anywhere, but this was not a situation in which we could afford to have a 10-year plan for incremental change."

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  • Initially criticized as young and inexperienced, the then 37-year-old Rhee didn't help her cause when she took swift steps to shut down underperforming schools, fire ineffective teach­ers, and replace principals, often without consulting the City Council, which controls the school budget. "It may be the greatest plan in the history of plans," says Michael Brown, at-large D.C. council member. The problem is "how she com­municates and deals with people. She doesn't really include parents; she doesn't include teachers—in fact, she fires them—and she doesn't really include the council."

    Leverage. In October, Rhee fired nearly 400 school per­sonnel, including 226 educators, to close a $43.9 million bud­get shortfall that union leaders, teachers, and council mem­bers claim was manufactured as an excuse to clean house.

    But the pace at which students are fleeing public schools and flooding charter schools gives Rhee bargaining chips. In 2007, there were 13,000 fewer students enrolled in public schools than in 2002. Over the same period, enrollment in charter schools grew by 9,000 students. "Part of what gives Rhee the leverage that she has over the D.C. public schools is that they've been bleeding students like crazy," says Greene. "So, because students are beginning to leave in large num­bers, Rhee has leverage and can say, 'Look, we're going to col­lapse here unless we change.' "

    Another powerful weapon she has is the full support, both monetary and political, of Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty. Rhee admits that a big part of her success depends upon Fenty staying in office. He is up for re-election in September 2010. "He has been the main driving force in our ability to enact these reforms in an aggressive way," she says. "He has been unequivocal about his support for these efforts and the schools, and that really has been the linchpin to everything."

    Early signs of success exist: The District of Columbia has shown impressive gains in its student test scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress tests since 2007, and in the past two years, the achievement gap between white and African-American stu­dents has closed from 70 percentage points to 50 percentage points. A 50 percentage point gap between races is unac­ceptable, says Rhee. But if that rate of improvement con­tinues, the gap will nearly close in five years, making D.C. "the first urban school district in the country where the race and socioeconomic status of a child does not determine their academic achievement levels." 

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    • More on education reform from U.S. News & World Report.
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