Advocates of local control and a lean education bureaucracy have a new champion in Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Hired last June by Mayor Adrian Fenty, the 37-year-old Teach for America alumnus and founder of The New Teacher Project has garnered national attention for her tough stance on bureaucratic accountability and education reform. Rhee has set her sights on a most controversial task – cutting out the dead weight of D.C.’s bloated central education office.
On Tuesday, the D.C. Council made her job a whole lot easier, passing legislation giving Rhee the authority to fire nonunion employees “without cause.” Center for Education Reform President Jeanne Allen called the vote “historic,” and suggested in a Washington Times editorial that the measure might make feasible the previously untenable directive often issued to big-city school leaders: “Fix these schools but, oh, by the way, you have no control over personnel or their positions.”
It’s true that giving school officials direct hiring and firing authority over employees won’t single-handedly turn troubled urban school systems around. But it sends a powerful message to ineffective administrators, telling them that the needs of kids outweigh their job security. And if central office employees fail to serve consumers (students and their families), well then, pink slips won’t be far behind.
Rhee’s reforms include more than just shaking up the bureaucracy; nevertheless, she points out in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that the personnel legislation is “a critical piece” of her school reform equation. What else factors in her master plan? Rhee supports rewarding skilled teachers and giving principals greater autonomy. She’s also an emphatic advocate of parental choice and the competition it provides for public schools. When it comes to what goes on in the classroom, Rhee steers clear of silly platitudes, telling The Washingtonian the cause of her success as an inner-city teacher was “no silver bullet. It was sweat.”
If implemented, Rhee’s reforms have the potential to produce what her predecessors’ plans could not: a smart, well-functioning system that serves the educational needs of students. But will her ability to make personnel decisions and her efforts to empower principals have any impact on achievement? After all, some might say it’s a stretch to connect autonomy – whether it’s that of a local education leader like Rhee, or a school principal – with student performance. But data from last month’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), detailed by Education Week, make a strong case for the link between local control and achievement. Specifically, analyses of PISA data (culled from school systems in 30 of the world’s richest countries) show that test scores were higher in systems where local schools had the freedom to set their own budgets.
Clearly, having the necessary autonomy to do a job well matters. It matters for local leaders, principals, and teachers. But ultimately, autonomy matters because it impacts students and parents. They are, after all, direct beneficiaries of an effective system, or victims of a broken-down one. Rhee knows this and intends to use her flexibility to structure a system where kids come first. With an initial reform plan (.pdf) that’s peppered with references to “customers” and “constituents,” Rhee knows she ultimately answers to D.C. schoolchildren and their families.
Sure, she has a considerable task ahead. She’s a novice when it comes to managing a school district; moreover, D.C. schools are generally a mess and student performance is abysmal. But Rhee is no run-of-the-mill leader. Last week’s edition of Newsweek profiled her as someone likely to make an impact in 2008, calling her “unconventional” and “blunt.” As a second-grade teacher, she once swallowed a bumblebee to get unruly kids’ attention and keep them guessing, notes the magazine. Now, “everyone is waiting to see what she does next.”
So should we. Like her or not, this is one rebel with a cause.