Michelle Rhee

Superman, Rhee and Everything in Between

John Merrow charter schools, media, Michelle Rhee, pbs newshour, teaching

I have a couple of things on my mind this morning, all somewhat connected.  Before I am through, I am going to recommend a bunch of websites, all worth a look in my humble opinion.  So here goes.

Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim, Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates on OprahThe publicity train for “Waiting for Superman” pulls into the station this Friday, when the movie opens, and its cross-country trek has been a marvel: fulsome praise on Oprah, the cover of Time, and so on.

For a balanced view of the movie, please read Nick Lemann’s review in the current issue of the New Yorker.  And here’s another, tougher review, this one by a teacher.

I have already reviewed the movie but want to reiterate my point: the bleak picture of public education that the movie paints is a huge disservice to millions of kids and teachers.

Because I ran the meeting where charter schools were born (1988) and have been following the story ever since, I resent the movie’s endorsement of charter schools as the solution.  Continue reading →

A New Song for Michelle Rhee?

John Merrow Below C Level, Michelle Rhee, school reform , , ,

A few years ago, people were singing “Michelle, My belle, these are words that go together well.”

Today people are singing a different tune, “Should she stay, or should she go?”

Now that Adrian Fenty has lost his bid for a second term, the education world is buzzing about the fate of Michelle Rhee, his outspoken schools chancellor.  Ms. Rhee has become a national figure, much beloved by many outside the district.  At home, however, she is a lightning rod and a polarizing personality.  In her 3+ years she has closed nearly two-dozen schools, fired more than 15% of her central office staff, and let over 100 teachers go for inadequate performance.

Michelle Rhee and Adrian FentyWhile many say that Ms. Rhee has made long overdue changes in a dysfunctional system, others—including both the local and national teachers unions—have campaigned to get rid of her and, by extension, some of the changes she has made.  By some reports, the unions spent over $100,000 to defeat Mr. Fenty and, by extension, Ms. Rhee and her policies.

What about Michelle Rhee herself?  Would she want to stay on and report to Fenty’s probable successor, City Council Chairman Vincent Gray? Continue reading →

Summer Ends, Fall Changes

John Merrow Michelle Rhee, paul vallas, teaching

For most of America’s 56 million school age youth, late August and early September are times of great excitement and anticipation. Sure, summer break is over, and that’s a drag, but most kids begin school excited to see their friends and with the belief that ‘this year will be the best ever.’

Back to schoolWe’re feeling something akin to that at Learning Matters. We’ve “started over” in our new office space, a large loft on the top floor–with high ceilings and a skylight–on West 26th Street in Manhattan.  We’ve closed the books on our 3-year coverage of New Orleans and Washington, DC, and are eager to dig into new stories, Continue reading →

MOVIE REVIEW: Waiting for Superman

John Merrow media, Michelle Rhee, teaching , , , , , ,

Note: I hesitated to review Waiting for Superman because of our dispute with Mr. Guggenheim about our PBS NewsHour footage, but that dispute was resolved (there’s no truth to the rumor that I threatened to picket the Hollywood opening in my skivvies). It’s an important film about education, a subject I have been reporting on for 35 years, and those two facts outweigh the other consideration.

Waiting for SupermanThere’s much to admire about Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim’s new film about public education. He and his colleagues know how to tell a story, the graphics are sensational, and some of the characters—notably Geoff Canada—just jump off the screen.

And I hope it does well at the box office, because that would demonstrate that a significant number of us care enough about education to spend a few bucks to see a documentary about it.

That said, the film strikes me as a mishmash of contradictions and unsupportable generalizations, even half-truths. And while it may make for box office, its message is oversimplified to the point of being insulting.

I realize that I am swimming against the stream on this, given that the movie has been glowingly reviewed by Tom Friedman in the New York Times and others, but please hear me out. Continue reading →

Further Proof that Teachers Matter

John Merrow Michelle Rhee, teachers unions, teaching

Last week I endorsed the use of data to identify ineffective teachers and—THIS IS IMPORTANT—the administrators who have known the identity of the underperforming teachers and have not acted.  That set off a firestorm, which I take to be indicative of the issue’s importance.

Credit: Sally Ryan / The Chicago News Cooperative

The LA teachers union is outraged, but according to reports it is also now being pressured by the school district and by AFT president Randi Weingarten (!) to reconsider. Here’s part of what the Los Angeles Times reported:

The Los Angeles Unified School District will ask labor unions to adopt a new approach to teacher evaluations that would judge instructors partly by their ability to raise students’ test scores — a sudden and fundamental change in how the nation’s second-largest district assesses its educators.

The teachers union has for years staunchly resisted using student test data in instructors’ reviews.

The Times also reports that LAUSD has had this information for years but has not acted because of inertia and fear of the union. I disagree: I think it goes back to the system’s willingness to tolerate mediocrity.

A number of respondents to last week’s post attacked my reasoning. Knowing that I am an opponent of simple bubble tests and have spoken out on the importance of multiple measures, they wondered how I could get behind a system that was using so-called ‘value added’ data and nothing else.

I cop to the charge of inconsistency and defend myself thusly: nothing else was happening! Continue reading →

Tabula Rasa does not mean Carte Blanche

John Merrow media, Michelle Rhee, paul vallas, pbs newshour, summer , , , , , ,

What are the emerging education stories in the months ahead? What continuing stories should we be tracking? What issues aren’t being covered in the proper depth?

What's next?I know it’s the dog days of summer, hardly the best time for jumping up and down with intellectual energy, but I hope you will give us a hand, because Learning Matters is at another crossroads, another decision point.

I hope you have noticed that we have devoted lots of time, resources and energy over the past three years to two important school reform stories: the efforts to bring about change in Washington, DC and New Orleans, LA, two of the lowest performing school systems in the nation, by Michelle Rhee and Paul Vallas, respectively. In a few weeks the final episode of this series will air on PBS NewsHour. In total we will have produced twelve stories about NOLA and twelve about DC. That’s unprecedented reporting, particularly for television, and it’s been worthwhile.

Now, however, we have the opportunity to cover other stories.

Continue reading →

Writing ‘Below C Level’

John Merrow Below C Level, Michelle Rhee, paul vallas, reading

In my work for PBS NewsHour over the past three years, I am most often asked two very specific questions: “Is Jim Lehrer ever going to retire?” And “What is your personal opinion of Michelle Rhee? Do you like her and what she’s doing in Washington?”

Below C LevelTo the first question my answer is always the same. ‘I hope not.” Of course I never answer the second question when I am asked, because it’s our job to report what we see happening, not express opinions or pass judgment. I do, however, have some thoughts on the subject, which you will find in Chapter 9 of Below C Level, pages 81-105. Yes, it takes 24 pages.

I spent five and one-half years writing Below C Level. The first drafts of many of the chapters were written on an airplane—I haven’t watched an in-flight movie for years—because my work takes me to distant places, and I have been living on the West Coast for the past eight years.

But, looking back with the first copy of Below C Level on the desk next to me now, I realize that the first five years were a walk in the park, relatively speaking. The last six months were without question the hardest part of the journey. During that time I rewrote every one of the 37 chapters. Once rewritten, it then had to find a place in the structure of the book, or go into the circular file. Continue reading →

What you didn’t see on television

John Merrow media, Michelle Rhee, paul vallas

My colleagues and I have spent the past week or more putting the finishing touches on the last installment of our reporting from New Orleans and the Recovery School District there. In all, PBS NewsHour will have aired 12 segments about Paul Vallas and the RSD, and we also produced three other post-Katrina (pre-Vallas) segments. (Watch the full Paul Vallas series here.)

Paul Vallas in New OrleansThat’s 15 segments, each 8-10 minutes in length, a total of 2 hours of television, roughly. You might be interested to know what went into creating those two hours. Each piece generally entailed three days of shooting, perhaps 6 hours of videotape each day. That 6 (hours) X 3 (days) X 15 (segments) = 270 hours in all.

Our monumental task–15 times over–was to then take that raw material and edit and shape it into a short segment that would tell some part of the story of the effort to transform what was easily one of the worst school districts in the nation.

We produced more than our reports for PBS NewsHour: Each piece was accompanied by as many as four podcasts, usually longer interviews with Vallas, State Superintendent Paul Pastorek, various Teach for America teachers, parents, and so on. (Listen to the podcasts here.)

We’ve been doing the same job in Washington, DC, chronicling the efforts of Michelle Rhee to reform the schools there. We’ve made as many trips, shot as many hours of video, and spent as many weeks editing. We’ll present our final chapter from that city later this summer.

Did we get it right? Continue reading →

Remembering a Bold School Leader

John Merrow Michelle Rhee, teaching

It feels like a death in the family. A charismatic middle school principal in Washington, DC, was murdered in his home last week, and we are mourning his loss. Brian Betts was one of a kind, an educator who gave up a comfortable job in a suburban district to ‘answer the call’ when Michelle Rhee became Chancellor in Washington. He wanted a challenge, and Rhee, recognizing his skills and devotion, assigned him to one of her tougher schools, a middle school with a history of low performance that was also merging with another low performing school.Brian Betts

Brian jumped in with both feet. He eagerly turned the page on the past and created a new identity for the school. With extra money from Rhee, he hired coaches for his teachers, coaches who taught the teachers to start their planning by writing the final exam and then working backward from there. With carte blanche on hiring, he brought in virtually an entirely new staff, and he made it clear to them that he expected results–or they would not be around long.

Kids loved him. That was apparent to anyone who spent time in the building or outside it before the first bell. He would greet children by name and with a hug, dozens and dozens of them. For someone like me–I sometimes struggle to remember my own name–this was an awesome display. Continue reading →

Changes in Detroit, DC and Beyond

John Merrow Michelle Rhee, robert c. bobb, school reform , , , , ,

These are amazing times in public education. For openers, there’s the huge competition for $4.35 billion in federal money. Of the 41 competitors in the Race to the Top, only two were chosen in the first round. The message seems clear: go home and clean up your act.

Michelle RheeNow, I don’t know how many of you out there looked at any of the original proposals. I read into four of them and can tell you that the writers (using that term loosely) have invented a wonderful substitute for Ambien, a perfect cure for insomnia. I think the average proposal came in at somewhere between 800-900 pages—of turgid prose. Had I been sentenced to read all of that stuff, I think I would have thrown up my hands, torn out my hair, screamed, and then given the money to the states with the shortest proposals.

I hope this time the Duncan team will tell the competitors in the second round: “30 pages max! If you can’t say it in 30 pages or less, don’t bother. Put all the rest in appendices, thank you.” (I recall the wisdom of “If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter,” attributed to Mark Twain and others.)

A second remarkable event is the new contract between the Washington Teachers Union and Michelle Rhee. It took 2+ years, but it may have been worth the wait. Continue reading →