Long Battle Expected on Plan to Fire Teachers

D.C. Union Being Aided By National Organization

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 25, 2008; B01

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and the Washington Teachers' Union -- aided by its national parent organization -- are digging in for what could be a protracted struggle over Rhee's plan to fire instructors deemed to be ineffective.

School officials have posted job openings for an unspecified number of "helping teachers" to counsel instructors who have received notice to improve or face termination. Principals have been asked to identify teachers who can be placed on the so-called 90-day plan, which gives teachers 90 school days -- or about five months -- to upgrade their performance. The helping teachers will also document all assistance given to instructors and report to central office administrators, according to the job description posted on the D.C. schools Web site.

The teachers union is gearing up to respond. In a letter to members earlier this month, WTU President George Parker said the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) will join the Washington local to "provide support and strategies" to instructors designated for the 90-day plan. Parker said this will probably come in the form of help from AFT and local union staff members who will work with targeted teachers to avoid dismissal.

"Our role for any teacher in the 90-day plan is to make sure they get the necessary support," Parker said.

School officials have declined to say how many of the city's 4,000 teachers they would like to replace. The 90-day provision has been on the books for years but has been difficult for school principals to administer. Paperwork, numerous binding deadlines for conferences with teachers and a series of required classroom observations are a major commitment of time. The helping teachers have also been a part of the evaluation system but are nearly always in short supply.

Rhee wants to reshape the city's teacher corps with instructors willing to tie job security to improved student achievement. Her proposal to boost salaries into the six figures, in exchange for a weakening of tenure protections, technically remains on the bargaining table as negotiations for a labor contract continue.

But union opposition to the plan, which requires teachers seeking top pay levels to go on probation for a year and risk dismissal if they do not meet performance standards, has significantly dimmed its prospects.

As a result, both sides are beginning to move the fight from the conference room into the schools.

In an August interview, AFT President Randi Weingarten said the national union was "not involved" in the Washington contract. But it has actually played a significant behind-the-scenes role, driven by the potential national impact of Rhee's salary plan -- especially its targeting of teacher tenure. An AFT national representative, George Bordenave, has been detailed to the Washington Teachers' Union offices for the past several months. The AFT also paid for a membership poll this summer that revealed opposition to Rhee's plan by a 3-to-1 margin. In large public gatherings of teachers, however, sentiment seems more evenly split.

Parker said in his letter that the local union is "working closely" with the AFT to formulate a response to Rhee's salary package. It is expected that the response will call for a larger District investment in developing the skills of teachers and less emphasis on their possible dismissal.

In an Oct. 8 letter to the New York Times, Weingarten called Rhee's salary plan one she "intends to impose upon teachers, not one she hopes to develop with teachers. And it is one that will, in effect, create a temporary work force of highly paid, transitory teachers who will spend much of their time looking over their shoulders at one another -- not at the children in front of them."

There is a history of tension between Rhee and Weingarten, who also serves as head of the New York City teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers. The New Teacher Project, the nonprofit organization founded by Rhee, wrote a report critical of a 2005 labor contract negotiated by Weingarten that eventually resulted in New York City paying $81 million in salary and benefits to teachers unable to find positions at other city schools after their jobs were eliminated.

George Jackson, an AFT spokesman, said Weingarten was not available yesterday for an interview. Rhee, asked whether she regarded the AFT's involvement as unwarranted or inappropriate, called it "disingenuous."

"The national union's claims that they have no involvement in local negotiations have been patently false," she said in a statement. "If the national [union] wants to insert themselves in this negotiation then they should be at least honest about their involvement."

Rhee is also developing a new teacher evaluation system, to be fully implemented next fall, based on test scores and other achievement benchmarks yet to be announced.

Parker told teachers in his letter that administrators have a right to set evaluation methods. But he also said that the union can contest the details if they will be harmful to teachers. Such a challenge would come in the filing of a complaint with the District's Public Employee Relations Board.

"The WTU will legally challenge any such process that is unfair to our members," Parker wrote.

Rhee said earlier this month that she had hoped to secure the changes she wanted and pay teachers well. But the $200 million in foundation money for the first five years of the program was contingent on a labor deal that broke new ground, she said.

When talks stalled, she announced a "Plan B" to bypass the negotiating table and use the 90-day provision and a new evaluation process to eliminate weak teachers.

Rhee Details Prescription for Ailing Schools to Donors

Leonie Haimson Reports:

Sound familiar? Michelle (Take no Prisoners) Rhee attempts a strategy right out of Joel Klein’s play book; going to foundations to fund her pet priorities, while asking that they donate directly to the DC Public Education Fund, which takes them out of the public domain:

“…she said she wants private donations directed to the D.C. Public Education Fund, a nonprofit created by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Rhee has said she wants to avoid cumbersome procurement processes and other bureaucratic tasks that would come from accepting the money directly from multiple nonprofits.

But some private donors are concerned, the attendees said, that the fund, overseen by a young former Fenty aide and a board with similarly close personal and political ties to the mayor, could lack independence and transparency.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201414_pf.html

Washington Post
Rhee Details Prescription for Ailing Schools to Donors

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2008; C04


D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, seeking more than $200 million from the private sector over five years, has presented potential donors with a plan that offers significant new details about her vision for transforming the city's foundering education system.

Among the questions addressed in the 13-page "DCPS Strategic Planning Update" is how she intends to sustain her costly proposal to dramatically raise teacher salaries after five years of anticipated philanthropic support has run its course.

The blueprint, circulated in private meetings and obtained by The Washington Post, calls for saving more than $90 million dollars in tuition and transportation costs through 2013 by bringing about 2,000 special education students, now in private schools, back to city schools. The plan does not specify how the children, who received private placement because the city could not meet their physical or emotional needs, will be served.

Rhee also envisions a $28 million savings by relocating the system's central offices on North Capitol Street, possibly to a former school building, and $121 million over five years from the recent round of school closings and consolidations. Overall, the financial plan assumes that during the five-year period in which private foundations carry a significant load, Rhee will extract about $300 million in savings from a school system critics have long described as notorious for squandering money.
And while the document promises a school system dramatically transformed -- with safe, clean buildings, rigorous academic programs and high-performing teachers -- it also shows that Rhee anticipates no more than 500 additional students enrolled in public schools by 2013.

Through her spokesperson, Mafara Hobson, Rhee declined a request for an interview. She said the strategic plan is "an evolving draft document and doesn't reflect final estimates, cost savings or allocations."

The planning document makes broad promises about the school system's future under Rhee. "The experience of DCPS stakeholders will be dramatically different in five years," it says. The paper divides that period into three phases. The first 18-month segment, currently underway, calls for action to "aggressively transition out poor performers at all staff levels."

The shakeup began in March with the dismissal of 98 central office employees and continued this spring with the firing of more than 40 principals and assistant principals. Personnel change continues as an objective in the salary plan Rhee has proposed to the Washington Teachers' Union, in which instructors opting for big raises and bonuses must agree to go on probation for a year.

The second 18-month period, from 2009 to mid-2010, stresses the use of test data to guide classroom instruction. A major theme of third though fifth years is to overhaul special education and completion of a data system intended to give parents real-time information about how their children are faring.

The history of school overhaul efforts in D.C. is replete with five-year plans embraced and abandoned. But Rhee has largely avoided spelling out a long-term vision. Instead, armed with the power vested in her office by the mayoral takeover of the school system, she has plowed ahead with a crash program of reorganization focused on building closures, extra support for substandard schools and replacement of under-performing teachers and principals.

While the city's business and political leadership laud her sense of urgency, they have also been frustrated by what they describe as a lack of detail about her long-term intentions. She has also put off potential allies with what is frequently described as a blunt, dismissive manner.

"She is without a doubt a different personality," said Mike Kimsey, president and executive director of the Kimsey Foundation, a major nonprofit supporter of education overhaul, who added that he does not know Rhee well enough yet but has heard the complaints, almost always leveled privately.

Rhee expects that most of the funding for her teacher pay proposal, which ties big raises and bonuses to improved student achievement, will come from large national foundations heavily involved in overhauling education. In recent private meetings, multiple attendees said she identified four major foundations -- Bill & Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, Dell and Robertson -- as prepared to underwrite the plan, should it win union approval.

Chris Williams, a senior program officer for Gates, said Friday that no agreement has been struck. "We haven't made a commitment on this and we haven't had a discussion about making a commitment," he said.

Officials with Broad and Robertson said they would not comment on prospective grants. Dell did not return a phone message.
Through Hobson, Rhee declined to comment.

Major national donors often look at the level of local contributions before making decisions on grants. On July 17, Rhee went to the World Bank for a meeting of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers, an influential network of foundations, charitable trusts and corporations that funds nonprofits and local governments. Its members include organizations that have invested millions in education over the years, including Fannie Mae, the Carter & Melissa Cafritz Foundation, IBM and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation.

According to three attendees who asked for anonymity because they did not want to damage their relationship with the chancellor, Rhee circulated the planning document and asked local givers for an annual commitment of $7 million to $10 million, over and above the millions donated to the array of community organizations that provide tutoring, after-school programs and other services to the District's public schools.

Moreover, she said she wants private donations directed to the D.C. Public Education Fund, a nonprofit created by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Rhee has said she wants to avoid cumbersome procurement processes and other bureaucratic tasks that would come from accepting the money directly from multiple nonprofits.

But some private donors are concerned, the attendees said, that the fund, overseen by a young former Fenty aide and a board with similarly close personal and political ties to the mayor, could lack independence and transparency. Philanthropists also expressed the worry that in an ailing economy with limited corporate dollars, Rhee's insistence on centralizing private largesse in the mayor's fund would limit traditional foundation support for the other older, smaller community organizations.