Rheerasure - Still Believe It Is All About The Kids?

Over 100 schools are reported to have erasure irregularities - this is the tip of the ice berg.

D.C. official resigns as school faces questions of test security

By Bill Turque, Published: June 20

Wayne Ryan, a former Noyes Education Campus principal who won acclaim for dramatic test score gains, has resigned from a senior position in the D.C. school system as the school he once led faces questions about possible cheating.

Ryan announced he was stepping down as instructional superintendent in an e-mail to colleagues Friday evening. He did not specify a reason for leaving.

“I am looking forward to the opportunity to pursue new options and old interests,” he said. He also thanked Acting Chancellor Kaya Henderson for “many years of support, encouragement and friendship.”

Ryan did not respond to an e-mail or phone message to his office Monday.

D.C. school officials, citing personnel rules, said they would not discuss the reasons for Ryan’s departure. He has been accused of no wrongdoing. In 2010, after nine years at Noyes, he was promoted by then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. As instructional superintendent, he supervised a group of principals.

Ryan, 55, who practiced law in Texas before becoming a principal, won a 2005 Distinguished Educational Leadership Award, sponsored by The Washington Post. But his career took off under Rhee, who hailed him as a rock star when reading and math scores on standardized tests grew dramatically from 2006 to 2009. Reading proficiency rates spiked from 24 percent to 85 percent, while math proficiency surged from 10 percent to 63 percent. He became a poster image for D.C. school reform in the Rhee era. “Are you the next Wayne Ryan?” said a principal recruitment ad.

But Noyes was also one of more than 100 D.C. public schools with classrooms flagged by authorities during that period for elevated rates of answer sheet erasures in which incorrect responses were changed to correct ones. A USA Today analysis of erasure data published in March found one seventh-grade classroom at Noyes with an average of nearly 13 wrong-to-right erasures per student. The District-wide average for seventh-graders that year was less than one.

Other schools with high-erasure classrooms included J.O. Wilson Elementary, Aiton Elementary and Coolidge High School.

Henderson has asked the D.C. inspector general to investigate USA Today’s research. Sources familiar with the probe, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said investigators have interviewed Noyes staff members.

Sources said last month that a fourth-grade teacher at Noyes was dismissed for test security violations on the 2010 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System. Authorities also invalidated test scores in three classrooms — at Noyes, and at C.W. Harris and Leckie elementary schools — for irregularities in 2010.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-official-resigns-as-school-faces-questions-of-test-security/2011/06/20/AGX6A0dH_print.html

Oh What A Web We Weave When We Practice To Deceive

After D.C. cheating probe, 3 classrooms’ test scores tossed

By Bill Turque, Published: May 18

The District has voided the 2010 standardized test scores of three classrooms after an investigation found evidence or a strong suspicion of cheating, officials announced Wednesday.

The disclosure comes amid ongoing reviews of security questions related to the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System, the high-stakes test used to measure student achievement, teacher effectiveness and annual progress as required by the federal No Child Left Behind act. It also comes as multiple school system and teachers’ union sources have said that at least two instructors were fired for inappropriate actions while administering tests.

Acting Chancellor Kaya Henderson declined to discuss the circumstances of the dismissals, citing privacy rules. Improper actions could involve giving students advance looks at test questions, prompting students during tests or tampering with answer sheets after the tests are completed.

D.C. test scores have been closely watched in recent years as school reform efforts have taken root. Rising scores on the city tests and on separate federal tests have been cited as signs of progress.

D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley said Wednesday that the troubles identified in 2010 test results were isolated. “Most of our teachers and students are playing by the rules,” she said.

Whether Wednesday’s action will dispel questions about the reliability of the city’s test scores remains unclear. A USA Today investigation published in March found that classrooms in more than 100 D.C. public schools showed higher-than-average rates of erasures from wrong to right answers on the annual tests between 2006 and 2010. They included schools that showed some of the most dramatic growth in scores. Henderson has asked the office of D.C. Inspector General Charles Willoughby to investigate the newspaper’s findings.

Testing experts regard elevated erasure rates as an indicator that students might have been improperly steered toward changing answers or that answer sheets were tampered with after the test was given. Classrooms in some schools, such as Noyes Education Campus, Bowen Elementary and Aiton Elementary, showed extraordinary levels of erasures: from 10 to 12 times the District average.

Mahaley, speaking Wednesday at the weekly news briefing of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), did not elaborate on what could have gone wrong in the three classrooms. Mahaley’s agency oversees the administration of the test — known as DC-CAS — in all public schools, traditional and charter.

In a letter to Henderson, Mahaley’s office noted that the three classrooms with voided scores were at Noyes, C.W. Harris Elementary and Leckie Elementary schools.

The invalidation of those scores came in response to answer sheet irregularities in classrooms at 18 schools — 10 in the school system and eight public charters — that were flagged after an analysis by CTB/McGraw Hill, the publisher of the test.

Mahaley’s office conveyed those preliminary findings to the D.C. school system, which hired Caveon, a Utah-based test security firm, to review security procedures and interview staff in the classrooms that had been flagged. Safiya Simmons, a spokeswoman for Henderson, said Caveon “concluded that two classrooms had possible testing irregularities and one classroom had a confirmed case of testing impropriety.”

Henderson’s office related the findings to Mahaley, who informed Henderson Wednesday morning of her decision to invalidate reading and math scores in the three classrooms.

Mahaley, who called Caveon’s assessment “three proven incidents of cheating,” said that in a school system with 3,800 classrooms and 45,000 students, the finding was testament to the effectiveness of the system’s security protocols.

Former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, who resigned the post last fall, said in an e-mailed statement: “I believe this process validates the integrity of the vast majority of the tests taken in classrooms across DCPS.”

The D.C. public school investigation, led by Caveon, has coincided with at least two dismissals related to testing, according to school system and teachers’ union sources.

The sources said a fourth-grade teacher at Noyes was dismissed within the past two weeks for test security violations on the 2010 DC-CAS. It could not be learned exactly what the teacher was accused of or how the case fits into the broader questions being probed by Caveon, D.C. schools or the inspector general’s office.

Simmons confirmed that a fourth-grade teacher at the school recently left the city school system, but she would not comment further, citing confidentiality rules.

Another teacher, a special-ed instructor, was also dismissed within the past week, according to Washington Teachers’ Union President Nathan Saunders. Other school system sources said the second firing involved tests from another school year.

In an e-mail Wednesday, Henderson did not rule out further disciplinary actions.

“I have been consistently clear that DCPS is moving aggressively to take appropriate action, up to and including termination, in cases where any cheating has been confirmed and a teacher acted inappropriately,” Henderson wrote.

District officials also made public a list of test security incidents on the 2011 DC-CAS, which was administered last month. The state superintendent’s office said its security monitors found 31 irregularities in regular and charter schools, of which 14 will be subject to further action by District authorities. The list does not identify the schools.

A summary released by Mahaley’s office contained only brief descriptions of the incidents to be investigated. Among them: “inappropriate level of support given to students”; “three teachers in three classrooms provided aid to students”; and “proctor gestured and spoke to student during testing.”

Staff writer Michael Alison Chandler contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/district-voids-test-scores-for-cheating/2011/05/17/AFJlln6G_story.html

Ain't Over 'Til It's Over

By Lisa Gartner

Created May 24 2011 - 6:28pm

WTU president unsurprised as his predecessor teams up with Rhee

Upon hearing the news that former D.C. teachers' union head George Parker was teaming up with rival-of-record Michelle Rhee, Randi Weingarten texted, "REALLY?"

Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, mediated tense contract negotiations between Parker and then D.C. Schools Chancellor Rhee, who has essentially labeled teachers' unions Public Enemy No. 1.

Weingarten was taken aback, to say the least.

But Nathan Saunders, who defeated Parker in his re-election bid for the Washington Teachers' Union presidency, felt quite the opposite. "This isn’t surprising news to me and a lot of people who really understood what was going on," he told The Washington Examiner.

In 2008, Saunders sued Rhee and Parker, saying in the suit that he was "systematically punished and retaliated against" for speaking out on teachers' issues.

"I was the first to come out and say that Mr. Parker and Ms. Rhee were colluding and pushing for the teachers’ contract, and that’s fairly reflected in the court records," Saunders said.

Parker is "definitely being used as a political tool," Saunders charged, but that's not his concern.

"We have received a lot of inquiries from teachers who felt they were never represented properly by Mr. Parker because of the rumors of him [colluding] with Ms. Rhee," he said. They're questioning "whether Mr. Parker sold them out."

"This is the very beginning of something that we’re going to have to pay attention to."

http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/capital-land/2011/05/nathan-saunders-george-parker-teaming-rhee-wtu

http://www.rheefirst.com/

Better Test Scores Do Not Neccesarily Mean Smarter Kids

No evidence mayoral control led to D.C. schools' better test scores, report says

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 4, 2011; 10:55 PM

Rising standardized test scores, often cited by D.C. officials as evidence of an improving school system, are of limited value in determining whether students are actually learning more, according to the first major independent study of D.C. school reform.

That conclusion, part of a report issued Friday by the National Research Council, is likely to drive new debate about the testing-centered culture of D.C. schools and other systems across the country. While the testing data contain encouraging signs, the widely quoted averages of citywide performance say little about the quality of teaching and learning.

"Looking at test scores should be only a first step - not an endpoint - in considering questions about student achievement, or even more broadly, about student learning," the study said.

The council is the research arm of the National Academies, and its report is the first in a series of evaluations required by the 2007 law that placed the city's long-troubled public schools under mayoral control. Researchers said that while the city has made "a good faith effort" to implement the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, it is premature to draw sweeping conclusions about its effect on student achievement.

The District became a national staging area for urban school reform under then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), who appointed Michelle A. Rhee as the city schools' first chancellor hours after taking control of the system. She resigned in October, after more than three years on the job, and was succeeded on an interim basis by her deputy, Kaya Henderson.

Fenty and Henderson could not be reached for comment. Rhee declined to comment.

Reading and math scores on the District's two main tests, the annual D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (D.C. CAS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), have shown what the report describes as "modest improvement" under Rhee and her predecessor, former superintendent Clifford Janey, although elementary-grade scores fell in 2010.

But researchers said the city must develop a more sophisticated capacity to track individual students who shift from traditional public schools to public charter schools, or in some cases drop out of the system entirely. The city also needs a firmer grasp on rapidly changing neighborhood demographics and their impact on academics. "In the meantime, naive aggregate comparison of test scores among race-ethnic groups in the District should be interpreted critically and cautiously," the study said.

The study received an enthusiastic greeting from critics, who say heavy emphasis on testing has narrowed curricula and warped classroom creativity.

"This report is a shot over the bow of politicians seeking to reform education in this incredibly narrow way," said Mary Lord, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education and mother of a junior at Wilson High School.

Former deputy mayor for education Victor Reinoso, who served under Fenty, agreed that better data are needed and that the city is committed to expanding the base of available information. But he added that test scores remain important "consumer or market indicators" for parents who have to make immediate decisions about where to enroll their children.

"I appreciate that the folks involved in this research are academics and they are going to want to see more and more proof," he said. "I just think that what we have to do is balance the need for the quest for perfection in data analysis with the practical reality that the schools are responsible for educating thousands of kids every day. So we can't sit back and wait for an answer."

In 2009, after months of political squabbling and stalemate, Fenty and then-D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), who is now the mayor, settled on the National Research Council as the independent evaluator for the school system under mayoral control.

The committee assembled by the research council includes a number of prominent scholars and practitioners, including University of California at Berkeley law school dean Christopher Edley Jr., University of Wisconsin sociologist Robert M. Hauser, former Long Beach and San Diego school superintendent Carl A. Cohn and Jon Fullerton, head of Harvard University's Center for Education Policy and Research.

The focus of this initial study is a series of suggestions on how the city might develop a system evaluating its schools. It said such an effort should be continuous, involve local stakeholders and dig more deeply into data surrounding the question of whether children in all parts of the city are realizing benefits from the schools' overhaul. The inquiry should also be independent of school and city leaders.

One method the study suggested was a partnership with a university or other outside institution. As an example, it cited the Baltimore Education Research Consortium, a partnership between the Baltimore school system and researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University.

As it stands, the District's gathering and handling of data about schools remain fragmented and incomplete. The study found that the District (along with other big-city school systems) collected significant amounts of information never made public, including promotion rates, student and parent perspectives on instruction, and measures of professional culture.

The data points more likely to land in public view, researchers said, "served to highlight the positive achievements of the district."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030402414.html

If Democrats are friends like this.........

Gov. Scott Walker can thank Michelle Rhee for making teachers unions the enemy

Richard D. Kahlenberg
Sunday, February 27, 2011; B03

Education writer explains how the former D.C. schools chief helped stoke anti-union fires

A half-century ago, Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to pass legislation allowing collective bargaining for public employees, including educators. At the time, teachers across the country, who make up a significant share of public employees, were often underpaid and mistreated by autocratic administrators. In the fight for greater dignity, union leaders such as Albert Shanker in New York City linked teacher unionization to the fledgling civil rights movement.

Today, Wisconsin is again at the forefront of a union battle - this time in Republican Gov. Scott Walker's effort to cut his state's budget deficit in part by curtailing collective bargaining for teachers and other public employees. How did it become okay, once more, to vilify public-sector workers, especially the ones who are educating and caring for our children?

On the most obvious level, teachers unions are taking a pounding because Republicans have gained power in recent state elections, and the GOP has a strong partisan interest in undermining public-employee unions, which provide troops and treasure to the Democratic Party. In Wisconsin, Walker's campaign to restrict the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other groups to the issue of wages is transparently partisan. Exempt from his plan are two unions that supported him politically: those representing police and firefighters.

But Walker's argument - that greedy teachers are putting their own interests over the interests of the public - resonates in part because in recent years, many Democrats have made that argument as well.

Exhibit A is former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Under Democratic mayor Adrian Fenty, she repeatedly clashed with the Washington Teachers' Union, which she said put the interests of adults over those of children. "Cooperation, collaboration, and consensus-building are way overrated," Rhee said at the Aspen Institute's education summit in 2008. She told journalist John Merrow it is imperative that teachers-union bargaining rights exclude issues such as devising a fair teacher-evaluation system.

Since resigning as chancellor last year, Rhee has launched a new organization, StudentsFirst, with the express goal of raising $1 billion to counter teachers unions. Her approach remains confrontational. In a profound sense, Democrats like Michelle Rhee have paved the way for Scott Walker.

But Rhee couldn't have done it alone. Then-candidate Barack Obama endorsed Rhee in a 2008 debate as a "wonderful new superintendent" and later applauded the firing of every single unionized teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. (The teachers were later rehired.) Rhee's agenda also received a big boost from liberal movie director Davis Guggenheim, whose film, "Waiting for 'Superman,' " implies that teachers unions are to blame for the failures of urban education and that non-unionized charter schools are the solution. The movie includes no acknowledgment that the things teachers want for themselves - more resources devoted to education, smaller class sizes, policies that allow them to keep order in the classroom - are also good for kids.

Today, Obama has appropriately labeled Walker's proposal an "assault on unions." And to its credit, the U.S. Education Department recently held a conference in Denver highlighting progressive agreements between unions and management in cities such as Baltimore and New Haven, Conn. But overall, one official told me, teachers unions feel unfairly criticized by the president.

Of course, some teachers unions brought this on themselves. Too often, union leaders protect incompetent teachers and make it difficult to pay outstanding educators more. But the bipartisan attack on unions as a central impediment to improved education is off the mark. America's largely non-unionized education sectors - charter schools and schools in the South - are hardly shining examples of success.

The debate in Wisconsin could give teachers unions a fresh chance. A USA Today-Gallup poll finds that, by 61 to 33 percent, Americans oppose ending collective bargaining for public employees. Teachers should use this moment to articulate a powerful reform agenda. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has made a good start by suggesting that all educational issues should be on the table (with the exception of private-school vouchers). The AFT has also endorsed a promising way to get rid of bad teachers: peer-review programs in which excellent teachers work with struggling ones to improve performance, but in many instances end up recommending termination of employment. Some school districts use similar systems. Under these programs, teacher firings have increased, but in a way that many teachers accept as fair. On Thursday, Weingarten further proposed accelerating the timetable for teacher terminations.

Wisconsin and many other states are facing dire budget crises, and unions need to be smart about advocating strategies that keep fiscal concerns in mind. That means moving beyond traditional efforts to pour more money into high-poverty schools. Magnet schools, which give low-income students a chance to be educated in a middle-class environment, are an especially promising investment. But this kind of engagement in education policy involves moving in a direction opposite of the one advocated by Rhee, Walker and others.

As the teachers union founder Al Shanker noted years ago, restricting bargaining to the issue of wages is a clever trap in which critics can suggest that teachers care only about money. Bargaining should be broadened, not constrained, to give teachers a voice on a range of important educational questions, from merit pay to curriculum. This could help improve the battered image of teachers unions. But, more important, it could help students.

Richard D. Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the author of "Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022506611.html

No Surprises Here As Rhee Back Pedals

Rhee is amazing... lots of hot air and collateral damage. And no shame.

Rhee now concedes students’ test answers may have been erased

By Bill Turque, Published: March 31

Former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee backed away Wednesday from her vehement criticism of a USA Today story on concerns about standardized tests during her tenure, acknowledging that some cheating may have occurred.In an interview with Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews, Rhee said that some of her initial comments were “stupid.”

“You have got to have really strong test-security protocols at the district level and at the state level,” said Rhee, who contacted Mathews. “The vast majority of people will not cheat, but there will be exceptions here and there.”

Rhee, who was chancellor from 2007 to 2010, said the school system should ensure that after students complete D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests, answer sheets are not left in school offices where they may be vulnerable to tampering.

The issue emerged Monday when USA Today reported unusually high rates of erasures on answer sheets in more than 100 D.C. public schools from 2008 to 2010. At some schools, wrong answers were replaced by correct ones at rates too high to be random, according to statisticians consulted by the paper.

Rhee said in a statement Monday evening that USA Today was in league with “enemies of school reform” who believe that D.C. scores could not improve without teachers or students cheating. She said USA Today’s report was “an insult to the dedicated teachers and school children who worked hard to improve their academic achievement levels.”

Rhee has become a major national figure in education reform since her resignation last October. Her stature rests largely on her work in the District, where city and federal test scores rose during her tenure.

Earlier this year, Rhee faced criticism for claiming in 2007 on her resume that as a teacher in the early 1990s her students at Harlem Park Elementary School in Baltimore made significant gains on standardized tests. The record neither supports nor debunks such a claim.

Acting Chancellor Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s former deputy, announced Tuesday that she had referred questions about testing security in D.C. public schools to D.C. Inspector General Charles Willoughby. But she also expressed complete confidence in the findings of Caveon, a contractor the District hired to investigate erasures on the 2009 and 2010 citywide tests.

“DCPS has established procedures to ensure testing integrity and to flag any concerns,” Henderson said Tuesday.

Rhee described Caveon as “the best alternative we had at that time.”

Henderson did not return an e-mail message seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/rhee-acknowledges-possible-cheating-on-school-tests/2011/03/30/AFBKaI5B_story.html

Good Article On Test Scores Report

The author of GF Brandenburg's blog says it better than I can - their intro:

Nothing But Spin from Rhee and Fenty on Spring 2010 DC-CAS Results

If you read the press release from the Fenty-Rhee Spin HQ, you would think that the (supposedly) wonderful test score rises under Rhee are continuing like gangbusters.

As usual, that’s not really correct.

http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/nothing-but-spin-from-rhee-and-fenty-on-spring-2010-dc-cas-results/

RheeFenty Rock Throwing

D.C.'s Rhee told that replacing Hardy principal may backfire

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 4, 2010; B01

There are signs that the lingering dispute over Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's decision to replace Hardy Middle School Principal Patrick Pope may be driving away the very families she sought to attract with the change: those in the "feeder" elementary schools in Northwest Washington.

Parent leaders told Rhee at a meeting Tuesday that the Georgetown school, which requires that students apply for admission, has received no completed forms from any of the approximately 150 fifth-grade families at Hyde-Addison, Key, Stoddert or Eaton elementary schools.

Last year, about 35 percent of fifth-graders from the feeder schools entered sixth grade at Hardy. Many of the rest secured spots at Deal Middle School, Washington Latin Public Charter School or parochial or other private schools.

Applications from students at other city elementary schools are also down sharply, from 162 at this time last year to 30 as of Monday morning, parents reported, although many more students are seeking admission through a school system lottery.

"Clearly the removal of Mr. Pope has hurt the program," said Keenan Keller, chairman of the panel of parents, teachers and administrators known as the LSRT (Local School Restructuring Team) for Hardy.

An enrollment decline would have funding consequences for the school, which has about 160 sixth-graders. Pope, who will leave his post in June, confirmed the numbers and said he was "very concerned." But with a March 31 application deadline, Rhee said it is still too early to draw conclusions.

"We would have to wait until the application deadline to have data that is really meaningful," she said in an interview after the meeting.

Rhee announced late last year that Pope, founder of the arts and music program that draws a majority-African American student body from across the city to the newly renovated school, would be replaced in June by Hyde-Addison Principal Dana Nerenberg.

Rhee said she wanted to strengthen Hardy's identity as a neighborhood school despite the application process, which she describes as confusing for local families. Rhee has assigned Pope to begin planning a middle school arts magnet. Nerenberg will run both Hardy and Hyde-Addison, underscoring the continuity between Hardy and its surrounding feeder schools.

Some African American parents at Hardy said Rhee is trying to alter the demographics of the school, an assertion she denies.

Parents at some of the feeder schools said that instead of making Hardy more inviting, the turmoil has given them pause. Sherry Woods, who has a fourth-grader at Eaton and two children at Hardy, said there is concern about having a principal running two schools.

"I don't want a principal who's got her feet in two doors," Woods said. "One of those learning environments is going to be grossly impacted. Bottom line, it will be the middle school."

Allan Assarson, who has a third-grader at Key and a sixth-grader at Hardy, said Key parents are worried about Hardy faculty following Pope out the door. "There are a lot of concerns about the transition Rhee is imposing," he said.

Rhee is also locked in a dispute with the LSRT over the District's annual out-of-boundary lottery for parents seeking to place students in schools outside their neighborhoods.

Until this year, Pope ran Hardy with an unusual degree of autonomy, based on a 2003 decision by the old Board of Education designating the school as a "special program." He instituted an application process that includes a student letter, teacher recommendation, the most recent report card and a school visit. Pope and Keller have said that it was set up as a way to assess students' needs and reach out to parents, not as a device to exclude anyone.

Families within Hardy's attendance boundaries are guaranteed spots. And rarely has an out-of-boundary family that completed the application process been denied admission, Pope has said.

But Rhee wants Hardy to draw out-of-boundary students from the lottery and then require them to complete the application process as a condition of admission. Citywide, interest in Hardy remains robust.

In the lottery that closed Sunday, 151 students put in bids for sixth-grade seats at the school, up from 88 last year.

"I actually believe that what we want to create here is a process where any family, regardless of where they live, as long as they fulfill the requirements of the application, have an equal opportunity," Rhee said.

Keller, an attorney for the House Judiciary Committee, said District law allows specially designated schools such as Hardy to admit by application and to use the lottery at the back end of the process if necessary to fill spaces.

Rhee and the LSRT ended the meeting at an impasse.

"Once again, you are creating instability at Hardy," said Keller, who contended that Rhee was "not in compliance" with D.C. law.

"I disagree," Rhee said.

Inquiries to D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles and school system General Counsel Jim Sandman were referred to Rhee spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway, who said in a statement late Wednesday: "The Chancellor has the authority to set the selection criteria for Hardy, and she has determined that selection of out-of-boundary students shall be based on the good-faith completion of all elements of the application process and participation in the out-of-boundary lottery."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/03/AR2010030302585_pf.html

DC Transportation Director - No Snow PLan

I take the following as a subtle admission that there was no plan........... ahhhh small government!! (or maybe it is small thinking government)....


District needs a major snow plan, transportation chief says

By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 27, 2010; B01

The District has a plan for a snowfall of 18 inches or more: Major roads should be cleared to bare pavement within 36 hours and residential streets within 60 hours.

The problem is there's no plan for much, much more, such as the amount dumped on the region during the back-to-back storms earlier this month, said Gabe Klein, director of the District Department of Transportation.

"What we need is a different plan," he said. "A contingency plan. A major storm plan."

Klein acknowledged the weak spot at a D.C. Council committee hearing Friday on the city's recent snow removal efforts. Residents who testified complained of inconsistent street plowing, untouched alleys and sidewalks, and random trash collection.

The snowstorms proved a test for all the region's leaders. But Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) appeared to face much of the criticism, having set high expectations with his longtime focus on constituent services and the city's praised handling of a 20-inch snowstorm in December.

The Fenty administration initially stumbled during this month's first storm with an announcement that schools would remain open, a decision that was quickly reversed. It continues to be criticized for the menacing, Blob-like mounds of snow that remain on street corners, in alleys and between parked cars. A few residents brought photographs as proof.

Their complaints were backed by council members who questioned Klein and William O. Howland Jr., director of the Department of Public Works, about why some streets were plowed and others weren't.

"This is about these pockets that weren't dealt with," council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said. "In some cases, it was bizarre."

Klein said the record snow was too much for the city's equipment. The city has a supply of plows that were too large to squeeze through streets crammed by snow and ill-parked vehicles, he said. "There were, unfortunately, instances of plows hitting cars," Klein said.

City officials, led by Klein and Howland, realized that the District needed smaller heavy equipment. The city owns fewer than 10 small heavy-duty plows, Klein said, and contracted 56 more to help with snow removal.

In the future, the city might want to prohibit cars from parking on both sides of a residential street, Klein said, adding that it would have to weigh limiting parking against snow removal. When the city currently declares a snow emergency, vehicles are prohibited from parking on main roads, forcing them onto residential streets.

As for the alleys, Klein warned that plowing those back streets alone would have tripled the cost of removal.

Kathy Henderson, a former Ward 5 advisory neighborhood commissioner, praised the city's overall performance but said there should have been a plan for staffing during the storm. Henderson said she hated to wake up a driver asleep in his plow to tell him to get to a certain missed block "after your catnap."

She said residents who have been certified or trained to operate such equipment, including her, should be identified for emergencies. "I'd be willing to plow some streets," she said.

Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), chairman of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation, said sidewalks that were to be maintained by property owners must be addressed. He pointed to Freedom Plaza, the open-air park across from the John A. Wilson Building and overseen by the National Park Service. The sidewalks and park were not cleared until well after the last storm. "Totally ignored," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022605835_pf.html

RheeFenty Evans Ellington School Drama - Round & Round We Go

Scroll to the bottom for the Post article that got the ball rolling - chronological from bottom to top most recent -

Ellington arts school staying put for now, Rhee says

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 22, 2010; B01

Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, moving Thursday to quell a storm of protest, said that the District has no immediate plans to move the Duke Ellington School of the Arts out of Georgetown but that it hopes to eventually build a new facility to replace the school's century-old home.

"Ellington will stay in Georgetown for the foreseeable future," said Rhee, who is scheduled to meet with members of the school's governing board Friday.

Rhee has been inundated with calls and e-mails from the school community since The Washington Post reported Sunday that the District had studied the cost of moving Ellington to the former Logan Elementary School building on G Street NE, near Union Station.

News of the possible relocation of Ellington, which draws its 85 percent African American enrollment from across the city for renowned music, dance, visual arts and theater programs, touched nerves still raw from the recent debate over Hardy Middle School, just two blocks to the north. Rhee triggered criticism last month when she announced the future replacement of Hardy Principal Patrick Pope, who oversees an art and music program that also draws a primarily African American student body. Looking to market the school more effectively to neighborhood families, Rhee announced that the principal of Georgetown's Hyde-Addison Elementary will run both schools next year. Many Hardy parents accused Rhee of trying to squeeze black students out of the newly remodeled Hardy, which she denied.

Ellington school leaders said word of the relocation study took them by surprise. Michaele C. Christian, president of the school's governing board, told Rhee in a letter Wednesday that she was "appalled" by the possible move, which had been considered without consulting the school community. She called the Logan site "woefully inadequate" and said the move "would eviscerate one of the most outstanding educational institutions in the District."

"Once again," Christian wrote, "we find ourselves distracted from the task at hand, creating the highest quality education that we can provide to our students, by politics and innuendo."

Rory Pullens, the head of Ellington, told parents in an e-mail Wednesday that any attempt to relocate the school will be fought. "We, as an institution, will not idly stand by while such plans are taking place and not have our voices heard!"

After speaking with Rhee on Thursday, however, Christian's tone moderated. "My understanding is there have been preliminary discussions about Ellington's needs, which are significant. And they were exploring various options for addressing those facilities' needs. I look forward to an opportunity sit down with the chancellor to address any residual concerns to put this all to rest."

Rhee declined to comment on The Post's report, based on a source knowledgeable with the internal discussions, that school construction czar Allen Y. Lew had been asked to develop a scenario for moving Ellington to Logan. She also declined to respond to D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who said in the same article that he supported the idea of moving Ellington to a more central location and opening a traditional neighborhood high school at the Georgetown site.

Rhee said the long-term solution for Ellington remains a new building, something the District can't afford right now. Anacostia, Wilson, Woodson and Eastern high schools are all undergoing complete reconstructions or major renovations over the next two years.

School officials say the cost of a new building, complete with a theater, dance and recording studios and numerous other arts-related needs, would be between $75 million and $85 million.

"I'm very clear that what the school needs is a great state-of-the-art facility," Rhee said. "If and when it becomes possible to do that funding-wise, we will fully engage with the Ellington community to make sure that where it's done and how it's done pleases the vast majority."

Addressing the controversy in an interview Thursday, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) was somewhat more open-ended than Rhee in his comments. He said it was "too early" to say whether -- or how long -- Ellington would stay in Georgetown. Asked if he could guarantee parents that the school, which is scheduled to be renovated in 2012, would remain in Georgetown beyond that year, Fenty said: "No, in fact, the opposite. We're exploring all options for all of our schools."

But Rhee said there was no daylight between herself and the mayor on the issue. "We're always looking for the best options for all of our facilities."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR2010012104778.html



From The Washington Post web site - D.C. Schools Insider blog by Bill Turque, dated January 21, 2010:

Fenty: Ellington not going anywhere, yet

I caught up with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty this morning and asked him to address the uproar over discussions about the possible relocation of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.The takeaway seemed to be that nothing is imminent, but that the condition of Ellington's 1898-vintage building raises questions about the school's long-term future in Georgetown.

Here is the entire conversation, which took place after a mid-morning groundbreaking for a new playground at the Arboretum Recreation Center in Northeast:

BT: The Duke Ellington community is pretty upset by what they've read recently.Can you shed any light at all on what the District's intentions are long term?

AF: I can't. I can't really shed any light, any more light, than what you've written in your articles, which I've been briefed on.

BT: Do you anticipate Ellington moving any time in the foreseeable future?

AF: I would just say it's too early to know what the entire future of all of our high school projects are. Our general commitment is that all of our high schools are going to get complete renovations and modernizations and Duke Ellington is long overdue.

BT: Duke Ellington is scheduled for renovations in 2012. But can you guarantee that Ellington will remain in Georgetown [after renovations]?

AF: No, in fact, the opposite We're exploring all options for all of our schools.

BT: What's wrong with it where it is?

AF:There's nothing wrong with the location. The building is completely run down and needs an overhaul. I think we're at stages now like we are with a lot of our high schools, looking at what is the best way to get a fantastic building for the Ellington students as quickly as humanly possible.

BT: Do foresee them at Logan temporarily?

AF: Again, I can't even commit to that. It's that early. We've got about four high schools, maybe more, that have broken broken ground. It's only those high schools we can discuss. The other ones, I have to defer to my facilities and programmatic experts who are kind of working everything out. Once they have something more concrete they'll present it to me, and if it makes sense then we'll present it to the greater community.

BT: Would you like to, like Councilman Evans has expressed, see a traditional, comprehensive high school in Ward Two around that location?

AF: One of things we want to do as we start to turn over the population, we've just gotten to the point where the population of the school system is growing, is to find ways to create more schools, that's elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.

BT: So you can see something like what the councilman is talking about?

AF: I can see in the future of the school system, and we've talked about this for the last three years, you know we had to make the consolidations early on. We just had too many schools close to each other, the resources were bring spread too thin. So going forward what we really hope is that as the population of the school system continues to grow, we'll do things like we've done at Oyster-Adams and other places where we have double campuses, open new elementary schools, new middle schools and yes even open new high schools. We're not at that point yet but it's the right goal for the city and I support it.

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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcschools/2010/01/_btthe_duke_ellington_communit.html

From The Washington Post web site - D.C. Schools Insider blog by Bill Turque, dated January 20, 2010:

Ellington principal: "We will not stand idly by"

Duke Ellington head of school Rory L. Pullens hasn't returned my e-mails or phone messages to discuss the possible relocation of the Georgetown arts school, described Sunday in The Post. But he and members of the school's governing board, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts Project (DESAP), which met Tuesday, have plenty to say to the Fenty Administration, the D.C. Council and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.

Here's what Pullens sent home to parents Wednesday:

"I am sure that many of you are well aware of the newspaper article that ran in last Sunday's Washington Post about the possible relocation of Duke Ellington. We, as an institution, will not idly stand by while such plans are taking place and not have our voices be heard! I met with our governing DESAP Board on Jan. 19, and among the many strategies we are employing, is the attached letter to Mayor Fenty, Chancellor Rhee, City Council, and others. This presents our official response and expectations of resolution. I will keep you posted on future developments in this most critical matter. Thank you for all your support today, and that support which may be needed in the future."

And here's the letter, signed by DESAP board president Michaele Christian:

"Dear Ms. Rhee:

I write on behalf of the Board of Directors of Duke Ellington School of the Arts Project, as well as the entire school community, to tell you that we were appalled by recent reports of a well developed proposal to move Ellington to a new location from its home at 3500 R Street, NW. Such a move, particularly to a facility as woefully inadequate as the suggested new site of Logan School, would eviscerate one of the most outstanding educational institutions in the District. It is shocking to us that the board of the school was not deeply engaged in even preliminary discussions, much less a fully developed plan, of such consequence to the future of the school, its students, and the entire Ellington community. Once again, we find ourselves distracted from the task at hand, creating the highest quality education that we can provide to our students, by politics and innuendo. We urge you and other District officials to recognize that Ellington's contribution to the education of a generation of talented students, as well as its tremendous success, in the face of continuing obstacles, in managing a dual curriculum of college preparatory academics and pre-professional arts instruction for its current student population of nearly 500, and to work with us, not against us, to create a world-class program.

Those who believe that Ellington can simply be moved to any other building do not understand the needs of a comprehensive arts high school. In addition to a college preparatory academic program, Ellington offers a wide variety of performing and visual arts programs that have special space needs. Since its inception, Ellington has worked within the current building structure to reach a point where, although it is certainly not perfect, does provide many of the facilities Ellington requires. Indeed, in the last five years, Ellington - together with its partners the Kennedy Center, The George Washington University, and many individual and corporate donors - has donated approximately $700,000 in funds and in-kind contributions to create such venues as a recording studio, a television studio, a professionally equipped theater, and a gallery to accommodate visual art works and the only high school museum studies program in the country. DCPS has also invested in Ellington, as a performing arts high school, by spending substantial sums to renovate high quality dance studios and other performance venues. Such facilities cannot be found in any other high school in the city.

If Ellington were to relocate, it should only be to a building that truly addresses the requirements of a school with Ellington's unique mission. These requirements would include:

-A safe location in which the school can safely operate a program that starts early and regularly involves student practice and rehearsals into the late night hours and weekends;
-A fully equipped performing arts theatre (not simply a school auditorium) with space for both rehearsal and technical design and production of major theatrical events, along with a black box theatre space and music recital hall;
-Several high quality dance studios;
-Several visual arts studios for both 2D and 3D art, graphic design and animation capabilities;
-A variety of large and small settings for vocal and instrumental music classes and practice rooms, insulated to keep sound from traveling;
-A full service audio recording studio and television production studio;
-A gallery for the exhibition of fine arts.

An example of such a facility is the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a performing arts high school in New York City recently built at a cost of approximately $78 million.

In addition, basic non-instructional operations costs including those for security, maintenance, cleaning and transportation to our partner institutions (George Washington University and the Kennedy Center) would increase with any move. As you know, our budget has not kept pace with our costs, to the point that we had to furlough teachers and staff this year. We are very concerned about the potential threat to our core curriculum that such additional costs would pose.

If the District cannot afford to build a new facility, then Ellington should remain in its present location and the District should proceed with the major renovation scheduled for 2012 to make this building an even better performing arts high school.

In stark contrast to a facility that would serve Ellington's needs is the Logan School, an elementary school built in 1935 whose sole qualification is its vacancy. Logan has none of the requirements listed above for a performing arts high school. While Logan could likely be renovated for purposes suitable to a school with only an academic program, no amount of renovation can change its location and structural deficiencies that make it unsuitable for a school with an arts and academic mission. In short, Logan is simply unacceptable. Ellington has a long history in its current location. It has successfully attracted students from all of the city's wards and, indeed, has had record applications in the past two years, including large numbers of students from outside D.C. public schools, and even the city.

In closing, as you might imagine, the entire Ellington community is now in complete upheaval over these recent events. The DESAP board would like to have an urgent meeting with you and other relevant city officials to discuss this nascent plan, and would also request that you meet with our parents and staff soon thereafter. The DESAP board will attempt to make itself available at a time of your choosing over the next few days. Please let us know which other city officials you feel should be present. In the press, Mayor Fenty and Jack Evans have been identified as participants in this planning, though of course Ellington is a citywide school and others will undoubtedly want to be involved. Meaningful engagement with Ellington on this critical issue has been lacking to date. The location of Duke Ellington School of the Arts and its facilities are far too important not to be addressed in a thorough and deliberative manner, and the involvement of those who know how to operate a performing arts high school with a full academic curriculum is essential. Please let us know how to proceed to schedule these meetings as soon as possible so that we can all get back to educating our students.

Sincerely,

Michaele C Christian, M.D.
On behalf of the DESAP Board of Directors

cc: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
Mayor Adrian Fenty
Council Chairman Vincent Gray
Councilmember Jack Evans
Councilmember Yvette Alexander
Councilmember Marion Barry
Councilmember Muriel Bowser
Councilmember Kwame R. Brown
Councilmember Michael A. Brown
Councilmember David Catania
Councilmember Mary M. Cheh
Councilmember Jim Graham
Councilmember Phil Mendelson
Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr.
Councilmember Tommy Wells

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By Bill Turque | January 20, 2010; 8:12 PM ET



From The Washington Post web site - D.C. Schools Insider blog by Bill Turque, dated January 19, 2010:

Cafritz "stunned" by Ellington scenario

Duke Ellington School of the Arts co-founder Peggy Cooper Cafritz says that if the District is contemplating a move for the Georgetown school, it is doing so without speaking to any of its partners.

"No one has spoken to me or to the chairman of the board," said Cafritz, referring to Michaele Christian, president of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts Project (DESAP) board, one of two that helps govern and finance the institution along with the District.

The Post reported Sunday that District officials have estimated the cost of moving Ellington into the former Logan Elementary School near Union Station, with an eye toward turning its current home into a traditional neighborhood high school for Ward 2. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) backs the idea.

District officials have so far said only that there are a number of different scenarios they are looking at for Logan. But Cafritz, a former D.C. school board president, said she was reliably informed over the weekend -- she declined to say by who -- that school construction czar Allen Y. Lew had also commissioned drawings that show what Logan would look like as a new home for Ellington, but without the input of anyone connected with the school or familiar with its needs. (I have a request in to speak with Lew)

Cafritz said she was "stunned" by the Sunday article, and the idea that the much smaller Logan could ever be a suitable location for Ellington.

"I've had tons of meetings in Logan," she said. "It's absurd. It's beyond the pale." Cafritz said that while she supports Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, she added: "This administration has a tendency to decide it is going to do something and then to just do it."

The issue will almost certainly come up at tonight's meeting of the DESAP board, she said.

By Bill Turque | January 19, 2010; 8:17 AM ET

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcschools/2010/01/cafritz_stunned_by_ellington_s.html





And the article that kicked it off:

Ellington arts school might be moved out of D.C.'s Ward 2

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 17, 2010; C01

The District is studying the possibility of moving the Duke Ellington School of the Arts out of Georgetown and converting the building at 35th and R streets NW into a high school to serve Ward 2 families.

Representatives of Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and school construction czar Allen Y. Lew said no decision has been made and that there are no immediate plans for a move. But Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) strongly backs the idea, and a source familiar with the discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from officials in Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's administration for discussing internal deliberations, said Lew's office has developed cost estimates for relocating Ellington to the former Logan Elementary School building on G Street NE near Union Station.

Logan housed the School Without Walls for two years before the high school returned to its newly renovated Foggy Bottom building in the fall.

Tony Robinson, a spokesman for Lew, and Jennifer Calloway, Rhee's spokeswoman, issued identical statements Friday: "The Administration has no current plans for the Logan School, but as it has recently become vacant with the return of SWW to their renovated Foggy Bottom Campus, we are beginning to research an exhaustive list of possibilities for the building."

Pressed about cost and who asked for the study, Robinson said, "That's all they would let me say." Robinson said he was referring to Fenty's office.

Ellington is unique among District public schools: It is operated as a joint partnership between the city, the Kennedy Center and George Washington University. Co-founded in 1974 by former school board president Peggy Cooper Cafritz and the late director-choreographer Mike Malone, it draws its nearly 500 students from across the city for traditional academics and an intensive program of vocal and instrumental music, dance, visual arts and theater. Many faculty members are working artists, and alumni include comedian Dave Chappelle and opera star Denyce Graves. Incoming students must audition as part of the admissions process.

Word of discussions about Ellington's future comes as Rhee has been working to retain a larger proportion of Ward 2 families in the public school system after they leave the elementary grades. In November, she replaced Patrick Pope, principal of nearby Hardy Middle School, which has an art and music program that also draws a primarily African American student body from outside Ward 2. Looking to market the school more effectively to neighborhood families, Rhee announced that Pope would be succeeded at the end of the school year by Dana Nerenberg, principal of Georgetown's Hyde-Addison Elementary, who would run both schools.

Parents at Hardy, which completed a $48 million renovation, have said that Rhee is trying to squeeze African American students out of the middle school, a claim she denies.

Evans has long supported converting Ellington -- the former Western High School -- back into a regular "comprehensive" high school and moving the arts magnet to a new home in a more central location for its citywide student body. He points out that Ward 2 is the city's only ward without a neighborhood high school.

"I would say yes, I'm interested in exploring the opportunity to create a new Ellington at a more centralized location and a new full-service high school for Ward 2," Evans said. He added that he is at "the very beginning stages" of discussing the idea with Rhee and Fenty (D) but then said: "Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee move quickly on things. Things happen fast."

Ellington Principal Rory Pullens did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

Some Ellington parents said they had heard rumors of a possible move and found them disturbing.

"Most of the parents I talked to are not happy, not happy at all," said Glennette Clark, a Ward 5 resident whose daughter is a junior literary media major. She has scheduled a "living room meeting" next month for Rhee to speak with some Ellington parents.

"Our feelings are that this is more an economically driven" move, Clark said. "Times being what they are, parents in that community want their kids to be able to go to a school that they don't have to pay for."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/16/AR2010011602748.html

I Have Watched This Before

Replacing principal at Hardy is decried
D.C. chancellor accused of trying to squeeze out minority students

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 6, 2009

Sarah Bax, an award-winning math teacher at Hardy Middle School in Georgetown, goes back many years with Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, once her trainer in the Teach for America program.

But Bax had a warning for her old mentor Friday night, after Rhee announced her decision to replace Patrick Pope, the popular longtime principal.

"This is a grave, grave error," Bax said. "This staff will not be here when Mr. Pope is not here."

Bax was part of a standing-room-only crowd of parents, teachers and students infuriated by Rhee's decision to change leadership at the school, home to a highly regarded arts and instrumental music program that draws a predominantly African American student body from all wards of the city.

Rhee said Pope would finish the academic year at Hardy and then begin planning a new magnet middle school for the performing arts. He will be replaced this summer by Dana Nerenberg, principal of nearby Hyde-Addison Elementary, who will run both as a unified pre-kindergarten through eighth grade program.

Rhee, who promised that Hardy's arts curriculum would not change and that the school would remain open to out-of-boundary enrollment, is looking for ways to retain more of the city's white middle class families, who usually leave the public school system after the fourth or fifth grade.

But in a tense and often angry two-hour session in the school cafeteria, punctuated by calls of "liar" and "no BS," Rhee was confronted by accusations that she wanted to squeeze minority students out of Hardy to make it more palatable for white families from neighborhood "feeder" schools. Some said the neighborhood wants to "take back" Hardy now that a $48 million renovation is complete.

Rhee, who has held meetings over the past year with parents at nearby elementary schools such as Key, said they have long been confused by Hardy's application process, which she said left the misimpression that it was not a neighborhood school open to all within its attendance area.

Members of the Hardy community said that was insulting and absurd and that elementary parents have heard years of presentations from Pope and his teachers about how Hardy operates. They also took issue with meetings Rhee has held with feeder school parents over the past year while failing to consult with Hardy's parent leadership.

Jeffrey Watson, who sent two sons to Hardy, said neighborhood parents stayed away because they were not comfortable with the racial composition of the school.

"Don't play games with people in here. We're not stupid," Watson said. "Rather than having private meetings with them, tell them to walk on over."

Rhee said she found the suggestion that race factored into her dealings with neighborhood parents to be "extraordinarily disconcerting."

"In none of the conversations that I have had about Hardy, with parents either at school currently or at the feeder schools, has anyone said they were said they were concerned with the racial makeup of the school," Rhee said.

But Pope's fate remained the focal point of the emotionally raw evening. Many were upset by recent public statements, one from a Rhee staff member and another from Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson, that there would be no leadership change. The audience repeatedly asked Rhee to reconcile her praise for Pope's record with her decision to replace him with a much younger, less experienced elementary school principal who would have to split her time between two buildings.

Asked whether she offered Pope the option to stay at Hardy rather than accept the planning job, Rhee said: "I gave him the offer. He accepted the offer." Pope attended the meeting but did not speak. Asked afterward whether he was offered a chance to remain, he declined to comment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120501580.html

RheeFenty Appears At City Council Hearing

Ms. Rhee appears at the City Council meeting and acknowledges that yes the those fired are older than the average age of DCPS teachers and the average age of the 900 new hires is considerably younger when she has been selling her line that both groups accurately reflected DCPS' teachers' demographic. In addition to age descrimination, Ms. Rhee acknowledges illegally shifting monies from one program (regular teachers) to another program (summer school), a maneuver that requires Council approval. And she basically says - "screw you Council, I did it, I challenge you to do something about it".

Her logic that she made a decision between the interests of adults and the interests of students is ludicrous. The adults teach the students. It is not some simplistic one against the other.



Rhee ignored instructions about cuts, council says



By Bill Turque

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

D.C. Council members angrily accused Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee on Thursday of skirting the law by deciding unilaterally to lay off teachers and staff -- instead of trimming summer school operations -- to save $9 million in the school system's budget.

The decision, which Rhee defended on legal and policy grounds, was one of a series of disclosures during a contentious day-long oversight hearing that shed new light on the layoffs. The dismissals have sparked vociferous street protests, a union lawsuit and the most intense public debate of Rhee's 28-month tenure.

For some council members, the revelations confirmed suspicions that Rhee ignored a council directive to trim the summer school program and manipulated this year's budget process to further her goal of replacing a large portion of the city's 4,000 teachers. They vowed to press their investigation of the dismissals.

The hearing also laid bare festering tensions between Rhee and D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), a possible mayoral candidate next year, who has for months criticized the school leader for a lack of communication and transparency. He said her decision, which he called "incredibly cavalier," violated legal requirements that she submit a "reprogramming" request to the council when shifting funds.

"I'm talking about the law," Gray said. "Why bother to have a legislative body if the people in the executive branch do whatever they choose because they don't like the decision of the legislative body?"

Others took issue with Gray's analysis, but even some of Rhee's most steadfast supporters on the council rebuked her for the bitter state of relations between the school system and elected officials.

"We cannot continue to have this kind of craziness," said Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who noted encouraging signs of progress in the schools but lamented that "we are sitting in a chamber where tensions couldn't be higher." Under Rhee, test scores have risen recently, and enrollment appears to have stabilized after a long decline.

'Change is hard'

Testifying under oath, Rhee said she was open to improving communications but added: "Change is hard. Some of the decisions we are making are going to cause some opposition and push-back. We can't shy away from those decisions because we don't want to hear the noise."

Rhee said the Oct. 2 layoffs of 266 teachers and other educators were needed to help close a $43.9 million shortfall in the 2010 budget. Union leaders have denounced the action as an illegal mass firing designed to purge older educators. They have gone to court to have the teachers reinstated.

Rhee also revealed new information about the teachers who were fired and the 934 she hired during the spring and summer. In written testimony delivered Wednesday night, she told Gray that the average age of the District's teachers is 42 and that the average age of those who were laid off is 48. The average age of the 934 new hires is 32.

Rhee had deflected claims of age discrimination in interviews this month, saying that the average age of the laid-off educators was consistent with the age of the school workforce.

Thursday's hearing centered on $20.7 million the council cut from the school budget July 31, part of a citywide belt-tightening because of declining tax revenue. About $9 million of the cut came in the form of a reduction in 2010 summer school operations.

Rhee said that summer school has become a critical component in helping high school students catch up academically, recover course credits and stay on a path toward graduation. Given a choice between protecting the interests of adults and students, she said, she chose to protect students. The $9 million represents a little more than 100 of the 266 teacher layoffs.

A visibly exasperated Gray was not swayed, citing what he called Rhee's violation of city regulations.

"You think that's inconsequential?" he asked. "You think that's okay?"

Rhee responded: "I think that at times you are making difficult decisions, and things don't always happen in the ideal manner," adding that Attorney General Peter Nickles and James Sandman, the school system's general counsel, advised her that she was on firm legal ground. She added that she will submit the reprogramming request next year before the beginning of summer school.

Mixed phone signals

Gray asked why the council had to wait until Thursday to learn that rerouting summer school funds was part of her strategy for meeting the shortfall. Rhee, in turn, accused Gray of being unwilling to pick up the phone.

"There have been multiple occasions in the last few months where I have tried to get on the phone to talk to you about these issues," she said, describing one particular day in which two scheduled conference calls fell through because he was not available.

Council members also denounced Rhee's chief financial deputy, Noah Wepman, who acknowledged that he was aware in mid-July that as the school system was hiring hundreds of new teachers it faced a deficit of between $12 million and 13 million in its 2009 budget. Wepman said he briefed Rhee on the deficit, which eventually grew to $20 million, and said she would need to adjust the 2010 budget to close the gap. One of the options discussed, Wepman said, was layoffs.

Wepman also acknowledged that he never shared information about the deficit with his superior, the District's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, who certified the 2010 budget without knowing of the potential shortfall. Wepman conceded that he should have been more communicative.

Joyce E. Smithey, an employment lawyer with Rifkin, Livingston, Levitan & Silver, said in an interview that "if the evidence shows that the chancellor hired employees in bad faith, then the question is whether she did so with the goal of forcing a layoff of older employees. If that's the case, then any admission about advanced knowledge of budget troubles could be damaging."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/29/AR2009102901889_2.html?hpid=moreheadlines

FentyRhee In Action - Teachers Cut

District Schools Lay Off Teachers
Layoffs Come Amid Scramble to Staff Security Checkpoints

By Bill Turque and Emma Brown
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 3, 2009

In one of the most turbulent days in its recent history, the D.C. public schools system laid off more than 200 teachers Friday and coped with the abrupt loss of its 300 security guards, whose company went out of business overnight Thursday.

The combination of events, which included a skirmish between students and police at McKinley Technology High School that resulted in two arrests, highlighted the challenges faced by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) as they struggle to reform the troubled system in lean economic times. The layoffs were the deepest cuts for the school system since 2003.

In all, 388 school employees received separation notices, the latest jolt to a system that has seen broad and sometimes wrenching change under Rhee. The schools chief has rolled out a tough evaluation regimen that links some instructors' job security to standardized test scores and raised the bar for other educators with an elaborate set of classroom requirements and guidelines.

In a sign of significant progress, a federal judge told Rhee on Friday that the city had made enough gains in reforming its special education system that he would consider releasing the District from court oversight.

But Rhee, beginning her third school year in the District, also learned on the eve of the layoffs that Hawk One, the company that placed security guards in the city's 127 schools, had gone out of business. The company had been experiencing financial troubles and was not expected to continue working in schools when its contract expired in December, but its abrupt collapse sent officials scrambling.

"These same security guards, they dealt with the kids throughout the year, so you take them away from the students in addition to taking the teachers away and replace them with D.C. cops -- it was a terrible situation," said Kaprice Perry, whose daughter is a senior at McKinley.

Schools opened Friday with a patchwork of police and school administrators staffing security checkpoints. Although the loss of the guards slowed the beginning of school at some locations, the day proceeded quietly by most accounts. Two firms, Securitas and U.S. Security Associates, will be working at schools beginning Monday, officials said.

The McKinley scuffle was the only serious incident reported. An estimated 200 students gathered outside the Northeast Washington school as the day ended to protest the staff layoffs. Witnesses said that a female student angrily confronted police and fell or was knocked to the ground. She was arrested.

Saymendy Lloyd, mother of a ninth-grader at McKinley, said she was arrested for disorderly conduct after questioning the student's arrest. "I said children should be able to express themselves," Lloyd said. "They said, 'You're interfering with police business.' "

Police said two people were arrested but gave no details.

"This should not have happened," said McKinley PTA President Michelle Lewis. "The mayor should have handled it different. This whole year is disrupted."

Officials said the layoffs were necessary to close a $43.9 million gap in the system's 2010 budget caused by a round of July spending cuts and what Rhee called the need to "right-size" a school system that has seen steep enrollment declines during the past decade. That meant shedding the cost of extra teachers, counselors, janitors and other personnel. Central office programs and personnel were also trimmed, although officials did not offer details.

The 229 teachers were placed on paid administrative leave and will be dropped from the payroll Nov. 2. They represent about 6 percent of the classroom teaching force of 3,800.

School officials did not specify which schools had experienced layoffs, saying only that the cuts were concentrated at a relatively small number. They said 39 schools experienced no layoffs, and another 37 lost just one staff member. A dozen schools lost five or more. The heaviest cutbacks were expected to occur in high schools, some of which have not reached their projected enrollments.

Sources said as many as 20 faculty and staff members at Cardozo High School were in danger of dismissal, along with 18 at Ballou High and 15 at Spingarn High. Rhee promised minimal disruption to student schedules.

Principals were provided with a "separation notification script" to use when presenting teachers with dismissal notices Friday afternoon. It asked that they return all District property and said they could return Saturday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to gather personal belongings.

At Cardozo High School, Brittany Lee, 25, a laid-off first-year special-ed teacher, was loading boxes into her car, aided by a student. She said some students in her class read on the second-grade level, and she questioned the District's ability to serve them.

"I don't understand what class my students are going to learn to read in," Lee said.

Veteran teachers had expressed fears that they would be targeted by Rhee and school principals, who were not bound by seniority considerations in drawing up layoff lists. Rhee did not offer details but said the terminated employees as a group were "consistent with the overall demographic makeup of the staff."

Washington Teachers' Union president George Parker disputed Rhee's numbers and analysis. He said he had been informed by Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson that 266 teachers were terminated. He said early indications, based on calls he had received from teachers, were that the terminated group was predominantly "senior teachers over 50."

"It's a very disturbing pattern," Parker said. "Clearly, a lot of mistrust has been generated by this."

Rhee also faces questions about the fiscal justification for the layoffs. D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, who contends that the dismissals are not necessary, announced Friday that he will hold hearings this month. "I'm convening this hearing so that we, as a community, can get to the bottom of these decisions," Gray (D) said in a statement.

Parker added that the turmoil created by the layoffs had deflected his attention from trying to reach a contract agreement with Rhee and the District. Talks have proceeded intermittently for almost two years, slowed by disputes over job security issues.

"Clearly, this has had some interruption," said Parker. "Our focus from a union standpoint is on the workforce and the students."

Asked whether Friday was her most difficult day as chancellor, Rhee said that it was hard to assess.

"Anytime you're dealing with a situation like this, it's difficult," she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100202289.html

DCPS Taking On Special Ed?

Why did DCPS wait over the summer to see if things "would improve" to then disrupt a school year? Best for the children as RheeFenty so often declare? More going on here than the Post reports......




City to Pull 170 Students From Private School

By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 25, 2009

A Springfield private school that is paid by the District of Columbia to provide education to students with special needs is in danger of closing after the District decided this week to pull its students, citing concerns about the quality of instruction.

Accotink Academy, which has worked with District students for more than 15 years, received an e-mail Wednesday from Richard Nyankori, the District's deputy chancellor for special education, who informed the school that 170 students were being pulled in the coming weeks.

Accotink Academy said it had not been told of any concerns before notices were sent to parents Tuesday. They also said the academy's teachers were highly qualified and that the school wasn't going down without a fight.

Most of the academy's students are from the District, and the school, which has been open since 1964, will be forced to close if they are pulled, said Elaine N. McConnell, the academy's founder.

"We've never had a blemish on our name," she said. "We weren't given one word, not one single word."

The District has nearly 9,300 special education students, including those in public charter schools, and about 30 percent of them are enrolled in private schools because the District can't meet their needs. The cost to taxpayers in tuition and transportation is about $200 million a year. Accotink Academy has been receiving about $10 million a year from the D.C. school system, according to District figures.

The e-mail from Nyankori said that Accotink staff members were "indifferent" to the students and that the quality of teaching was "quite low." It also said teachers didn't seem to be following individualized education plans, which guide instruction for special education students.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles said the school should have known from repeated monitoring visits that it was being evaluated. It was "not a close case," he said.

"If they couldn't see that what was going on was inappropriate," he said, "then they must have been blind."

He said the school wasn't closed over the summer because "there may have been some hope" that it would improve. "They haven't gotten the message," he said.

Several parents said that they had not seen any problems and that they were worried that switching schools a month into the school year would disrupt students far more than any changes that might have been made over the summer.

"I have never had problems with getting any educational need that I wanted for him," said Barbara Jones-Dixon, whose 18-year-old son is in his final year at the school. When her son arrived there eight years ago, Jones-Dixon said, "he was a child that did not trust anyone. . . . He has made tremendous progress."

The students and families will meet with placement teams in the coming weeks to determine where they will be going to school. They will be allowed to go to private schools, according to letters they received from the school system. Nickles said he did not think the change would save the District any money.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092404842.html

RheeFenty Ax @ Work

School Cuts Appear to Be Well Underway

By Bill Turque and Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 24, 2009

When Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced in front of D.C. school headquarters Sept. 16 that the District will lay off teachers as part of up to $40 million in budget reductions, they said the public would have a voice in deciding where and how to cut.

"Principals will spend the remainder of the month working with instructional superintendents and their school communities to determine the budget adjustments that best meet their needs," Rhee said in her formal statement.

It would appear, however, that the process is more than well underway. On Friday, two days after the Fenty-Rhee announcement, Director of School Operations Jesus Aguirre told principals in a memo that they had until 10 a.m. Saturday to hand in their budget reduction worksheets identifying the positions they planned to eliminate to meet financial targets.

The expectation was that principals would consult Local School Restructuring Teams, advisory bodies of parents, teachers and administrators that offer input on budget issues. Perhaps some teams were consulted, but if they were, it was on the fly.

"Train has left," one veteran principal e-mailed Monday. "Cursory attention paid to school communities. There really wasn't time."

Starting Monday, principals began trekking to a sixth-floor conference room in the human resources department to discuss their choices with senior administrators. If, for example, a principal thinks the school can get by with one fewer math teacher, he or she must "rate and provide a supporting narrative" for every math educator in that job classification. The rating and writing are to be done in the conference room.

The rating criteria are heavily weighted toward "office or school needs," which count for 75 percent of the 1-to-10 score. That includes just about everything Rhee preaches, such as commitment to student achievement, positive classroom environments and using data to make decisions about instruction. Ten percent will come from contributions to the school community, such as after-school tutoring, or an exceptional prior-year performance. Using special skills or life experiences to enrich student life count for another 10.

Human resources calculates the final 5 percent: length of service, veterans preference and past outstanding performance ratings.

Before the end of the month, the District will deliver termination notices to principals, who must hand them out the next day after school. If they think the news might be met with hard feelings, or worse, principals should be in touch with Aguirre.

"Please feel free to contact the Director of School Operations if there are unique security issues that you believe need to be addressed," he wrote.

D.C. Teachers Rally Against Rhee, Union Head

D.C. Teachers Rally Against Rhee, Union Head

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:41 PM

A small but vocal band of District teachers, angry about impending layoffs, rallied against Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and their own union president in front of the school system's central offices early Thursday evening.

"Our teachers are running scared right now, because they're not sure they'll have a job," said Malvery Smith, a second grade teacher at Turner Elementary School@Green in Southeast.

Smith, who has taught in the city for 14 years, was one of about 60 District educators in the plaza in front of school headquarters on North Capitol Street. They were joined by supporters and community activists.

Teachers protested Rhee's Sept. 16 announcement of a still-unspecified number of layoffs. It came more than three weeks into the school year and nearly seven weeks after the D.C. Council sliced $20.7 million from the 2010 DCPS budget. The cuts, which also hit other city agencies, were triggered by a continued decline in tax revenue.

Teachers who will lose their jobs are expected to be notified by Sept. 30.

Word of the layoffs followed a spring and summer when the school system filled 900 teaching vacancies. Rhee said she did not expect the council's cuts, which were approved July 31. She waited until mid-September, she said, so that the staff reductions could be done in tandem with the annual "equalization" process, which shifts teachers at under-enrolled schools to others in need of more educators.

But teachers scoffed at that explanation Thursday, contending that Rhee is seeking another way to oust veteran instructors. "That doesn't hold water," said Willie Brewer, an instrumental music teacher at Marshall Elementary in Northeast who has worked in District public schools for 26 years.

Jerome Brocks, a veteran special education teacher said there was only one reason Rhee is pursuing the cuts. "It's to get rid of veteran teachers of color," said Brocks, who is black.

Rhee has denied targeting teachers because of age or race.

Washington Teachers Union President George Parker did not attend the rally, which was organized in part by two of his most outspoken critics, union board of trustees member Candi Peterson and its general vice president, Nathan Saunders.

They have denounced Parker for weak leadership and aligning himself too closely with Rhee in contract talks that have lasted nearly two years. The District's 4,000 union members have been without a contract for three years.

"Our union leadership has led us to this point," said Tom O'Rourke, a social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School. "Management knows they can wait us out and pick us off one by one."

Parker said the union didn't endorse the rally because it was "hastily and loosely organized.

"It did very little to serve the interests of our members, although it may do a lot to serve the political interests of Candi Peterson and Nathan Saunders," he said.

Parker said the teachers union will hold a rally Oct. 8.

It has been a turbulent first few weeks of the new school year for D.C. teachers, who have been trying to adjust to a series of changes made by Rhee.

In addition to the impending layoffs, the District has unveiled a new, rigorous evaluation system that will include improvement in standardized test scores as part of the criteria for assessing some instructors. It is linked to a deeply detailed new set of teaching guidelines and strategies that cover everything from classroom presentation to checking for student understanding to instilling the belief that hard work leads to success.

School officials have also introduced a revised version of the student disciplinary code that is intended to de-emphasize suspensions and push teachers to work harder at keeping misbehaving students in the classroom.