Michelle Rhee PDF

For the exclusive use of H. Ab Mukmin, 2023.
HKS694
Case Number 1958.0
Michelle Rhee’s IMPACT on the Washington D.C. Public Schools
For eighty-five years, until the 1950s, the Washington D.C. public schools (DCPS) were considered a model of
academic achievement; students consistently met or exceeded national norms on standardized tests.1 But in the
1950s and 1960s, accomplished teachers began to leave the city for better opportunities in the suburbs, carried
out by the tide of black middle-class families seeking refuge from the rising crime rate in D.C. Following the white
flight that had come before it, this black flight created a permanent class of impoverished families who struggled
to educate their children amid widespread social unrest and high unemployment. 2
Student performance plummeted and D.C.’s schools were soon counted among the nation’s worst
performing. Residents often attributed the schools’ crumbling infrastructure, low student test scores and high
dropout rate to governmental neglect. As a federal district, Washington D.C. was under direct control of the
federal government; residents could not elect city officials and had little self-governance, even over the schools. In
1968, mounting public pressure to improve the quality of education in the public schools forced Congress to grant
city residents the right to elect a Board of Education, effectively making board members the city’s only elected
officials.3 As the sole venue for residents to voice concerns and influence local government, the Board of Education
became a contentious political platform, and made little progress improving the schools.
Washington residents appealed to Congress to cede more control to the municipality. Bowing to pressure, in
1973 Congress enacted the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that devolved certain powers over the District to an
elected local government consisting of a newly created mayoral position and a 13-member Council of the District
of Columbia (the functional equivalent of a state legislature), which governed the DCPS. Nevertheless, all
legislation passed by the Council, including the city’s budget, remained subject to approval by Congress, which
maintained supreme authority over the city.
For the next twenty years, little changed. In 1995, in response to escalating budget deficits and continued
abysmal academic performance by the city’s public-school students, Congress passed the D.C. School Reform Act
and created the D.C. Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority (Control Board) to take fiscal
control of the city. Within a year, the Control Board fired the DCPS superintendent and transferred the authority of
the elected Board of Education to an appointed board of trustees. Declaring a “state of emergency” requiring
This case was written by Laura Winig, Case Writer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. It was
sponsored by Joshua Goodman, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS), Harvard
University. Funding for this case was provided by the Robert G. Wilmers Local & State Government Case Studies Fund. HKS cases
are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data,
or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. (February 2012)
Copyright © 2012, 2021 President and Fellows of Harvard College. No part of this publication may be reproduced, revised,
translated, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express
written consent of the Case Program. For orders and copyright permission information, please visit our website at
case.hks.harvard.edu or send a written request to Case Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.
This document is authorized for use only by Habib Ab Mukmin in PP5168-Public Service Leadership (Lesson 4) taught by AGNES SWEE TIN TAN, National University of Singapore (NUS)
from Jan 2023 to Jul 2023.
“drastic and immediate action,” the Control Board chair said, "We are convinced that the time for change has
come—that every day we delay action is another day that children's futures are delayed." 4
When the trustees’ term expired in 2001, power reverted back to the elected Board of Education, but the
school system remained in crisis. By 2007, Washington ranked last among 11 urban school systems in math and
second to last in reading.5 Indeed, only 43% of students graduated high school6 despite a $1 billion school budget
yielding the third highest level of per pupil spending in the country.7
Parents, politicians, labor unions and activists all agreed that reform was necessary; by almost any measure—
test scores, attendance, safety—Washington public schools were failing. But stakeholders disagreed sharply on
how to achieve their shared goal of providing a good education to the city’s children. Reformers wanted to close
failing schools, parents wanted to choose where their children attended school, and the teachers’ union wanted
more compensation for teachers.
Mayor Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee
D.C. City Council member Adrian Fenty made reforming the DCPS a centerpiece of his 2006 Washington
mayoral campaign. After celebrating a landslide victory with 89% of the vote, Fenty, a native Washingtonian and at
35 the youngest mayor in the city’s history, made good on his promise. “The election made me the CEO of the
government of the District of Columbia. I posed two questions: What’s the biggest thing holding us back? What is
the best way for me to propel the city forward as fast as possible? The easy answer to those two questions was
schools and education,” he recalled. a
Fenty set his sights on recruiting reform activist Michelle Rhee to lead the DCPS. The daughter of Korean
immigrants, Rhee attended private schools in Toledo, Ohio where she excelled academically.8 After high school,
she moved to upstate New York to attend Cornell University, an Ivy League school, where she majored in
government. Though she had no teaching aspirations, in her senior year Rhee learned about Teach for America, a
program that placed freshly minted college graduates in poor urban and rural schools for short-term teaching
assignments. Intrigued, she joined the program and spent three years teaching in Baltimore elementary schools. 9
Rhee co-taught 70 students and claimed to have dramatically increased their reading levels over the course of
two years. The experience led her to believe that teacher quality was the key to improving schools. “It shaped my
entire career, because in a very low-income, very low-performing school, probably one of the worst, I saw a group
of kids move from the bottom on standardized tests to the top,” said Rhee. “I saw that when you worked hard,
when you structured the kids’ schedules, that they could absolutely rise to the incredibly high expectations that we
set of them.” Added Rhee: “The lesson I took from that was that teachers are everything," she said. 10
After the Election

After the mayoral election, Fenty contacted Rhee to ask her to consider serving as DCPS superintendent, but
Rhee demurred, citing the union and Board of Education’s power to stand in the way of the reforms she felt
a
Personal interviews with Adrian Fenty, Michelle Rhee and George Parker were conducted for this case study in May and July 2011.
HKS Case Program 2 of 16 Case Number 1958.0
needed to be made. Fenty persisted: "This system needs radical change. It really needs a shake-up," he said. "We
did not want to pick someone to tinker around the edges. . . . “ 11 Fenty also wanted to move quickly. He explained:
My biggest concern was that we would not move fast enough, that we would not make
decisions aggressively enough, and that we wouldn’t show results to the citizens quickly
enough. My thinking was, in order to fix the school system, we need to give Michelle
Rhee as much power and authority as possible, so that she can fix it as quickly as
possible. My role was to give her as much freedom from politics, politicians, and special
interests as possible. My hope was that she would spend almost no time thinking about
politics, just about fixing the school system.
Upon taking office in January 2007, Fenty announced his plan to restructure the DCPS by putting the mayor’s
office, rather than the Board of Education, in charge, emulating a move made by New York City Mayor Bloomberg
in 2002 that resulted in higher graduation rates and improved test scores. In April 2007, the D.C. city council
approved the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act that gave the mayor direct oversight
over and responsibility for the school system and authority to select a chancellor responsible for school
administration.
In June 2007, Fenty announced that Rhee would be appointed chancellor—a new position that would report
directly to the mayor—and signed her to a 5-year, $1.25 million contract.12
Rhee as Chancellor
Rhee was determined to heed the mayor’s directive: “He said, ‘Our kids can’t wait for incremental change.
So, we’re going to go 100 miles an hour,’” she recalled. At the start of her tenure, Rhee spent most of her energy
attending to the DCPS’s emergency operational needs. “Everything in the system was broken, but first we had to
take care of people’s basic needs. Let’s make sure that people are being paid, they’re on health benefits, we know
how many kids are in the system, we’re making sure that the textbooks are getting delivered,” said Rhee.
Next, Rhee turned her attention to teacher and principal quality. “The research is very clear that in terms of
in-school factors, teacher quality is the number one determinant of student achievement and student success. I’d
be dumb not to take that into consideration, and focus very, very heavily on the human capital aspects,” said Rhee.
She met with every principal in the D.C. school system. “Many of them said to me, “I’ve never met the
superintendent, much less sat down and talked with them. And I said, ‘We’re going to set goals together,
document them, and then I’m going to keep track of them,’” said Rhee.
Throughout her first six months, Rhee heeded Fenty’s directive to keep her focus on the needs of the
children: “He said, ‘I want to make sure that we are making every decision with the best interests of kids in mind. It
was our north star,” said Rhee.
School Closings and Teacher Firings
In November 2007, less than six months into Rhee’s tenure, Fenty and Rhee announced that 23 under-
enrolled schools, an average of three within each of the city’s eight wards and representing 15% of the city’s
schools, would be closed. Rhee cited a variety of factors for her selections, taking special note of the average 5-
year enrollment decline for each of the closed schools (ranging from 20% to 64%) and the low student test
scores—fewer than 61% of students tested proficient in math and reading in any of the schools on the list. 13
Nevertheless, as Rhee began to close the schools she was shouted down at public meetings where parents
turned out in droves to protest. Most were skeptical that Rhee’s actions were in the best interests of their children
and wanted their schools left open.
Firings
In May and June 2008 Rhee dismissed 46 principals and assistant principals, citing poor performance. In a
letter to Rhee, the Council of School Officers—the AFL-CIO-affiliated union that represented school principals—
said the firing decisions were made in a “factual vacuum” calling the firings random and arbitrary: “When . .
.decisions are made without reference to an individual’s performance evaluation, the entire evaluation process is
rendered a mock and a sham.”14
A few weeks later in July 2008, 75 newly hired teachers who were still in their probationary period (and thus
had not yet earned tenure) were fired for poor performance. In February 2009, an independent arbitrator reversed
the teacher firings, ruling that although Rhee had the right to fire teachers during their two-year probationary
period, she could only do so if they had received negative feedback from school principals. The “glaring and fatal
flaw” in Rhee’s move was that the teachers were not offered reasons for their terminations, as required by their
contract.15
In October 2009 Rhee again laid off 266 teachers. The union claimed that Rhee manufactured a budget crisis
to justify firing older, tenured teachers and filed suit challenging the terminations. 16 In response, Rhee told a
magazine reporter: "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78
days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"17
George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU), demanded that Rhee issue the teachers
an apology. "It is an unfortunate and dangerous statement to paint all these teachers as child abusers [and it] is
simply not true. She owes the teachers an apology. It is reckless and damages the reputations of a lot of teachers—
it’s just not true," said Parker.18
The controversial firings led to a rally with protestors—teachers, administrators, parents and union
representatives—carrying signs reading, "Sweep Her Out," calling for Rhee’s resignation.19 "We are tired of being
quiet, of just accepting whatever Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee impose," said a high school counselor. "The
time has come to speak up." The AFL-CIO called the layoffs "a cold, hard case of union busting" and pledged
support.20
Negotiating with the Washington Teachers’ Union
In December 2007, Rhee opened negotiations with Parker to create a new teacher’s contract to replace the
one that expired several months earlier. Parker, who served as a union negotiator since 1988 and was elected
president in February 2005, noted that even before Rhee’s arrival, the union was prepared for reforms. After a
survey of D.C.’s teachers revealed strong support for the Mayor’s plan to take control of the schools, the union had
backed it.
Both Rhee and Parker entered negotiations hopeful that a contract could be worked out reasonably. Each felt
the other’s agenda was clear. Rhee knew that Parker wanted higher pay for teachers. Rhee, too, wanted to
increase teachers’ pay. “Usually in contract negotiations, pay increases are the problem,” said Parker. “But
Michelle Rhee believed in paying teachers. That was the easiest contract that I’ve ever negotiated when it comes
to convincing somebody that teachers ought to be paid.” Parker knew that Rhee’s quid pro quo was very clear.
“She said ‘Look, we pay the teachers and they do the job. If they don’t do the job, we fire them.’ That was her
philosophy from day one,” said Parker.
Rhee and Parker negotiated a plan that called for schools to pay teachers a bonus if school wide student test
scores improved. For schools that raised their math and reading scores by 20%, every teacher could earn a bonus
of $8,000, called a team award. “That’s unheard of. In most school districts, you might get $500, $800. Michelle
said, ‘If we’re going to offer an incentive, then let’s make it a real incentive . . .” said Parker.
In December 2008, one year into the negotiations, Parker and Rhee hit an impasse. Despite the popularity of
the bonus plan, Parker faced opposition within the union. Parker received calls from union leaders around the
country who thought that accepting performance pay set a dangerous precedent. Parker was unconvinced. “In any
other business, your performance matters. I remember telling one guy, ‘When you go to the next Rams game, tell
them don’t pay the quarterback any more than they pay the kicker and see how many great quarterbacks you
get,’” said Parker.
Parker was frustrated that he had nobody to appeal to as his negotiations with Rhee derailed. He explained:
In other contract negotiations, whenever there was a situation where you just can’t
move forward with the superintendent, you had the option of going to board members
and getting them to help move things along. But in this case, you can only go to the
mayor, and he was unyielding in his support of Michelle Rhee. He gave her carte
blanche. That is one of the reasons why the negotiations took such a long time, because
I just had to work it out with Michelle.
In April 2009 a mediator was brought in, but little progress was made as the two sides debated the merits of
Rhee’s pay-for-performance plan. By July 2009 it was becoming clear that a new contract would not be in place for
the start of the 2009/2010 school year.
Evaluating Teacher Performance
Before 2007, DCPS teachers received annual evaluations based on classroom observations by school
principals. The vast majority of teachers received positive ratings. As a result, very few teachers were fired due to
poor evaluations. “Only 8% of the eighth graders in the city’s schools were performing at grade level in
mathematics. And at the same time, 95% of teachers were being rated as doing a good job. So how can you have a
system where all the adults were running around thinking, ‘I’m doing good work,’” said Rhee, who decided she
would develop a measurement system that would evaluate teachers, in part, on the gains made by their students.
“We wanted to tie how we’re evaluating ourselves as the adults in the system to the outcomes that we are
producing for kids,” she explained.
Rhee was surprised to discover that the teacher evaluation system was not subject to collective bargaining
with the union. (Though the instrument and process of teacher evaluation was not subject to collective bargaining,
the use of the data was.) Congress gave the school system sole authority for the development of a teacher
evaluation system in the mid-1990s after the WTU refused to renegotiate the then-existing evaluation system with
the District.21
Beginning in early 2009, Rhee and her team met with scores of teachers to learn what was working—and not
working—with the existing teacher evaluation system. “According to everybody, it was not a good evaluation
system at all,” said Rhee. “They felt we needed a more fair, rigorous and transparent evaluation system moving
forward.” Rhee noted that the existing system did not identify students who might be falling short on reading and
math proficiency levels but who nonetheless had shown improvement over the course of the school year. She
believed she could use standardized testing data more accurately to judge student growth and teacher
effectiveness.22
Rhee said she and her team took steps to make the process inclusive by holding focus groups and meeting
with teachers directly to collect feedback, but she noted the difference between soliciting feedback and agreeing
to act on it. “There was no way that we were ever going to be able to create a model that addressed everybody’s
concerns. We knew we could not make everyone happy. But people were saying, “We told you to do something
and you didn’t do it. Therefore, you didn’t listen.” And I said, “I listened. I take in all that information, and at the
end of the day make the decision that I think is the right one,” said Rhee. “Though we did a tremendous amount to
reach out to teachers to get their insights, at the end of the day, we knew that we could implement whatever tool
we wanted,” she said.
Designing IMPACT
School systems employed a variety of methods to evaluate their teachers, ranging from reviewing portfolios
of student work to peer or parental assessments.23 Several major school systems, including those in Houston,
Chicago and Milwaukee, had started limited use of a new "value-added" approach, primarily to award bonuses or
design performance improvement plans.24 Value-added systems aimed to isolate each teacher’s unique
contribution to their student’s educational achievement based on student test scores that could not otherwise be
attributed to family, school, peer or community influence.
Critics of value-added systems noted they presented serious potential pitfalls. One was that the smaller the
sample size, the more statistically unreliable the result. Measuring test score growth across a school, or even a
grade within a school, was more valid than looking at an individual teacher’s class, which may have 15 or 20
students.25 One critic pointed out that value-added systems were most useful for differentiating between
exceptional and poor teachers but had difficulty with "fine-grain distinctions" about those in the middle. 26
Rhee was eager to introduce value-added measures to DCPS but had difficulty enlisting academics to help her
design an evaluation system. “We talked to lots of researchers and I asked how to draw the line between an
ineffective teacher and a minimally effective teacher and then between an effective and highly effective teacher.
They kept telling me it could not be done in a perfect way,” said Rhee. Ultimately Rhee, her chief “human capital”
assistant and 2005 national Teacher of the Year, Jason Kamras, Harvard Graduate School of Education professor
Thomas J. Kane, and the research firm Mathematica Policy Research, developed a value-added tool at a cost of
roughly $4 million. (See Exhibit 1 for a description of how individual value-added (IVA) scores were calculated.)
The value-added tool was designed to use scores from the standardized tests that DCPS was already
administering in certain grades and subjects—the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS).b
Approximately 20% of DCPS teachers taught in grades or classes that conducted standardized testing so only those
teachers received a value-added score: a measure of the impact teachers had on their students’ learning over the
course of the school year, as measured by the DC-CASc test score data.
The value-added tool, however, was only one component of teachers’ evaluations. The overall evaluation
system, dubbed IMPACT, was comprised of several parts. The value-added score comprised 50% of these teachers’
IMPACT scores. The second measure, called the Teaching and Learning Framework, was designed to evaluate a
teacher’s instructional expertise and made up 35% of their IMPACT score. For this score, teachers were observed
in their classrooms five times before a final rating was generated, three times by a building administrator (typically
a principal or assistant principal) and twice by an outside "master evaluator" who was an independent subject-
matter expert.27 After the initial observation, teachers received a “growth plan” outlining their strengths and
weaknesses and suggesting plans for improvement, if needed.
An additional 10% of the teachers’ score was a measure of the teacher’s involvement with the school
community beyond the classroom, called Commitment to the School Community. The remaining 5% was called
School Value-Added Student Achievement Data, a measure of the impact a teacher’s school had on student
learning over the course of the year; this measure, like the individual value-added score, was based on DC-CAS
data.
The IMPACT model was comprised of multiple measures so that a teacher with a low value-added score but
otherwise high marks would not be deemed ineffective. “I don’t think that anyone should be evaluated based on
one measure alone,” said Rhee. “If a teacher knocks everything else out of the park on observations and
contributions to school community, then they can’t be rated as being an ineffective teacher,” said Rhee.
Since about 80% of DCPS teachers taught in grades or subject areas where standardized testing was not
conducted, the value-added measure was replaced by a measure called Teacher-Assessed Student Achievement
b
The D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System assessed students on reading and math in grades 3-8 and 10, science in grades 5 and 8, biology in
high school, and composition in grades 4, 7, and 10.
c The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by president George W. Bush in 2002, required states to develop assessment tools to test skills of
students in specific grades. To comply with the law, DCPS developed the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS). Federal officials
used the results of the annual tests to determine whether D.C. schools had achieved adequate yearly progress toward proficiency benchmarks.
If not, provisions in the law required DCPS to make changes in academic programs or close underperforming schools.
Data, which used assessments other than the DC-CAS and only accounted for 10% of teachers’ scores. Scores for
the additional components were also weighted differently: Teaching and Learning Framework: 75%; Commitment
to the School Community: 10%; and School Value-Added Student Achievement Data: 5%.
One of the most controversial aspects of IMPACT was Rhee’s demand in the ongoing contract negotiations to
be able to fire, rather than coach, low performing teachers at the end of a single evaluation cycle (one year).
Although school districts had experimented with value-added for many years, it was generally employed as a
diagnostic tool to assess weaknesses or determine bonuses. Rhee's use of the method to make firing decisions was
expected to prompt other school systems to look at her method as a possible model. 28 “That caused a lot of
anxiety amongst a lot of people,” said Rhee, who said critics and the union wanted her to give teachers more time
to pursue professional development to help improve their performance. But for Rhee, whose two daughters
attended the D.C. public schools, one year was long enough. “Whenever I was developing policy, I always did so
knowing it would impact my own kids. If I decide to let an ineffective teacher stay in a classroom for a second year,
then I have to do that knowing that there’s a possibility that person might be teaching my daughter. And that’s just
not a decision that I could make for my kids. And if I’m not willing to make that decision for my child, then I’m not
going to make it for any other mother’s kid either,” said Rhee.
In July 2009, just days before Rhee introduced IMPACT to the DCPS system for the beginning of the
2009/2010 school year, the U.S. Department of Education announced the Race to the Top Initiative, a $4.35 billion
program designed to spark reforms in K-12 education. Under the initiative, states competed against one another to
receive extra education funding. Applications would be judged based on criteria such as “improving teacher and
principal effectiveness based on performance” and “supporting the transition to enhanced standards and high-
quality assessments.” Rhee and Fenty applied for the funding.
The Union Weighs In

The WTU opposed IMPACT as an unreliable tool for judging teachers’ effectiveness. Union leadership was
concerned that statistical modeling would be unreliable due to the small sample sizes and that the data-driven
system did not take into account the difficulty of teaching low-income students, whose academic performance
could be negatively influenced by poverty, family and a host of other social issues. WTU was also concerned that
the value-added component measured teachers’ relative performance: teachers within a given school were scaled
in relation to each other, rather than compared against a uniform measure of accepted teaching practices. WTU
noted that the master educators who would be conducting the classroom performance evaluations would be
chosen by the school district with no union input.
Despite WTU’s serious reservations, the union was powerless to stop Rhee from rolling out IMPACT. “When
Michelle wanted to implement [the new system], legally we could not prevent her from doing so. I met with her,
and I made recommendations. It was such a complicated evaluation system that I felt it needed to be piloted first.
But she didn’t agree. She said, they had to move forward now,” said Parker.
Though she noted WTU’s objection, Rhee pointed out that others thought she was not moving fast enough.
She explained:
I went to a conference of Wall Street CEOs and I was asked by one, “What is the most
revolutionary thing that you are doing right now in the school system?” I said, “We’re
creating this tool and 50% of the evaluation is going to be based on student
achievement growth.” And he said, “Fifty percent? Isn’t that a teacher’s job to ensure
that students are progressing academically? Why isn’t it 80% or 90% of their
evaluation?” And I looked at him and I said, “Look, bucko, right now it’s 0%. We’re
taking this from zero to 50%.”
IMPACT was implemented at the beginning of the 2009/2010 school year, the start of Rhee’s third term as
chancellor. She said she had spent her first two years laying the groundwork for the accountability system. “It
wasn’t like we came in on day one and did it. There was a process that we went through to try to get people
oriented more towards a culture of accountability,” said Rhee. Parker disagreed: “I felt it was implemented too
hastily, without preparing principals, teachers or the master educators,” he said. “It's very punitive. It takes the art
of teaching and turns it into bean counting.”29
However, some teachers supported IMPACT as an improvement over the existing evaluation system, and
Rhee noted the system was designed to provide teachers with five formal feedback cycles over the course of the
school year, giving teachers ample opportunity to improve their performance. “We knew that not everybody
would love it—but we thought it was a good first step,” said Rhee.
Reaching a Contract
On April 7, 2010, one year after Randi Weingarten, head of WTU’s parent union and the mediator were
brought in, Rhee and Parker announced they had reached a tentative agreement on a new contract. Both sides had
made concessions in order to reach agreement. Rhee backed off her demand that teachers give up tenure so they
could be terminated at will; instead, she agreed that DCPS would continue to show “just cause” before dismissing a
tenured teacher. However, the process was streamlined and the definition of “just cause” amended to allow Rhee
to fire teachers who received IMPACT scores of “ineffective” immediately.
A crucial feature of the new contract was a large, general salary increase for teachers—21.6% over the five-
year life of the contract. Additionally, however, under the new contract, at the end of the school year, teacher
performance was converted to a 100-to-400-point scale and each teacher received one of four ratings:
• Highly effective: teachers who earned this rating were eligible for bonus compensation up to
$25,000 and repeat highly effective scorers were also eligible for base salary increases up to
$20,000.30
• Effective: Teachers rated effective advanced normally on their pay scales. 31
• Minimally effective: Those receiving the minimally effective rating were given an additional year to
take advantage of professional development opportunities provided by DCPS but could be fired if
they failed to improve after two years.32
• Ineffective: A rating of ineffective signified unacceptable performance and those who received the
rating were fired.33
The raises and bonuses in the contract were funded by four private foundations that agreed to contribute $64.5
million.
WTU membersd ratified the contract by a vote of 1,412 to 425. “I think that spoke volumes about the fact
that the teachers weren’t afraid of accountability. As long as they knew it was going to happen in a fair and
transparent way, they didn’t have an issue with it. It was really the teachers’ union leadership that were worried
about setting a precedent for the rest of the country,” said Rhee. Fenty agreed. “Teachers loved the reforms. I
believe that the people who run the teachers’ unions don’t. Because I believe that teachers sign up to teach, and
they’re the last people who would want to stick around if they weren’t getting results,” he said.
Parker admitted he was surprised the contract passed by such a significant margin. “I think our younger
teachers got it over, because it passed by a great margin. Of course, the monetary piece was an incentive. There
were a lot of carrots to go along with the stick,” said Parker. Indeed, teachers took to the blogosphere after the
contract was ratified and many who said they voted in favor of ratification cited the financial benefits of the
contract.
Rhee was pleased with the outcome: “What we ultimately ended up with is a contract where essentially
nobody has tenure and seniority is not a factor in staffing decisions. The entire system is oriented towards
performance and effectiveness. So now, if a teacher is rated as ineffective, it doesn’t matter if they have taught
two months or twenty-two years, if they’re rated as ineffective, then they are terminated,” she said.
First IMPACT Scores Released

On July 23, 2010, just after signing the new teachers’ contract, DCPS released information regarding the
scores from the IMPACT evaluations. Rhee was ready to announce that she planned to fire the 165 teachers who
had received IMPACT ratings of “ineffective” as well as 76 teachers who had not met qualifications based on their
certification, but the timing gave her pause, since the mayoral primary election would be held in September. She
explained:
We were supposed to let these folks go. So, I went to the mayor and I said, “I’m very
sensitive to the fact that your election is right around the corner, so give me some
direction.” And he said, “If we take this action, does that mean that more kids are going
to have better teachers in the fall?” I said yes. He said, “Well, then let’s do it.” But the
minute we announced it, it was on the national news—CNN, MSNBC, everybody was
covering it—and I got calls from supporters who said, “Are you insane? You can’t fire
hundreds of people weeks before his election. This is political suicide.” And it may well
have been, but it was just in keeping with what we had always decided to do.
d
Of WTU’s 3,400 members, 1,837 voted in the election.
On July 23, 2010, Rhee announced the 241 dismissals, which represented approximately 5% of the total
teachers in the system. In addition, 737 other instructors (approximately 17% of all teachers) were told they had
been rated “minimally effective” and had one year to improve their performance or face dismissal. "My hope is
that many of them improve, but at the same time, we need to make sure the bar is high," said Rhee. "I've got two
children in the system, and I don't want a 'minimally effective teacher' and I don't think anyone else does,
either."34 Rhee’s office noted that in 2006, the year prior to her being named chancellor, not one teacher had been
fired for ineffectiveness.
The WTU immediately criticized the move and stated it would challenge the terminations. Randi Weingarten,
issued a statement: “Questions have been raised not only about the validity of IMPACT, but about the chancellor’s
penchant for firing teachers rather than providing supports to develop their skills.” 35 “Evaluations should include a
component of student learning, of course, but there also has to be teacher development and support,”
Weingarten said. “It can’t just be a ‘gotcha’ system. . . ”36 Indeed, though others, such as the state of Tennessee,
had used value-added systems primarily to evaluate and improve teacher performance, e teachers expressed
concern that they would lose their jobs or be subjected to public humiliation if Rhee released their scores to the
public. In Los Angeles, the city’s largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, published value-added scores for that
city’s teachers. (See Exhibit 2 for Los Angeles public school teachers’ responses to the methodology used to
generate their scores.)
Parker surveyed the WTU teachers about their experience with IMPACT. “There were a lot of teachers who
felt that they needed more time to prepare. Teachers were having to get used to teaching the new standards at
the same time they were trying to get used to the elements of a new evaluation process, and that’s why it was so
controversial. It was like shock therapy,” said Parker, who believed the program was designed to weed out
teachers rather than help them improve. "It's punishment-heavy and support-light," he said, adding that it should
have first been tried on a small pilot basis. "They've gone too far, too fast." The union filed an unfair labor practice
complaint with the council.37
The Election
In early 2010, Fenty had begun to gear up for his re-election bid, vowing to “work around the clock to get re-
elected.”38 Although the mayor seemed confident as he began a neighborhood door knocking campaign—a
strategy that had worked for him in the last election—public confidence in his leadership, if not his results, had
faded. In late August 2010, a Washington Post poll showed his opponent, city council chairman Vincent Gray,
leading by 17 points.
e
Tennessee began using value-added scoring for teachers, based on students’ standardized test scores, in 1992. Scores were used to help
teachers improve their performance; teachers could not be fired solely based on their value-added scores. Jay Matthews, “Tennessee System
for Gauging Results Angers Some Educators but Gains Acceptance Elsewhere; Testing Students, Scoring Teachers,” The Washington Post, March
14, 2000.
In the closing days of the campaign, Rhee joined Fenty at re-election rallies, but it was unclear whether her
efforts helped or hindered his campaign. A Washington Post poll found that among registered Democrats, 41%
said Rhee was a reason to vote for Fenty, and 40% said she was a reason to vote against him.39
Rhee had remained optimistic right up until the vote. “I thought crime levels are the lowest in forty years, and
the schools are doing better than they have in decades. People aren’t going to give this up because they don’t like
his personality or they don’t like the way that we went about the school improvement process. I was absolutely
wrong,” she said.
Epilogue
In September 2010, Fenty lost his re-election bid.
Parker was voted out of office in November 2010, 556 votes to 480, with 25% of the union’s membership
voting. He lost to general vice president Nathan Saunders, who had been his harshest critic during the contract
negotiations.40 Saunders had criticized Parker for being too accommodating to Rhee and pledged to pursue legal,
legislative and lobbying efforts to undo the IMPACT system.
IMPACT continued to be used to measure teacher performance in the D.C. public schools despite Rhee’s
departure, though Kamras, who remained to head up the IMPACT assessments, conducted 100 focus groups to
collect feedback from 1,000 DCPS teachers which was incorporated into the tool.
After leaving D.C., Rhee founded a grassroots non-profit organization, Students First, to drive education
reform nationally. Rhee wanted to sign up one million members and raise $1 billion to invest in the cause. “I travel
around the country and give speeches. And after every speech that I give, I always have teachers come up to me,
and say, ‘We are with you, Michelle. We can’t tell anybody we’re with you, but we’re with you.’ I believe that there
are a huge number of effective teachers out there who know that the system is broken, who know that we’ve got
to change, who don’t want to be in a profession where it’s impossible to fire low performers. They know that that’s
not what’s going to get kids a great education,” said Rhee. “Have I made some wrong decisions? Yeah. But the
bottom line is, the reason I can sleep at night, really soundly every night, is because I know that even if I didn’t
make the right call, I made it because I believed at that moment that it was the best thing for kids,” said Rhee. 41
Exhibit 1
DCPS Method for Calculating Individual Value-Added Scores
To calculate teachers' value-added scores, researchers at Mathematica used multivariate regression analysis
to estimate how a given teacher's students advanced academically relative to other students with similar
characteristics. Below is a simplified version of this calculation.f
Researchers at Mathematica ran the following student-level regression:
Mathig = β1Mathi(g-1) + β2Readi(g-1) + β3Femaleig + β4FreeLunchig + β5 SpecialEdig + β6 LEPig + β7 Absig +
α1Teacher1ig + α2Teacher2ig + α3Teacher3ig + ... + αNTeacherNig + εig
where the math test score of student i in grade g was regressed on the same student's prior math and reading
scores, indicators for gender, free lunch (poverty) status, special education enrollment and limited English
proficiency, a continuous measure of that student's absences, and indicators for having each teacher (N represents
the number of teachers in the school system). The same regression was also run using reading scores as an
outcome.
An individual teacher's value-added for math or reading was thus the coefficient on the indicator for that
teacher (the α's). The resulting number was converted into a 1 to 4 scale for comparability with the other IMPACT
components. If the teacher was responsible for both reading and math instruction, the two scores were averaged
together.
f
For the version of this calculation as it was explained to the public, see “IMPACT: The District of Columbia Public Schools Effectiveness
Assessment System for School-Based Personnel, 2011–2012,” District of Columbia Public Schools, 2011, http://1.usa.gov/v4u76c, accessed
November 8, 2011. For the full calculations as explained to researchers, see: Eric Eisenberg and Heinrich Hock, “Measuring School and Teacher
Value Added for IMPACT and TEAM in D.C. Public Schools,” Mathematica Policy Research, August 20, 2010, http://www.mathematica-
mpr.com/publications/PDFs/education/valueadded_techrprt.pdf, accessed January 3, 2012.
Exhibit 2
Blog Responses by Teachers in Reaction to Los Angeles Times Publication of their Individual
Value-Added Scores on August 29, 2010
I proctored many teachers during state testing time and many teachers I worked with helped their students
come up with the correct answers. I remember that a particular teacher told a student, "It's not A or C and you
crossed out D so it must be…" I know this goes on in many schools and this "grading" system is glorifying MANY
teachers that cheat! . . . So now many teachers are questioning each others' true effectiveness. How can a
teacher like myself that voluntarily works with students during lunch, after school, and on Saturdays, be placed in
the same category with teachers that arrive late, take a longer lunch break, and leave as soon as the bell rings? Is
this value added system "most effective" for teacher improvement?—iamanomyous42
We're not being measured by taking a test. We're being measured by someone else's taking a test, and we're
not being measured by the results of that test. We're being measured by a formula that uses the results of
someone else's test, along with variables unknown to the public, to try to predict our effectiveness like trying to
predict the rise and fall of a stock on Wall Street. It doesn't work on Wall Street, and it doesn't work in the
classroom.—anticorporategreed43
There is no consideration of attendance, tardiness, health of the student, parental knowledge and
cooperation, learning disabilities, intelligence, class restructuring to maintain size, family mobility, available
materials, class environment and disruptions, combination grades, language acquisition, date of enrollment, jury
duty and health absences of the teacher, administrative assignment of students, and many more factors. If I were
challenged I would contest this in the courts that should be tied up for years. Teachers are responsible, without
authority to control many situations in the classroom.—rozurista144
If we focus on . . .score test variance as a measure of value-added teaching, all we do is reinforce teachers
who "teach the test" at the sacrifice of developing programs that may more effectively achieve the objectives of
the curriculum.—Riskiebusiness45
If you really are trying to rate teachers, then you need to come up with an objective method to rate them,
fairly. Factors affecting such a scoring system include who gets to decide on the criteria, how are the many criteria
to be "weighed" against each other, how to "score" factors that can't be objectively quantified?—BobBrooks46
The value-added method totally ignores the number of students in a given teacher's classroom. Of course, a
teacher with 35 students will have a much more difficult time increasing student test scores than a teacher with
only 20 students. The value-added method also does not recognize that many teachers "team teach" with one or
more other teachers in the same grade level. Teacher A might teach language arts to all of the students in a grade
level, while Teacher B might teach math. Using the value-added method, Teacher A's students' standardized math
test scores would not reflect his or her teaching effectiveness, but instead, Teacher B's. Also, if there is even one
highly disruptive student in a given classroom, it can affect every student's ability to learn.—Richard Glenn
Shimizu47
Endnotes
1Thomas Sowell, "Black Excellence: The Case of Dunbar High School," The Public Interest, Spring 1974, p. 8 referenced in
Thomas Sowell, “The Education of Minority Children,” http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html#FN03, accessed October 18,
2011.
2 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008.
3“History of Voting in D.C.,” Board of Elections and Ethics website,
http://www.dcboee.org/voter_info/gen_info/voting_history.asp, accessed October 5, 2011.
4David A. Vise, “D.C. Control Board Takes Charge of Public Schools,” The Washington Post, November 16, 1996,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/dc/control/schools.htm, accessed October 5, 2011.
5 Risen, op. cit.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 ibid.
10David Nakamura, “Fenty to Oust Janey Today,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061102383.html, accessed September 20, 2011.
11 Risen, op. cit.
12David Nakamura, “Fenty to Oust Janey Today,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061102383.html, accessed September 20, 2011.
13Mayor Adrian Fenty, Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso, “Renew, Revitalize, Reorganize:
School Plan Presented to Councilmembers,” DCPS Watch, November 28, 2007,
http://www.dcpswatch.com/mayor/071128c.htm, accessed October 13, 2011.
14Dina Levitz, “District’s School Union Slams Rhee’s Firing of Principals,” Educational Rheeform blog, May 23, 2008,
http://rheeform.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/districts-school-union-slams-rhee’s-firing-of-principals/, accessed October 31,
2011.
15Michael Hirsch, “DC’s Rhee Hammered Over Firings, Padded Resume,” United Federation of Teachers website, February 17,
2011, http://www.uft.org/news-briefs/dc-s-rhee-hammered-over-firings-padded-resume, accessed October 31, 2011.
16Tamar Lewin, “School Chief Dismisses 241 Teachers in Washington,” The New York Times, July 23, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/education/24teachers.html, accessed October 4, 2011.
17Mark Segraves, “Rhee: Teachers Fired for Having Sex with Students,” WTOP radio, January 23, 2010,
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=&sid=1871149, accessed October 31, 2011.
18 Ibid.
19“Thousands March Against Rhee's Firings of Hundreds After Hiring of Hundreds of Her Clones,” Schools Matter blog, October
11, 2009, http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/10/thousands-march-against-rhees-firings.html, accessed October 31, 2011.
20 Ibid.
21Bill Turque, “Rhee Works on Overhaul of Teacher Evaluations,” The Washington Post, April 7, 2009,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603600.html, accessed October 4, 2011.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27Stephen Sawchuk, “D.C. Unveils Complex Evaluation System,” Education Week, October 5, 2009,
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2009/10/dc_unveils_complex_evaluation.html, accessed August 16, 2012.
28Bill Turque, “Rhee Dismisses 241 D.C. Teachers; Union Vows to Contest Firings,” The Washington Post, July 24, 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072303093.html,accessed October 31, 2011.
29 Ibid.
30Impact Guidebooks, District of Columbia Public Schools,
http://dcps.dc.gov/portal/site/DCPS/menuitem.06de50edb2b17a932c69621014f62010/?vgnextoid=b00b64505ddc3210VgnVC
M1000007e6f0201RCRD, accessed October 31, 2011.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34Stephanie Banchero, “Teachers Lose Jobs Over Test Scores,” Wall Street Journal Online, July 24, 2010,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704249004575385500484438266.html,accessed October 31, 2011.
35“AFT President Randi Weingarten Comments on Mass Firing of DCPS Teachers,” American Federation of Teachers press
release, July 23, 2010, https://www.aft.org/newspubs/press/2010/072310.cfm, accessed October 31, 2011.
36 Lewin, op cit.
37 Turque, op. cit.
38Ann Marimow, “Fenty Responds to Hardball’s Matthews,” The Washington Post, February 12, 2010,
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2010/02/fenty_responds_to_hardballs_ma.html, accessed October 31, 2011.
39Nikita Stewart and Tim Craig, “DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee Will Hit Campaign Trail With Mayor Adrian Fenty,”
Washington Post, September 2, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090305950.html, accessed October 18, 2011.
40Bill Turque, “Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker Loses Run-off Election,” The Washington Post, November
30, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006044.html, accessed October
31, 2011.
41 Risen, op. cit.
42Iamanonymous, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, May
12, 2011, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.
43AntiCorporateGreed, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online,
February 8, 2011, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.
44rozurista1, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, January 22,
2011, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.
45 Riskiebusiness, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, October
4, 2010, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.
46 BobBrooks, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, September
8, 2010, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10?page=3, accessed November 10, 2011.
47Richard Glenn Shimizu, “Teachers Respond,” September 1, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/teachers-
investigation/la-me-teachers-respond,0,3982085.story?page=2, accessed November 10, 2011.

Michelle Rhee PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Michelle Rhee PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

For the exclusive use of H. Ab Mukmin, 2023.

Michelle Rhee’s IMPACT on the Washington D.C. Public Schools

Mayor Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee

After the Election

HKS Case Program 2 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

School Closings and Teacher Firings

HKS Case Program 3 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

Negotiating with the Washington Teachers’ Union

HKS Case Program 4 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

Evaluating Teacher Performance

HKS Case Program 5 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

HKS Case Program 6 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

HKS Case Program 7 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

The Union Weighs In

HKS Case Program 8 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

• Effective: Teachers rated effective advanced normally on their pay scales. 31

HKS Case Program 9 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

First IMPACT Scores Released

HKS Case Program 10 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

HKS Case Program 11 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

HKS Case Program 12 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

DCPS Method for Calculating Individual Value-Added Scores

Researchers at Mathematica ran the following student-level regression:

Mathig = β1Mathi(g-1) + β2Readi(g-1) + β3Femaleig + β4FreeLunchig + β5 SpecialEdig + β6 LEPig + β7 Absig +

α1Teacher1ig + α2Teacher2ig + α3Teacher3ig + ... + αNTeacherNig + εig

HKS Case Program 13 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

HKS Case Program 14 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

HKS Case Program 15 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

HKS Case Program 16 of 16 Case Number 1958.0

You might also like