Radical

by Michelle Rhee

  THERE’S A MISCONCEPTION THAT because teachers unions are against certain reforms, then teachers must be against those reforms. That’s anything but true.

  In D.C., while the national teachers union opposed the changes we wanted to make in the union contract, 80 percent of the membership ended up voting for it. My staff at StudentsFirst is full of former teachers, and tens of thousands of our members are teachers. When I speak in other cities, teachers often come up to me afterward to tell me how much they appreciate my approach. They stop me in airports to show their support.

  What people do not know are the many sacrifices some teachers have made to fight the status quo and come out strongly to advocate for policies that put kids first.

  Rhonda Lochiatto, a seasoned teacher in Florida, is a great example. She drove four hours each way to testify in Tallahassee in support of teacher quality reform policies. For her brave stance, Rhonda was harassed by the opposition, but she remained strong and fought to put kids first. Rhonda still emails me with a message I have come to find invaluable: “I need you to stay strong so I can stay strong.”

  In Michigan, Todd Beard helped lead the fight for reform against the strong opposition of his local union leader. Not only did he testify before the House Education Committee, but he recruited and ferried other teachers to Lansing to do the same.

  On July 4, 2012, KMJ and I—as Sacramento’s first lady—were walking the Independence Day parade route down the California capital’s Cottage Way when a young woman rushed up to us. I expected her to want to take her picture with my husband, as had happened all morning. As I looked for her camera so I could snap the picture, she looked me straight in the eye. She was a teacher at Jedediah Smith Elementary. “I just want you to know that I love what you are trying to do, and I want you to know I am with you,” she said in stride.

  There are countless teachers across the country who have been fighting side by side with me to establish policies that put kids first. Their message is consistent: keep up the fight. Perhaps they are the silent majority of teachers. But they know that the public school teaching system is broken, and they want to see it fixed.

  The question is, How?

  FINLAND HAD AN OPPORTUNITY to re-create itself after World War II. The Nordic nation had survived decades under the control of either Sweden or Russia. As an infant nation, experimenting with independence, it struggled to figure out how to establish a successful economy and compete in the global marketplace. It chose to build on a foundation of public education. It exalted teachers.

  In 1963, the Finnish parliament voted to focus the small nation’s civic energy and financial resources on public education. “It was simply the idea that every child would have a good public school,” writes educator Pasi Sahlberg in his book Finnish Lessons. “If we want to be competitive, we need to educate everybody. It all came out of a need to survive.”

  The Finns did more than survive. They put their teachers on a par with doctors and lawyers—in training, expertise, status, and job satisfaction. Teaching became a very attractive career, respected and desired across the country. In 2010, Sahlberg says, about 6,600 applicants competed for 660 primary school training slots.

  Now Finland ranks top among nations in students’ abilities in reading and math.

  We cannot compare ourselves to a small, Nordic country, of course. We are a huge, diverse nation with two hundred years of devotion to public education. But I do believe we can take a lesson from Finland’s approach to elevating teachers in its society.

  Why not devote our entire nation, as Finland did, to putting teachers first among professionals? Why not make teaching an endeavor that will attract our best and brightest? Why not treat teachers as professionals to whom we entrust the academic development and future success of our children, for generations to come, literally, for the future of the United States?

  My goal is to help create an environment where teachers can thrive as they do in Finland. But that will take time and some wrenching changes.

  IN FINLAND, TEACHERS ARE expected to take the child who comes to their classroom and teach him to read and write, to add and multiply, to reason and understand. No excuses. Every child gets to learn.

  Not so in some quarters of the United States.

  There is an odd and somewhat unhealthy debate going on today in education reform circles that can serve to compromise a teacher’s standing in the community. Unfortunately, I find myself in the middle of that debate. It has to do with the role of teachers, how much teachers can actually influence student achievement, and to what extent we can hold teachers accountable for that growth.

  On one end of the spectrum you find the people who believe that teachers can have little impact on kids when environmental circumstances are tough. They argue that the trials and tribulations of poverty, uninvolved parents, violence in the community, a lack of health care, and inadequate nutrition present insurmountable hurdles that schools cannot overcome. They believe that we cannot hold teachers accountable for student academic growth in the face of these tremendous obstacles.

  Others argue that none of those environment factors matters, and that good teachers and good schools can educate students and raise achievement despite problems of poverty and family dysfunction. This side believes that we should hold teachers and schools accountable for everything that happens to kids.

  The debate is taking place on those extremes: either we cannot expect teachers to make a dent with poor kids, or poverty doesn’t matter. That’s not how the vast majority of Americans see the situation, though. And it’s certainly not how I view it. Having been a teacher in a low-performing urban school, I know firsthand how difficult it is to teach students who face a multitude of challenges before they even set foot in the schoolhouse door. These challenges are real and severe and have dire consequences.

  I don’t believe that educators and schools can fix all of society’s ills.

  That said, I do believe that schools and teachers can make a tremendous difference in the lives of kids who face these challenges every day. Do our children face significant obstacles that impact their ability to learn? Absolutely. Can we, as educators, still make an enormous difference in their lives, if we’re doing our jobs well? Absolutely. Those are not two mutually exclusive notions.

  The research is very clear: teachers make a real difference. In fact, of all in-school factors, the quality of the teacher in front of the students every day has far and away the greatest influence on student achievement.

  According to a 2011 report prepared by the Center for American Progress and the Education Trust, “Students who have three or four strong teachers in a row will soar academically regardless of their racial or economic background while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further behind. . . .”

  Many argue back, “But that’s a measure of in-school factors. Compared to the factors outside the school, teachers don’t play as large a role.”

  I would ask, “What is our job as educators?” I would argue that we, as educators, cannot be focused on the external factors. There are social service agencies and programs that exist to help families deal with problems beyond the schoolhouse. Educators should, while acknowledging those circumstances, focus relentlessly on what can happen when we have the children in the classroom.

  If we believe that the external factors are simply too difficult to overcome, then why do we have schools? In a city such as Washington, D.C., if we believe schools can’t make a difference, shouldn’t we have just shut down the school system and used the $1 billion annual budget to enhance social services and fix poverty?

  Therein lies the problem. While some contend that you can’t have great schools in every community until you solve the problem of poverty, I would argue the opposite. In the words of my mentor, Joel Klein, “You cannot solve the problem of poverty until you fix the public education system.” If you look at any country through any period of time, you will see that the single most effective strategy for c
ombating generational poverty is education.

  WHEN I FIRST BECAME chancellor, schools knew when I was scheduled for a visit. They prepared. After I’d seen my fair share of pep rallies, musical performances, and dance routines for my benefit, I decided to move toward unannounced visits. I wanted to see what was happening in the schools every day, when I wasn’t there.

  One day I decided to visit a school in Trinidad, one of the toughest and most dangerous parts of Washington. I pulled up to the front of the school. I stepped on the sidewalk and looked across the street to see a liquor store and a nightclub. Approaching the front door, I stepped over broken beer bottles and cigarette butts strewn across the open walkway. It was the picture of urban blight.

  When I visited schools I didn’t stop by the main office. That created too much of a scene. Instead I just walked around. On this particular day, I chose a random hallway and entered the first classroom I saw. What was happening in this particular fourth-grade class was amazing.

  Thirty pairs of eyes were transfixed on the teacher, a woman of boundless energy bouncing around the classroom. She had the kids’ rapt attention. It was clear from listening to the dialogue for a short time that the class was in the midst of a unit on Greek mythology. They were reading a chapter book together about a group of children who had traveled back in time (to the mythological time of Greek gods) and had an adventure. They were at the part of the book where they wanted to go back home.

  “Okaaaaaaayyyyy,” said the teacher. “Please look up at the posters I’ve put on the walls.” She’d created a variety of posters, each with the name of a Greek god and their kingdom. “And tell me,” she continued, “if you were one of these kids and needed help returning home, and you could choose one Greek god to help you, which would it be and why?”

  I scanned the posters on the wall and chose my answer.

  The first child raised his hand. “I would choose Zeus,” he said emphatically, “because Zeus is the god of gods! He’s the boss of everyone else. If he tells you to do something, you have to do it. So I figure, just cut out the middleman and go straight to the big guy!” He smiled broadly.

  “Great answer!” I thought.

  The next little girl raised her hand. “I would definitely pick Aphrodite,” she said confidently. “She is the goddess of women, children, and families. These are kids we’re talking about. These are her peeps! She’s gotta take care of them!” The other kids snickered in agreement with her logic. One of her table mates gave her a high-five.

  “Another really solid answer,” I thought.

  A pudgy boy raised his hand next. “I would choose Apollo,” he said. I looked up at the Apollo poster. “The god of art, music, and literature,” it read.

  “Okay, kid, that’s a total misfire,” I thought.

  Then he went on to explain his answer. “As you’ll remember from the book, the way the kids traveled back in time is they dug up an old Greek lyre. When they strummed the strings of the lyre, they were transported back in time. I figure if they have to go back, it has something to do with the lyre, so they should call on the god of music.”

  “Huh,” I thought. “That was pretty darn good.”

  The students in the room gave five or six really thoughtful answers before someone came up with my answer, which by that time seemed pretty lame and boring, of Hermes, the god of travel.

  The classroom was amazing. It was exactly what you want to see happening in a classroom every day—the kind of place where you’d want your own kid to be. All of the children were engaged. They were learning critical thinking and analytical skills. The room was alive with learning. I was thrilled.

  AND THEN I WENT across the hall.

  As I opened the door I nearly knocked over the teacher, who was standing in the opening. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “Everybody be QUIEEEETTTTTT!” she belted. “I just don’t understand what’s wrong. I’ve been telling you all morning to close your mouths and stop the yapping. But you’re just not listening. I’m going to give you one more chance. I’m going to count down from ten and by the time I get to one, everybody’s mouth should be closed.”

  “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . I’m waiting,” she said as she started to turn the light switch on and off.

  “seven . . .” Flick, flick, flick went the light switch.

  “six . . .” Flick.

  “five . . . I’m waiting . . .” Flick.

  “We’re waiting too,” you could tell the kids were thinking, “for something to happen!”

  I was in each of those classrooms for no more than ten to fifteen minutes, and I could tell you that those two groups of children, both from the same troubled community, who came to the same dilapidated building every day, with rainwater leaking through the roof and ceiling tiles falling on their heads, were getting two wildly different educational experiences because of the adults who were in front of them.

  I SIMPLY REFUSE TO believe that what we do in schools can’t make a difference. It can. A big one. The research bears this out. According to Eric Hanushek, an economist from Stanford, if the United States were to raise its PISA scores—which evaluate student achievement across the globe—to the level of Finland, we would raise our gross national product by more than $100 trillion over the lifetime of a child born in 2010. How do we do that? Hanushek presents data showing that replacing the bottom 5–8 percent of teachers with average ones would have us performing near the top in PISA scores.

  We know having the right teachers in the classroom can make a big difference for kids—a life-changing difference. What I’ve found fascinating is that when I go out and talk about these facts, I’m accused of being anti-teacher.

  That mystifies me—and teachers like Jennifer Miller.

  Miller had been teaching second grade at Janney Elementary in D.C. for years. She was a great success. Her students in the largely white neighborhood adored her. But she wanted a new challenge. So she wrote to me: “I am thrilled to work in a public school system where we are expected to raise achievement levels and have our results measured. I just found out that you’ve asked our principal, Scott Cartland, to take on a more difficult assignment in a failing school. I’ve decided I’m going to go too!”

  Cartland and Miller were heading to Webb-Wheatley, an elementary school in the troubled Trinidad neighborhood. Jennifer struggled through her first year but was able to use her skills to connect with the students and improve their academic achievement.

  Teachers like Jennifer Miller can have a significant impact on students. We should do everything we can to make sure that every child has an effective teacher in front of her every single day. How is that viewpoint anti-teacher? If anything, it’s incredibly pro-teacher. It’s saying teachers matter. It’s saying how you do your job makes a big difference. I think that acknowledging how difficult it is to be an effective teacher in a challenged environment honors teachers.

  IN ORDER TO ENSURE that every kid has a highly effective teacher, we have to differentiate among teachers. We have to have a rigorous evaluation system that determines which teachers have the greatest success with kids and which do not. And it also necessitates that we intervene with those who are not performing. We either quickly improve their skills and capabilities or we move them out of the system, because our kids can’t afford to be taught by an ineffective educator.

  Some people cast that as anti-teacher because it means that some people will lose their jobs. I disagree. I think it does two important things: first, it elevates the teaching profession; second, it ensures that we’re putting students and their interests first—above job security and tenure for teachers. That’s not anti-teacher; it’s pro-kid.

  It’s fascinating, though, to watch how conversations about this seemingly innocuous topic of teacher evaluation unfold. I say “seemingly innocuous” because you would assume that everyone, including teachers unions, would think that the current evaluation system, which relies on principal evaluations alone, i
s overly subjective, unfair, inconsistent, and prone to politics and corruption.

  The question then is “How do we change this?” Some would argue that it’s impossible to truly capture the effectiveness of a teacher. And while I would agree that it may be impossible for a tool to capture every last essence of a teacher, I also believe that we can measure a teacher’s effectiveness with as much accuracy as we can that of a doctor, lawyer, or management consultant.

  Does simply looking at a doctor’s mortality rate capture his true effectiveness as a physician? No, because it doesn’t give you any indication of their bedside manner. But if we were choosing an open-heart surgeon for our child, would bedside manner be the first thing we looked at? Of course not. We’d want to know how many of the doctor’s patients survived to see another day. You could have the best bedside manner in the world, but if all your patients died on the operating table, it wouldn’t matter one iota.

  So should surgeons be evaluated solely on the basis of their mortality rate? Absolutely not. Should it be a major factor? Definitely.

  The same is true of teachers. People don’t like the notion of teachers being evaluated partly on the basis of how their students perform on standardized tests. In fact, I had a conversation with a legislator that went something like this:

  “I don’t believe we can make judgments about the effectiveness of a teacher based only on test scores,” he said.

  “I don’t believe we should, either,” I responded. “We should look at teacher effectiveness through a variety of lenses. However, I think it’s critical that student achievement growth is a significant one of those factors.”

  He looked at me skeptically. So I continued: