“Today,” he wrote in an op-ed essay, “the only factor that goes into teacher layoff decisions in most districts in Minnesota is how long a teacher has been on the job. And while experience matters, it clearly shouldn’t trump everything else. By that absurd standard, I should probably still be the starting quarterback for the Vikings. For the record, I recently turned 72.”
If we make those basic calculations in professional sports, it ought to be even easier to make them in public education. For whatever reason, we have a standard in education where just trying is good enough. If a kid participates today, she gets a medal! When a teacher shows up, he gets tenure, which equates to having a job for life, regardless of performance. With all due respect to professional athletes and my husband’s past career, athletics are not a do-or-die enterprise. Educating our children is. There’s nothing more important we can do as a country than to ensure that our children have the skills and knowledge necessary to compete in the twenty-first century. It’s a matter of grave importance to the entire nation.
I don’t think you can overstate the importance of shifting our cultural mind-set on education. We have to make America competitive again. The best place to start is in the public schools.
Teachers should compete to create the most engaging classrooms and achieve the best outcomes for their students, and they should be rewarded for their success.
Students should be expected to achieve, and we should reward them when they do well, too.
Schools should compete for students and dollars.
No more mediocrity. It’s killing us. The acceptance and celebration of mediocrity is just one aspect of the crisis in our public schools.
The question shouldn’t be “Why is Michelle Rhee radical?” The question needs to be “Why aren’t we all radicals?”
RESTORING THE COMPETITIVE SPIRIT in America will require a massive cultural shift, but I believe moving our public schools toward the interests of students is more attainable. The problems and the solutions are within our grasp. For too long we approached education policy decisions by pitting the interests of the adults in the system—the school boards, the union leaders, the textbook manufacturers, the charter operators—against one another. The special interests won. And students lost.
The good news is we know what we have to do in order to strengthen public education, so that it works for every child and all of our communities. Research and practice have repeatedly shown that we can improve a child’s education by elevating the teaching profession and ensuring that every child has a quality teacher in his or her classroom; empowering parents with information and a role in the direction of their child’s education; and creating accountable governance systems and fair and sustainable sources of education funding. Local school districts like New York City, Denver, Charlotte, and Washington, D.C., have shown great success in improving outcomes for children. They did so by enacting policies that removed bureaucratic rules and reformed the antiquated system of compensation that keeps good teachers out of the classroom. They have empowered parents by giving them more information and meaningful choices. They have moved dollars out of administrative central bureaucracies and into the classroom. Student learning has dramatically improved.
We can improve our public education system. The solutions will not be easy or quick. They have to be sustained, well financed, and purposeful. But it’s absolutely possible. What do these changes look like?
Start in the classroom. We know that teachers are the number one in-school factor in determining the learning of a child. So we have to evaluate teachers through a rigorous system that measures how effective they are at ensuring that kids learn. We should then reward the best teachers by respecting them and paying them commensurate with their value in society—as the most important professionals in the community. We were able to establish a process in Washington, D.C., where the top teachers could earn as much as $140,000 a year, with bonuses based on their success in the classroom.
Staffing decisions in schools will be made on effectiveness, not seniority. Professional development will truly enhance our teachers’ practice and enable them to share best practices. Teachers will know what the expectations of their practice are, and they will have the freedom to innovate as long as they produce results.
When teachers walk into their classrooms they should have all of the supplies, equipment, and books that they need to execute engaging instruction. They should have the technological tools that they need to track the academic achievement levels of every individual student so that they can monitor their ongoing progress. For the classroom of tomorrow, technology is an essential. Today there are handheld devices that allow teachers to do immediate assessments of their students. Based on that data, teachers can generate reports noting which children are in need of interventions or enrichment. Individualized homework can be tailored for each student depending on what skills they need to work on. Computer software programs allow students to move through material at their own pace, differentiating based on their level, so that every student is being challenged. We have to make these advancements available to every teacher and also embrace them as a profession. They will allow us to serve children better.
Educators also need access to curricula, plans, and best practices that allow them to implement high-quality lessons for their students and modify their instructional practice based on the needs of their students. Imagine a third-grade teacher whose class is working on fractions. She opens up her laptop that the school has provided. She ventures into a teacher portal that the district has set up to assist educators. The teacher types “adding fractions” into the search engine. Up pop links to lesson plans that various teachers in the district have used to teach the skill of adding fractions. They are sorted by grade level. Each lesson is rated by a certain number of stars, ratings other teachers have given the plan based on how well it was written and how well it worked in their classroom. There are also links to videos of master teachers presenting lessons on adding fractions. In these videos teachers can hear narration by the master teacher, who is explaining what happened in the room, and why she did what she did. There’s also a message board that teachers can use to comment on the video and share ideas.
Teaching is sometimes a lonely profession. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can build structures that allow teachers to grow their practice and engage in meaningful sharing with other educators within schools and across the country. We have to invest in developing those structures if we want teachers to fulfill their potential.
If we can bring about these changes, students will be excited about coming to school every day, because they know they’ll be challenged and engaged. School will become the place where they can grow not only academically but also physically, through robust athletic competitions and activities. Art and music offerings must be mandatory in every school, so students gain important skills and knowledge beyond academics. In tough economic times, like the ones we are facing today, school districts often move to cut art and music programs first. They are seen as nonessential. We simply can’t allow that to happen. All children must have access to a broad-based curriculum. Art, music, and PE are not “nice-to-haves”; they are must-haves. Studies show that achievement on test scores goes up with a broad curriculum, rather than a narrow one. That’s why we tried to ensure that every school in D.C. had access to an art, music, physical education, and library professional. Debate and chess teams, orchestra, dance companies, robotics, and gaming programs should sit alongside the traditional athletic programs. Students will grow in social skills, too. We are building character skills such as discipline, effort, and hard work. When we engage kids fully, they will both respond and thrive.
We also have to acknowledge that the lives of children have changed significantly, which means the role of the school also has to evolve. Thirty years ago schools were responsible for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. If you delivered the material, you were doing your job as a teacher. Not anymore. Ask any
teacher, and he will tell you that at times he feels like a guidance counselor, social worker, nutritionist, and sometimes parent for many of his students. With a new understanding of how difficult it is to be an effective teacher in our changed American culture, we have to do everything we can to recognize and reward the best teachers. They are our country’s heroes.
We must also recognize that parents deserve options in choosing the right schools for their kids. No family should ever feel as if their sons or daughters are trapped in a failing school. Successful charter schools should be allowed to flourish and grow to scale, with our assistance rather than barriers. Low-income families should also be able to access vouchers to attend private schools. We should care less about whether a school is public, private, parochial, or charter. The measure that matters is whether it’s an effective school—or not. To that end, we should have structures and systems that give parents and the public real and meaningful information about how all of our schools are performing and an accountability system that shuts down failing schools.
The average parent with a child entering school should have ample access to information about their options. Ideally, parents should be able to log onto a website, input their address, and search schools that are a possibility for their child by proximity to their home, curriculum/course offerings, or theme. Information should be available about the academic achievement levels of the students, listings of the program of study and extracurricular activities, teacher-parent retention and satisfaction rates, and other available programs at the school. Parents would be able to view a virtual tour of the school and hear testimonials from other parents about the quality and qualities of the school. If they wanted, they could schedule an in-person tour or have their child attend a day at the school in the grade to which they are about to enter. Having assessed this information, families would then rate their choices of school in order. But unlike current lottery systems, which have far too many applicants for far too few spots, mutually agreeable matches would be the norm.
School funding will no longer be based on formulas. It will be distributed based on both need and performance. We should have complete transparency of the taxpayer dollars that are being spent on education so we can stop spending money on things that don’t work (or benefit only adults) and focus on the things that do. That means we have to shift more dollars into the classroom and schools, where they’ll have the greatest impact, and away from bloated bureaucracies and mandated spending requirements that don’t produce results.
To restore the competitive spirit, we need to have high expectations for all children. We have to fully acknowledge the challenges that we face, yet not let those serve as an excuse for a lack of achievement. We have to ensure that all students who graduate from high school or college are ready and able to compete in the global marketplace.
And since students know better than anyone what is working, they should also have a say in evaluating and rating their teachers and schools.
Teachers deserve a greater voice and role in the education reform debates. We can’t do anything without a significant number of teachers behind us. If the unions can reform themselves, that would be great. They should spend far less time protecting ineffective teachers and far more time developing and investing in the best. They should stop fighting change (and denying that they’re fighting it) and come to the table willing to have the tough conversations. Union leaders and reformers have to have real and meaningful conversations instead of staking out polarized positions with kids in the middle of the battle. If unions can’t come along, it shouldn’t stop us. Teachers can no longer close the door to their classroom and hope that things get better. They have to take an active part in the reform, with or without union involvement. Everyday classroom teachers must be front and center.
We have to begin aggressively identifying and electing candidates for public office who are able to withstand pressures from special interests in order to serve the interests of children. Everyday citizens have to make education their number one priority. They need to be knowledgeable about school reform and hold their elected officials accountable for their votes on the subject. Bowing to pressures for political reasons ought to be a case for ousting those officials from office.
The inevitable question is, How will we pay for it? It’s a valid one. For decades, the education establishment has been arguing that we need more money to fix the schools. Whether we are in lean times or prosperous ones, the same dance seems to occur around budgeting time every year. The school districts argue they need more money, and the government doesn’t seem to have enough.
A hard look at the data here is important. The bottom line is that over the last three decades we have more than doubled—almost tripled—the amount that we are spending per child on public education, controlling for inflation. Yet the results have remained stagnant. When we plot the spending on education and academic achievement levels of countries across the globe on a graph, we are in the quadrant where you don’t want to be. We spend more than almost every other country, but our achievement levels are not high. Countries like South Korea spend about half of what we do per student.
The days of claiming that all we need in order to fix education is more money have to come to an end.
I have said and will continue to say that our reforms require investment. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they require huge infusions of new cash. The bureaucracy doesn’t work. We can throw good money after bad, but we won’t get a different result in the classroom until we start spending taxpayer dollars in education more wisely. Only when we fix the fundamental flaws in the system should we begin to invest more money.
How? First, we have to mandate total transparency. Every parent, teacher, and taxpayer should be able to see how public dollars are being spent. This means that a district would have to report how much of its budget is going toward classrooms, compared with the central office bureaucracy. Are we paying for bureaucrats to go to conferences in Las Vegas versus children being able to go on a field trip to the nation’s capital? All of that information should be accessible.
We can begin by making the hard decisions to move dollars away from the programs that, while beloved, aren’t producing results for kids. Let me give you an example. Right now we spend about $18 billion a year paying teachers for having their master’s degree. Research shows that teachers with master’s degrees—except those in math and science fields—do not have better student achievement outcomes. Eighteen billion dollars! For something that is not producing better results for kids. That money could be spent much more effectively. So could many other dollars being spent on everything from after-school programs to class size reduction initiatives at higher grade levels. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have after-school programs. We need them. But we should be funding only those programs that show a measurable benefit to children.
We also have to move a greater percentage of the dollars we spend into the classroom and school. When I took the helm in the Washington, D.C., school system, we were spending more money than almost any other jurisdiction in the nation, and yet our results were dismal. The same can be said for cities across the country. Newark, New Jersey, spends about $22,000 per student. One would think they’d have a model education system. Instead it’s one of the worst in the nation. These districts are clear examples of why more money doesn’t always get us better results. The funds are not being spent well. There is no reason why teachers in D.C. or Newark should want for anything, yet throngs of them will tell you that they often lack the basic supplies and books they need to teach.
In D.C., this meant cutting the central office from more than nine hundred employees to fewer than five hundred. It meant improving the services and programs for special-needs students to stop the costly lawsuits and the court-mandated tuition payments to private schools. If we are going to spend more money than any other country in the world, then let’s make sure that money is felt by students, parents, and teachers every day.
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nbsp; And finally, we should ensure that every additional dollar that is put into education is accompanied by the policies necessary to reform the system. This should include federal dollars, which are currently largely distributed by funding formulas. Under those formulas, each jurisdiction is allocated a certain number of dollars based on the number of students it has, and how many of those students are low-income, special education, et cetera. There is, however, little to no accountability for those dollars. Instead, federal dollars should be given to states based on their willingness to adopt and implement reforms, similar to President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative.
If we want to stop the cycle of spending more money for the same, dismal results, we have to reward reforms that produce good results.
HISTORY TEACHES US THAT the only way to effect radical change in an entrenched system is through grassroots activism. There’s only so much that people will do for other people’s children or the greater good. People become active when something significant in their own lives is at risk or under attack. Right now, Americans need to understand that this is not someone else’s fight. This is about the soul of our nation and the future of our children.
I’m often asked when I will be satisfied. Maybe we should never be satisfied. But I’ll think we’re on the right track if:
Every child has a high-quality teacher in his or her classroom. That every teacher has the confidence that he or she will have the resources and professional feedback they need to succeed, and understands that he or she will be treated like a professional so that they are judged based on their results.
In the hallways of power, decision makers know they will be held to account for doing right by children. That they make decisions based on the best interests of students and not the special interests, based on the advancement of learning and not the advancement of power. That they spend dollars on education rather than bureaucracy, on what works rather than what doesn’t.
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