I came across this very interesting Article about the Washington D.C. Chancellor of Education. She was appointed as Chancellor by Mayor Adrian Fenty on June 2007. Prior to being appointed as the Chancellor, Rhee was running a nonprofit program called “New Teachers Project.” The project’s mission and goals were to help find struggling school districts find new, energetic and inspiring teachers to help educate one of the least performing school district in the nation. Although her previous job wasn’t exactly running school districts, she had some experience and understood what to look for in teachers.
During Rhees first year in charge of Washington’s schools, Rhee made more changes than most school leader, even reform minded ones, make in five years. Rhee shut down 21 failing schools which accounted for about 15% of the city’s total schools. On top of closing extremely under performing schools, she fired nearly 100 workers, not including teachers. She dismissed 270 teachers and removed 36 principals.
This was a very interesting article, especially after reading some of Diane Ravitch work. As you can read from my pervious posting, Dr. Ravitch is against radical firing and closing of schools. Although some may discredit and dislike radical purging of entire schools and staff, I do believe in accountability. I also believe however, that we need much more research and development in areas such as education. It is imperative that we find out exactly which teachers and administrators are failing our future leaders.
You can read the article by Amanda Ripley here http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1862444-2,00.html
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