Reply to testify to SAVE Mayoral control of DCPS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It might be worthwhile, if you haven't been in DC that long, to understand the Fenty/Rhee changes (I write this to any interested party, not in response to an individual post upthread).

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-04-20/michelle-rhee-set-national-example-of-education-reform-in-washington-dc

From 2017, talking about 2007:

"Ten years ago this week, the Council of the District of Columbia passed the D.C. Public Education Reform Amendment Act, which gave then-Mayor Adrian Fenty control over public education in the nation's capital. In doing so, it unleashed new reform energies in Washington, D.C., accelerated efforts already underway and had impacts that extend well beyond the district's 10 square miles.

The act abolished the District of Columbia's elected board of education and created a new office, the chancellor, who is appointed by the mayor, serves as the chief executive officer of the District of Columbia Public Schools, the public school district in Washington, D.C. Fenty selected Michelle Rhee as Washington's first chancellor, and this galvanized education reformers nationally.
...
Following her appointment, she closed nearly two dozen schools, primarily those with low enrollments and outdated buildings. This was a painful but fiscally and educationally essential step in a district that had lost more than 100,000 students since the 1960s.

Rhee also created IMPACT, a new teacher evaluation system that assessed teacher performance based in part on how much their students learned, and negotiated a new union contract that tied teacher pay to evaluation ratings, allowed teachers who earned multiple low ratings to be dismissed and provided hefty bonuses to those who earned the highest ratings. Subsequent research found that IMPACT has in fact improved the quality of teachers in DCPS, by prompting low-performers to leave the system and high-performers to stay and improving performance of high-performers.

These reforms came at a political cost: Fenty lost his re-election bid in 2010 (although other factors played an important role there), and Rhee subsequently left D.C. But her successor, Kaya Henderson, maintained and built on her reforms.

And this sustained reform effort has paid off for students: According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally administered test used to track trends in achievement nationally and across jurisdictions, DCPS students made significant gains in reading and math from 2007 to 2015. In 2007, DCPS students scored at the bottom of large urban school districts nationally. In 2015, they score at the national average for large urban districts in fourth-grade reading and math, and slightly below it in eighth grade. Moreover, from 2011 to 2015 DCPS made larger gains than any other large district in fourth-grade reading, fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading."[/quote]

+47389

Thank you for this important context. We absolutely should not return to having a powerful SBOE.[/quote]

+47390[/quote]

Hilarious that this is probably lot 5 people giving off each other thinking they’re making a powerful statement [/quote]

It must be hard being a lot 4 person. [/quote]

Typo police it’s like we’re in 2009. Sounds like my point stands[/quote]

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