Speaking of Change...

Campus Report ^ | July 17, 2008 | Deborah Lambert

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Speaking of Change...

by: Deborah Lambert, July 17, 2008

No doubt about it. Ivy League schools have issues. But when 11 percent of Yale’s senior class, 10 percent of Georgetown’s and 9 percent of Harvard’s head off to teach at some of America’s most impoverished inner city schools for the next couple of years, something’s going on.

The Wall Street Journal reported that last month, 3,700 recent college graduates showed up at Teach for America’s five-week boot camp, the program that precedes their two-year teaching stints where salaries will average somewhere between $25,000 and $44,000, depending on location.

Teach for America’s mission is all about leadership, “eliminating educational inequity,” and sidestepping the roadblocks (aka teachers’ unions) that stand in the way of progress.

Critics who say that two-year teaching stints make true progress impossible would be well advised to keep an eye on careerists—like D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, for example. Naysayers are in shock.

This can’t be true. Is progress really being made to repair the broken Washington, D.C. school system?

The answer is yes, thanks to D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, appointed to the slot in 2007 by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty.

During her first year on the job, Rhee sent waves of fear through the crumbling bureaucracy by firing hundreds of non-certified teachers and aides. No sooner was that job completed when she embarked on a plan that could give the teachers’ union cardiac arrest.

According to Economics Professor Richard Vedder, “Rhee is preparing to offer the teachers a deal—you can continue on your current pay scale, making, say, $62,000 a year with all your cushy tenure and seniority rights...

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A girl I used to work with quit to go teach at the Marshall Islands for 1 year on Harvards dime. Must be the same program.