Free Republic

Shouldn’t we be in the process of teaching second graders to be proficient in reading and writing before teaching them how ticked off Rosa Parks was at white people? Samuel Clover III reads excerpts from Rosa by Nikki Giovanni to his second grade class at Community Academy Public Charter School in Washington, DC. He explains why he chose this as one of the books on the Civil Rights Movement and how it challenges the myths he learned as a child about Rosa Parks. The book can be orderd from Teaching for Change’s Busboys and Poets Bookstore. For an article about...

Salary Rheeview Bethany Stotts, June 14, 2010 Michelle Rhee and the Washington Teachers Union have reached a tentative union contract which “will boost the average annual salary of a D.C. educator from $67,000 to about $81,000 and gives the city’s public school teachers salaries comparable to those in surrounding suburban districts, according to a union survey,” according to the Washington Post. In 2007 the Washington Post called the D.C. Public Schools system “among the highest-spending and worst-performing in the nation.” The Washington Post reports that the tentative agreement (pdf) with the Washington Teachers Union * redefines tenure as a due-process...

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, following through on promises to dismiss teachers deemed ineffective, has fired about 250 tenured and novice instructors this week for poor performance or failure to obtain a license, union officials said yesterday.... The dismissal of 80 tenured teachers is a landmark of sorts for the school system, which historically has fired only a handful of instructors each year for poor performance. ...

Abstinence Awareness by: Alanna Hultz, March 13, 2009 As the fourth annual abstinence awareness week kicks off, ULTRA (Urban Life Training and Reality Assessment) Teen Choice held an event at Howard University to promote abstinence awareness. ULTRA Teen Choice is a youth empowerment program that guides youth toward the formation of two-parent families and positive character development by emphasizing the benefits of abstinence from drugs, alcohol and premarital sex. Richard Urban, ULTRA Teen Choice Co-founder, said he founded the program because “it’s important to guide youth in the right direction.” He also said “abstinence programs are no longer allowed in...

Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee told the D.C. Council yesterday that the District needs to completely rethink its approach to preventing school violence, with a better trained security force but also by teaching students to manage conflicts before they spiral out of control. Rhee spoke to the council a day after fights among rival groups at Anacostia High School left five students injured, including three with stab wounds. Flooding school corridors with more police or private security guards is not the answer, she said. Students feel less safe in schools filled with guards, she said, and dollars are better invested in...

Chancellor Michelle Rhee told the DC Council yesterday that the District needs to completely rethink its approach to preventing school violence, with a better trained security force but also by teaching students to manage conflicts before they spiral out of control. Rhee spoke to the council a day after fights among rival groups at Anacostia High School left five students injured, including three with stab wounds. Flooding school corridors with more police or private security guards is not the answer, she said. Students feel less safe in schools filled with guards, she said, and dollars are better invested in teaching...

Nearly 150 windows installed last year in Northwest’s Shepherd Elementary School will be replaced this summer at a cost of roughly $6,300 each, and parents are hopeful the District’s new contractor will be an improvement over the last “catastrophe.” Roughly 140 rotting wooden windows at Shepherd, located on 14th Street just north of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, were replaced in 2007 at a cost of $4,042 per window under a contract awarded by the D.C. Public Schools to the Timonium-based Orlando J. Sales Painting Co. In December, Allen Lew, director of the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, terminated...

One of the unwritten codes for white teachers teaching in public schools has been that when it comes time to discipline a black student, the task should be left to another black teacher or administrator. This is to avoid the possibility that the student might mistake the discipline for just another display of the Eurocentric-White-Power-That-Rules-the-World-and-Keeps-All-People-of-Color-Enslaved-Hegemony. Sometimes, however, a white teacher needs to make requests in the classroom, like telling a poor, disadvantaged student to turn off the blaring music on his iPod. There are classes and workshops for teachers on how to do this “sensitively.” While being interviewed on National...

Proposed guidelines for sex-education classes in D.C. public schools face opposition from critics who say the standards are biased against abstinence-only education, promote the view that homosexuality is innate and are not age-appropriate. "I'm quite confident if you surveyed all the public school parents in D.C., the majority would not agree with these standards," said Richard Urban, executive director of Urban Life Training and Reality Assessment (ULTRA) Teen Choice, which promotes abstinence. Mr. Urban is among those slated to testify tonight at a public hearing before the State Board of Education, which is expected to vote on the standards next...

It is Back to Dysfunctional Schools Week in the District, where lagging test scores, dwindling enrollment, dilapidated buildings and an incompetence-protecting teachers' union have become the focus of another savior in chief, Michelle A. Rhee. The city's public school system has been befuddling superintendents since the 1960s, each as committed as the next to uplifting the future car jockeys of America. Now here comes Mrs. Rhee, energetic, full of ideas and ever committed to overhauling the worst darn education money can buy. Give the city this. It prepares the future car jockeys of America as well as any municipality in...

But not a one of them even whispered a word of outrage about a public school system that spends $13,000 per child -- third-highest among big-city school systems -- and produces pupils who score among the lowest in just about any category you can name. The only area in which the Washington school system is No. 1 is in money spent on administration. Chests should not swell with pride. The litany of more and more when it comes to money often has little to do with what, in the military, are called facts on the ground: kids and parents. It...

More than a dozen D.C. public school system central office administrators are taking home base salaries of at least $150,000 per year, compared with just one official earning that much two years ago, according to an analysis of payroll records. The salary information, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows 14 central administration officials receiving a base pay of at least $150,000 in fiscal 2006, including five officials making $170,000 or more. By comparison, pay records approved by the Board of Education in July 2004 show only one administrator -- former interim Superintendent Elfreda Massie -- earning at least...

The D.C. Council vented frustration yesterday about crumbling schools and hundreds of potential teacher layoffs by saying the city could find money by eliminating high-paying salaries and jobs in the school system's central administration office. "It's never about that big, humongous central administration office," said D.C. Council member Kwame Brown, at-large Democrat. "I want to see some additional cost savings there before we start laying off teachers." The discussion came before the council narrowly rejected a proposal by council member Kathy Patterson, Ward 3 Democrat, to use $10.7 million from other city agencies to help avoid the layoffs.

The former interim superintendent for D.C. Public Schools will receive a $50,077-a-year pay raise for a new school system position created for him, financial documents show. Robert C. Rice last year earned a $124,923 salary as the school system's assistant superintendent for standards and curriculum and acting chief academic officer, records show. When he was promoted to interim superintendent for five months last year, his salary rose to $175,000 a year. Mr. Rice stepped down from the interim job in September, but pay documents show he is still receiving his interim salary as a "special assistant to the superintendent" --...

<p>Five long years after Bill Clinton vetoed education vouchers for the poorest pupils in the District of Columbia, the political stars are realigning. The question now is whether Republicans are going to miss this opportunity to match policy with their we-care-for-poor-kids rhetoric.</p>