Dana Goldstein responds to my post in which I argued that Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee would not have made the progress they did in tying D.C. teachers' job security and pay to performance had they been ideologically opposed to the idea of public-sector unions in education. She pivots to explaining why, after agreeing to the contract, the unions then went on to spend money to defeat Fenty in the Democratic primary:
The answer, I believe, is that the bad blood between Rhee and the union goes back to Rhee's first months on the job, when she announced her goal of firing teachers and instituting merit pay well before she had developed IMPACT, her new teacher evaluation system linked to the district's curriculum. From a teacher's perspective it's pretty clear why a decent evaluation system would need to precede merit pay and firings: How can you decide who is failing if you haven't first defined success?
Other cities with strong teachers' unions, most recently Pittsburgh, have embraced Rhee-like reforms without the drama that went down in D.C., in part because when the discussion starts off on terminations, instead of with a debate about what makes an excellent teacher (a complex question), a lot of people are going to get very pissed off.
Because, as I said before, Fenty's rival Vincent Gray basically committed himself to the same trajectory of education reforms as Fenty and Rhee, I hope that he follows through and picks a replacement for Rhee who shares her views if not her politicking style. We'll see.
A related point, this is Matt Welch responding to my post criticizing him for throwing a pity party in response to Courtland Milloy's screed last week after Fenty and Rhee's defeat:
Yes, Adam, there are people whose lives have been much, much more wronged than my own (which, in the event, I wasn't complaining about). You can see them in the video above. I'm sure your white-boy mirth and appreciation of union rights will come as welcome consolation to the fact that their children are trapped.
Sadly, the joys of white boy mirth are unknown to me, not being white, although I am familiar enough with the concept to recognize when it masks a peculiar form of self-loathing. One of the perks of growing up black in D.C. while being light enough to pass is that by about age 12, you've learned to recognize that by the time someone pulls out "white boy" in an argument it means they've already lost.
I'm also a graduate of the more functional side of DCPS, although until recently I was the only one of my male friends from high school to also graduate from college. So I don't need to watch a YouTube video to be knowledgeable about how the lack of teacher accountability affects the opportunities students from the lower and working class whose parents don't have the time or resources to supplement the gaps in their education have. It's one of the reasons I liked what Rhee was doing, and why I don't find Welch whining about not being able to send his child to DCPS very compelling.
