Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

  Nor is Washington, D.C., an exemplar for the nation. Since 2007, it has been controlled by TFA alumni, starting with Michelle Rhee. It was a low-performing district when she arrived, and it was still a low-performing district after she turned the reins of power over to her deputy and fellow TFA alumna, Kaya Henderson.

  Critics do not have the national platform that TFA has. But they have raised important questions. The investigative journalist Barbara Miner decided to “follow the money.” She drew a line between the extraordinary corporate contributions to TFA and TFA’s support for privatization and its claim that poverty can be set aside for now.

  The organization is, without a doubt, a fundraising mega-star. In one day in June 2008, for instance, TFA raised $5.5 million. The event, TFA’s annual dinner, “brought so many corporate executives to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York that stretch limousines jammed Park Avenue for blocks,” the New York Times reported.

  … TFA has no public criticism of pro-market reforms such as privatization and for-profit charters. Nor does it ask hard questions about the relationship between the achievement gap and problems of segregation, poverty, and an unemployment rate among African American men that hovers around 50 percent in some urban communities.12

  Barbara Torre Veltri trains Teach for America teachers at Northern Arizona University. She helped mentor the young, inexperienced teachers through crises as they brought their problems to her. In her book, Learning on Other People’s Kids, she tells their stories as they struggle to meet the needs of the children in their classrooms. One TFA corps member says, “My students need experienced teachers who know what works and can implement it effectively. Instead, they have me, and though I am learning quickly, I am still learning on them, experimenting on them, working on their time.” Another: “Seven students (out of 28) speak limited English. Two students speak no English, two are resource (special education) students. Kids range in skills from K–6. Help!”13

  The claims made by Teach for America distract the nation from the hard work of truly reforming the education profession. Instead of building a profession that attracts well-qualified candidates to make a career of working in the nation’s classrooms, our leaders are pouring large sums of money into a richly endowed organization that supplies temporary teachers. If we were serious about improving teacher quality, we would encourage all future teachers to get a solid education and preparation for teaching, and we would expect districts and states to construct a support system to help them get better every year. Instead of expending so much energy on whom to fire, we would focus energy on making teaching a prestigious profession in which classroom teachers have considerable professional autonomy over what and how they teach.

  By its design, TFA exacerbates teacher turnover, or “churn.” No other profession would admire and reward a program that replenished its ranks with untrained people who expected to move on to a new career in a few years. Our schools already have too much churn. Too many teachers leave the classroom within the first five years, especially in high-poverty schools. These schools need stability and experience, not churn. Few members of TFA stay in the classroom as long as five years. Researchers have found that experience matters; the weakest teachers are in their first two years of teaching, which is understandable because they are learning how to teach and manage their classes. Researchers have also found that staff stability matters. The more that teachers come and go, the worse it is for the schools and their students. One recent study determined that teacher turnover depressed achievement in both mathematics and reading, especially in schools with more low-performing and black students. The disruption was harmful to students whose teachers left, as well as to other students in the school. Turnover itself is harmful, possibly because it undermines the cohesion and collegiality of the community of educators.14

  Anthony Cody, a science teacher in Oakland, California, and a prominent spokesman for the teaching profession, engaged in an online debate with Heather Harding, the research director for TFA. Based on research and on his own work as a mentor to TFA recruits, Cody emphasized that “the positive effect of a teacher with three or more years of experience is much greater than the effect of any entry program on student learning. Thus, programs that keep teachers in the profession have long-term effects on student achievement.”15 TFA rejects the idea that its recruits should sign up for longer than two years or that they need more than five weeks of training.

  In 2009, a surgeon in Texas was so excited by Teach for America that he wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal in which he proposed a program in health care that he called Heal for America (HFA). He imagined a program to train enthusiastic young college graduates to teach patients how to comply with a physician’s orders. The members of HFA would improve “cleanliness in homes” and help patients with personal hygiene. They could teach patients “tasks as simple as hand washing” and convey to them the importance of sleep and exercise. The program, he explained, would follow the example of TFA and cut down on the cost of health care by making patients better informed. He added, “Of course, the members of this program would not try to be amateur physicians, physician’s assistants or substitute registered nurses.”16 The work of medical professionals was far too important to permit these eager and enthusiastic amateurs to do more than assist those with the appropriate expertise.

  The medical profession would never permit a fresh college graduate to substitute for a doctor or even a nurse. Why, then, do American schools entrust vulnerable children to brand-new teachers with only five weeks of training?

  CHAPTER 15

  The Mystery of Michelle Rhee

  More than anyone else, Michelle Rhee is the face of the corporate reform movement. She is the leading spokesperson for its strategies: evaluating teachers by test scores; awarding merit bonuses; firing teachers and principals who don’t get higher scores; opposing tenure and seniority; attacking collective bargaining; closing public schools; and encouraging privatization by opening charters, both nonprofit and for profit, and by increasing the availability of vouchers.

  Adrian Fenty, the newly elected mayor of the District of Columbia, appointed her chancellor of the district’s public schools in June 2007, and she led the D.C. school system until October 2010, resigning after Fenty ran for reelection and lost the Democratic primary. She was a major factor in the mayor’s defeat because her policies of firing teachers and closing schools had alienated many black voters. After she left her position in D.C., she created an organization called StudentsFirst with the intention of raising $1 billion and enlisting one million members. Its purpose was to eliminate tenure and seniority so that “great” teachers could be rewarded with bonuses and bad teachers fired. It was also a staunch advocate for privatization of public schools. As StudentsFirst became active in political campaigns, Rhee worked closely with conservative Republican governors and endorsed candidates who shared her views about teachers, charters, and vouchers.

  When she was appointed to run the D.C. public school system, Michelle Rhee had never run a school system or even a school. In the early 1990s, as a member of Teach for America, she taught for three years in a Baltimore elementary school that was part of a for-profit experiment in privatization, which was terminated by the district after four years.1 After her teaching stint, she ran a program to recruit teachers for urban schools called the New Teacher Project. When Adrian Fenty selected her to lead the D.C. public schools, she was thirty-seven years old. Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City public schools, recommended her to Fenty; Klein, too, had come to his position without education credentials.

  From the moment she was appointed, Rhee became renowned for her candor and toughness. She minced no words in castigating the culture of complacency, inefficiency, and incompetence that she encountered. The D.C. school system, whose students were overwhelmingly black and poor, had a long history of abysmal test scores. Rhee blamed their low academic performance on lazy and indifferent teachers; she often complained about th
e “crappy education” that students in the D.C. schools were getting. She pledged to get rid of ineffective teachers and hire only great teachers. She said that teachers and their union were greedy and self-interested; she, unlike the teachers, cared about the children. With Fenty’s support, she pledged to make D.C. the highest-performing urban district in the nation. She said she would close the district’s yawning achievement gaps. And she made clear that she was there to fire people.

  Why the public fascination with Rhee? Part of it was due to the perception that she, unlike other education leaders, was willing to act tough in a field where professionals stress that they are caring and nurturing people. Every instance of her abrasive, confrontational style cemented her image as someone who would crush anyone who got in her way. She alone was “for the children.” The media loved her decisiveness, her lack of compassion, her hardness. So did the big foundations and corporations. She was the quintessential corporate reformer.

  Her tough talk brought her instant notoriety. During the presidential debates in 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain praised her, even though she had been on the job for only a year and a few months. Right after the election, she was featured on the cover of Time. The cover said, “How to Fix America’s Schools,” implying that Rhee knew precisely what to do. The cover photograph portrayed an unsmiling Rhee in a classroom, dressed in black, broom in hand, looking defiant and determined. To her admirers, she was the new broom, ready to sweep the schools clean of lazy teachers and incompetent bureaucrats. To her detractors, she was a mean witch with a broom. She was a star of the film Waiting for “Superman,” which opened in D.C. the day after Fenty lost his reelection bid.

  Rhee did what she said she would do. She closed schools, fired half the central office staff, fired hundreds of teachers, fired dozens of principals, and established a performance-based teacher evaluation system after a public battle with the Washington Teachers Union and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. By the time Rhee left, she had replaced nearly half the district’s teachers and about a third of its principals, according to her biographer Richard Whitmire.2

  By the summer of 2008, she had attracted an “army of believers.” She selected dozens of new principals, who agreed to do whatever was necessary to disrupt the culture and raise scores.3 She met with every principal and got a promise of test score gains. Those whose schools met their target won a bonus; those who failed to meet their target were at risk of losing their jobs. Overnight, she became the national hero of the brassy new reform movement. A profile in The Atlantic captured some of the excitement that reformers felt:

  “People are coming from across the country to work for her,” says Andrew Rotherham, the co-director of Education Sector, a Washington think tank. “It’s the thing to do.” Rhee had Stanford and Harvard business-school students on her intern staff this summer, and she has received blank checks from reform-minded philanthropists at the Gates and Broad foundations to fund experimental programs. Businesses have flooded her with offers to help—providing supplies, mentoring, or just giving cash.4

  With her brusque and unapologetic style, Rhee gleefully burned bridges. She alienated veteran educators and parents who opposed school closings. She mocked the idea of collaboration. She said in the fall of 2008 (and often repeated, in one form or another): “I think if there is one thing I have learned over the last 15 months, it’s that cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated.”5 She felt that if she listened to people who disagreed with her, it would slow her down, and she had no intention of slowing down. She gloried in being an intimidating and glowering superstar who fired people and closed schools, because she was doing it “for the kids.”

  Rhee believed that the key to raising test scores was to find and reward great teachers and great principals and to find and fire bad ones. She believed in test scores as the ultimate measure of schooling, and she scorned those who didn’t share her devotion to standardized testing. She felt certain that she could close the achievement gaps between black and white students if she could get the teachers and principals she wanted. Rhee believed that three great teachers in a row would close the achievement gap, and she often recited that claim. She felt sure that she could staff the entire school system with great teachers. To reach her goals, she needed to change the evaluation system and the salary structure. She expended much of her time negotiating a deal with the Washington Teachers Union to install her teacher evaluation system, called IMPACT, in 2009. She raised $80 million from several foundations to fund the new salary scale, one that offered significantly higher salaries to teachers willing to give up their tenure. (Many of the teachers who were eligible for big bonuses turned them down, preferring to keep their tenure.)6

  Rhee enjoyed stepping on toes and kicking people out, but there was a price to be paid for her hard-charging style. She became a major issue in the mayoral election of 2010, and her boss, Adrian Fenty, lost to the city council president, Vincent Gray. Gray won the black vote by a large margin, while Fenty won the white vote by a large margin. Gray was elected, and Rhee resigned. But Gray had no appetite for changing what Rhee started; he did not want to alienate the powerful people in the business and philanthropic communities who supported Rhee. To guarantee continuity, he appointed her deputy, Kaya Henderson, also a TFA alumna, to replace Rhee.

  What did Michelle Rhee accomplish? A review of her tenure a year later concluded that she had improved purchasing, textbook delivery, and food services. Most parents thought that the school system was improving. And the issue of school reform had been elevated as a major topic for public concern.7

  Rhee’s relentless pressure to raise the passing rates on tests brought some early gains, but it produced a major cheating scandal as well. In the spring of 2011, four months after Rhee left the district, USA Today published a report about widespread cheating at more than half the district’s schools. The investigation focused on the Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus, where the passing rates in reading had shot up from 44 percent in 2007 to 84 percent in 2009. The gains were so large that they should have set off alarm bells, but they did not. Instead, the school was recognized in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School. Michelle Rhee congratulated the principal and “touted the school … as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes’ staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.”8

  USA Today reported that the erasure rates on the standardized tests at Noyes were unusually high: “On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA Today.”

  Rhee honored Wayne Ryan of Noyes as a model principal. The district featured him and the school in recruitment ads and asked, “Are you the next Wayne Ryan?” Rhee promoted Ryan to the position of instructional superintendent, where he supervised other principals. Noyes’s great success proved to Rhee that her methods worked. She distributed more than $1.5 million in bonuses to teachers, principals, and support staff in schools that saw big test score gains; in three of those schools, USA Today found that “85 percent or more of classrooms were identified as having high erasure rates in 2008.” District officials knew of the high erasure rates before the exposé but did not conduct an investigation. Three months after the story was published, Wayne Ryan abruptly resigned.9

  The cheating scandal was referred to the office of the D.C. inspector general for investigation. That office concluded that there may have been cheating at one school but nowhere else. It saw “insufficient basis” to investigate any other schools. The inspector general of
the U.S. Department of Education concurred. Chancellor Kaya Henderson said, “I am pleased that the investigation is complete and that the vast majority of our schools were cleared of any wrongdoing.” The Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, who had supported Rhee, was outraged by the cursory investigation and wrote that it looked like a cover-up to him. Meanwhile, the reading proficiency rates at Noyes, which were celebrated when they reached 84 percent in 2009, fell to 32 percent in 2012, and the math proficiency rates were equally low. Similar high-pressure tactics in Atlanta produced another major cheating scandal, which was thoroughly investigated and led to indictments of the superintendent and thirty-four other educators. But no one was held accountable for the mysterious rise and fall of test scores in Washington, D.C.10

  Other things happened during Rhee’s tenure that bolstered her image among the corporate reform crowd while giving ammunition to her critics. Because she enjoyed the adulation of the media, she gave free access to many national reporters. When John Merrow visited, accompanied by a PBS camera crew, Rhee said to him, “I’m going to fire somebody in a little while. Do you want to see that?” That was too good to pass up, and the camera crew shot over the principal’s shoulder as Rhee said, “I’m terminating your principalship—now.” As she spoke, Rhee’s face was impassive; she showed no emotion, no regret, no compassion. The film clip was included in Waiting for “Superman” to demonstrate her legendary take-no-prisoners style. Her biographer said that her actions were “thoughtless and reckless,” but Rhee said that there was an “upside” to the media attention because it “helped attract foundations willing to commit millions to teacher pay-for-performance bonuses.”11