Radical

by Michelle Rhee

  It worked! This fourth and final contract of TNTP’s first year was an instant hit. It attracted national news coverage and garnered thousands of applications. The participants were dubbed the “bonus babies.”

  We worked frantically that first year and accomplished a tremendous amount. We found that the challenges in the school districts were immense. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t attract good candidates. It was that their systems didn’t treat candidates well. In many cases, no one would return an applicant’s calls. Their applications would be lost. No one contacted them after they had applied.

  After trying to change the way some HR staffs operated, we decided the best remedy would be to try to conduct these functions ourselves. We created separate Teaching Fellows programs in each school district to take applications from midcareer professionals who wanted to become educators. The TNTP staff would review teacher applications, interview applicants, communicate the requirements to them, train them through a summer program, and deliver them to the district in time for the start of school.

  It worked! So well that it surprised us. We got applications for our programs from rocket scientists, investment bankers, and judges. All of these people were willing to leave their jobs for the opportunity to teach.

  As we were closing out our first recruitment season and gearing up for our summer training programs, I got a call that changed the trajectory of The New Teacher Project: Vicki Bernstein, with the New York City Department of Education, was on the line.

  “We need three hundred teachers for the start of school,” she said. “Can you help?”

  The assignment was nuts. The New York system was gargantuan: the largest in the nation. It included more than a million students, in 1,700 schools, with nearly 75,000 teachers. In the other programs that we’d run, we were hiring 100 teachers on average, and we had nine months to run our entire process. Vicki wanted 300 teachers, and we had three weeks to recruit them before the training program.

  “We have never recruited this many people before in ideal circumstances, much less three weeks,” Tracy said. “And if we screw up, we screw up with the biggest and highest-profile school district in the nation. No way!”

  “Who is going to run the thing?” Charity asked. “We’re already all working beyond capacity. This is a major undertaking, and we’ll need an entire team to pull it off!”

  There was no shortage of good reasons not to take the project on. But I knew we had to do it. For all of the risks, there was tremendous upside. A foot in the door with the New York City public schools would create opportunities nationwide.

  “We are taking it,” I said. “We can pull this off.”

  The first order of business was assembling our recruitment materials. After another marathon late-night session we landed on another gem: a grainy black-and-white picture of an adorable young Latina child. Above her the caption read: “Four out of five 4th graders in the city’s most challenged schools can’t read and write at grade level.” At the bottom of the page: “Are you willing to do something about it?”

  We loved it.

  The New York City department hated it. The powers that be felt the message was too negative. They wanted something more positive.

  I argued that facts are facts. We didn’t make that statistic up. Moreover, a message that says, “Hey, everything in the school system is great—come be a cog in the wheel!” is not very compelling. Tell people they can make a difference, and they will come.

  Karla Oakley, the woman I’d hired to run the contract, took our argument to Harold Levy, the new chancellor. He was a bit of a maverick. He green-lighted the idea. The response to the pitch was immediate. New York Times editors were so intrigued by the ad that they assigned a reporter to cover our campaign. The article ran with a picture of the ad.

  Within days we had thousands of applications.

  RUNNING THE NEW TEACHER PROJECT made me realize that we could make a real difference. Quickly, we were working with most of the large urban school districts across the country and hiring thousands of teachers a year. We partnered with the Chicago Public Schools, Miami–Dade County Public Schools, Los Angeles Unified, and many others. Our experience base was growing exponentially.

  And so was my rage.

  Our job was to work with the school district bureaucracies. They were our clients. And it was uncanny how they simply couldn’t manage to do what a competent organization should do. In fact, they did the opposite of what must be done to recruit and hire the best teachers. It was maddening.

  When we began our work, we figured that there simply weren’t enough people out there who wanted to teach, so we had to inspire people to do something they hadn’t thought of doing before. I quickly learned that we could get huge numbers of very qualified people to apply for teaching jobs.

  Attracting candidates wasn’t the problem. But we found that the school districts couldn’t hire them—or wouldn’t hire them. They had set up systems and processes that made it impossible for them to hire the best teachers. We were so frustrated that we decided to try to document the problem by thoroughly examining how school districts responded to applicants, cataloging the processes and compiling the results in a report.

  At first we couldn’t convince anyone to fund the project, but we thought it was so important that we started the research on our own dime. Jessica Levin, our chief knowledge officer, led the effort, along with Meredith Quinn, whose research and writing skills made the project a success. They asked all our site managers who were embedded in HR offices in districts across the country to begin to track who applied for teaching jobs and when they applied. We also monitored whether they were ultimately hired.

  The results were shocking. They totally smashed the myth that there was a shortage of urban teachers. To the contrary, we found that experts in math and science were banging down the doors to get hired, but the school systems were turning them away. It made me crazy!

  How could schools deny the best candidates? First, school budgets were often not finalized until summer, leaving many principals uncertain of how many staff they would have to hire. Second, the districts often did not make structural decisions—school closures and consolidations or changes to staffing plans—until summer. That combined with the unresponsive and unaccountable nature of the HR departments equaled disaster. Third, even if a school district could usher a new teacher through the process in time for them to show up in the classroom at the start of the school year, the union contract mandated that no new teacher could be hired into the system until all of the current teachers had been placed.

  Potential teachers were essentially stiff-armed before they could get in front of the students.

  Lots of politicians have stories about constituents, relatives, or friends of friends who applied for teaching jobs and became so frustrated by the process and bureaucracy that they decided to do something else. Those, however, were just anecdotes. Our report put numbers behind the anecdotes in a compelling, sixty-three-page document supported by graphs, charts, and case studies of three school districts.

  We named it “Missed Opportunities” and went public in April 2003.

  We were very excited about the report, but we had low expectations. Who would care? We printed a couple of hundred copies. Requests poured in. Within weeks we had to print more. Because it confirmed the suspicions and anecdotes of so many people, “Missed Opportunities” resonated. Requests came from think tanks, institutions of higher education, states, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Investigative journalists devoured it.

  TNTP’s first foray into the policy world was a success, but we didn’t want to be known as one-hit wonders. The report and its reception made us hungry for more. We understood the impact and value of a document that presented live data and broke new ground. Lawmakers began using it to guide new policy, which had been our hoped-for ideal outcome. But we also knew that “Missed Opportunities” barely began to delve into a deeper set of obstacles. We wanted to expose more problems and
recommend solutions.

  Jessica Levin and I wrestled with the remaining roadblocks to hiring great teachers. We decided that the first two problems of HR processes and budget timelines could be addressed by good leadership and planning. The third issue, the requirement that school districts hold open spots for all current teachers without assignments, before offering spots to any new teachers—was a much tougher problem. This issue revolved around collective bargaining agreements and so it touched on a series of sensitive, sacred cows in public education.

  “There’s no doubt about it,” said Jessica, “the union issues are the seemingly intractable ones. Those are the ones that would be most interesting to delve into.”

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s do it.”

  “Are you crazy?” she said. “The unions would go ballistic. And they are not people you want to be on the wrong side of.”

  “We have to solve the problems,” I said, “right?”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “And you just told me that the budget and HR issues are more easily solvable.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then we have to pry into the guts of the union contracts,” I said.

  “Oh, honey,” she said, “do you realize what you’re getting us into?”

  Here’s how Sandra Feldman, the well-respected head of the American Federation of Teachers, reacted to “Missed Opportunities.”

  “If these transfer policies are getting in the way of recruiting new teachers in a timely fashion, labor and management should get together and create a better way of dealing with it.”

  If Sandy Feldman was willing to say that, how mad could the teachers unions be with us?

  AND WITH THAT, WE embarked on our second major project. It required two years of research and evaluation. We collected data in five urban school districts. In November 2005, we published “Unintended Consequences.” The report enumerated in exacting detail the rules and regulations embedded in collective bargaining agreements that prohibit school districts from hiring the best teachers. In fact, we showed that union contracts required school districts to give jobs to teachers who had demonstrated their failure at teaching.

  Take what school districts call “voluntary transfers.” If a teacher lost a job at one school because of budget cuts or poor performance, he or she was not fired from the system. Under the contract, they were considered “excessed.” Translation: If a teacher failed or was deemed unnecessary at one school, he could be first in line for a job at another school in the district. There was often nothing voluntary about the transfers. Bad teachers were often forced out of one school, only to be foisted on another.

  “Voluntary transfer rules often give senior teachers the right to interview for and fill jobs in other schools even if those schools do not consider them a good fit,” we concluded. Most principals reported that they didn’t want to hire those teachers. But contract rules forced them to accept teachers they neither wanted nor needed.

  Under contract rules, terminating a teacher requires weeks of time in writing reports and evaluations and holding meetings. Often principals simply “excessed” bad teachers and passed them from school to school, a ritual some referred to as “the dance of the lemons.”

  Contract rules often put promising young teachers—and their students—in a precarious position. A more senior teacher could bump a new teacher from a classroom, even if the more experienced teacher was known to be a lousy educator who had failed to teach students effectively for decades.

  In reporting on these issues, we knew we were challenging powerful unions and liberal dogma.

  “We hope that this report will initiate a discussion not on the merits of collective bargaining as a whole (which we support), but on the effects of the specific contractual requirements governing school staffing,” I wrote in the foreword: “When these rules were adopted in the 1960s by newly formed teachers union locals and school boards, they were an important and legitimate response to widely perceived arbitrary and poor management. Based on the now four decades of experience with these provisions, however, we believe it is time to find a new balance between protecting teachers from past abuses and equipping schools with the necessary tools to achieve excellent results for their students.”

  “Unintended Consequences” also presented very specific recommendations for change. We gave districts a road map for a better teachers union contract. Among our recommendations: Teachers could transfer from one school to another, but they could no longer force a school to accept them. If a teacher lost his or her job at one school—for poor performance, falling student enrollment, or any other reason—he could apply for a job at another school, but he was not guaranteed a position. Promising new teachers would not be the first to be laid off, and senior teachers could no longer bump those with less experience. Contracts would include procedures for evaluating teachers, training those who were not measuring up, and rewarding the best ones.

  The report got the attention of teachers unions. They went on the attack. We also got the attention of Joel Klein, who had succeeded Harold Levy as chancellor of New York City schools. New York was one of the districts that we had gathered data from for “Unintended Consequences.” Klein was doing battle with the unions at the time. After two years of negotiating unsuccessfully with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the school system and the union were heading toward binding arbitration. The UFT is the New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. Randi Weingarten, already a powerful and legendary union boss, ran the UFT at the time.

  Many of the disputes revolved around staffing and seniority, matters we had investigated at TNTP. Klein asked for my help.

  I loved Joel Klein from the moment I first spoke with him. Upon Harold Levy’s departure, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg had named Joel his new chancellor. The choice was a total shock to many. Klein was not an education professional—not even close. He had worked in the Clinton administration and as the CEO of the U.S. corporate arm of the Bertelsmann media conglomerate. But he was a New York kid, the son of first-generation Americans. He grew up poor and attributed his success to the great education he got in New York public schools. Still, he was an unlikely candidate for the head of the largest school district in the country.

  Before Klein started his new job as chancellor, he called me to have a conversation. By that time, we were the largest supplier of new teachers to the New York public schools, supplying two thousand new Teaching Fellows every year.

  “What’s wrong with the way we hire teachers?” he asked.

  At first I was a bit skeptical, so I stayed on the reserved side, unsure of what his reaction would be. But we connected, and I warmed to the task. I ran down what we had found with “Missed Opportunities” and our theory on union contracts. I told him how we had structured our Teaching Fellows program to work around the bureaucracy, and I described our success to date.

  “Okay,” he said, “can you do more?”

  “More Teaching Fellows?” I asked.

  “No, more to solve the fundamental problem. I get the Teaching Fellows piece, that’s great. Keep doing it. But you’re saying that the HR function for hiring traditionally certified teachers is broken. Why can’t you start a program like Teaching Fellows to go after those folks? Circumvent the system again.”

  “Umm,” I mumbled, “your HR department may not be so excited about that.”

  “I’m not worried about them,” said Klein. “Can you do it or not?”

  “Okay,” I said tentatively. “How many do you want?”

  “How many can you do?” he asked.

  “I’ll have to talk to my staff and get back to you,” I said.

  “Yeah, get back to me,” he said, nonchalantly.

  I went back to my staff and relayed my conversation with the new chancellor.

  Karla Oakley quickly chimed in. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “The HR department barely to
lerates us as it is. This would put us in direct competition with them. And that would not be good.”

  “Why not?” I asked again.

  “ ’Cause we’d probably kick their butts,” she replied, “and that would not be good.”

  After some rigorous debate, we decided to put together a proposal to locate another five hundred recruits for the new program. I sent it to Klein but half expected the idea to die on the vine. After all, the guy was about to take over a system of 1.1 million kids. He was having conversations with hundreds of experts in school law, finance, special education, food service, and transportation, just to name a few. He probably wouldn’t even remember our conversation.

  In what I would later learn was true Joel Klein fashion, he got back to me immediately.

  “Let’s go” was his answer.

  This guy was no joke. He totally won me over.

  IN 2005, KLEIN AND his labor negotiator, Dan Weisberg, asked me to get involved in their stalemate with the UFT. I agreed immediately.

  By then Klein had been battling for two years to change the union work rules, such as the one that forced principals to hire incompetent teachers. But Klein had unearthed another outrage. Teachers who had been deemed incompetent or unsafe—some because they had been accused of abusing students—were still on the payroll. The disciplinary system to assess and perhaps dismiss failed teachers was so cumbersome and lengthy that hundreds of teachers caught in the process were warehoused in what was dubbed “the rubber room.” Rather than go to a classroom, they came every day to bare rooms in school buildings. They read, they ate, they slept. And they cost Klein’s system $40–50 million a year.

  Klein and the UFT were at war. Under state rules, deadlocked negotiations with public unions come before an arbitration panel of three judges. Klein and Weisberg figured I could help their case. I had no idea that the stage was set for the first skirmish in what would become a wide-ranging battle over the union’s grip on public education.