Amanda Ripley, a reporter with Time magazine, requested an interview in the early fall of 2008. Ripley had written on education, and I knew her work. I agreed to the interview and let her follow me in action. Her article, in the November 26, 2008, issue, was thorough and fair. It was the photo that wound up sticking in the collective consciousness.
The photographer must have taken a thousand pictures of me, or so it seemed. Most of the shots showed me with a group of students. At the end, however, she took pictures of me holding a variety of rulers, pencils, and teaching tools. I called it quits.
“One more, please,” she pleaded. Her assistant grabbed a broom and asked me to stand with it in my hands. “Straight face, please.”
The picture with the broom made the cover.
That photo would wind up defining me, for better or worse, in a one-dimensional way. Fans saw me as an agent of necessary change; plenty of future enemies latched on to the image of a tough, brusque dictator bent on change, whatever the cost.
I got my fair share of hate mail after the Time cover, but I could find solace in the quiet of private emails.
A teacher in Hawaii wrote: “The students are behind and the expectations are low. I say if you are a good teacher then you should have no problem laying your job on the line. People need to man/woman up and realize this isn’t just about holding kids’ hands. We can’t baby another generation. Keep up the good work.”
And from Portland, Oregon: “I would like to be part of a higher mission to try and reform our public school system in America. If you are looking for teachers outside your district, please feel free to contact me.”
And a short one from closer to home: “A DC voter, NW. No kids yet but when I have them I want to send them to your schools—so stay tough RHEE!”
Those helped.
IN FEBRUARY 2009, RANDI WEINGARTEN inserted herself into the negotiations and ushered George Parker and the WTU to the sidelines. Her mother had recently passed away, and she spent the first twenty minutes of the first negotiating session talking about growing up the daughter of a teacher, and what it felt like to be an orphan. She was warming us up.
Then she said, “I know you’ll be upset when I say this, but I feel like we’re more at the beginning of the negotiations at this point than the end.”
“You’ve only gotten involved in the past fifteen days,” I said, completely annoyed.
“I know you are very frustrated, Michelle.”
Frustrated and not at all interested in starting over. By that point, we had been in talks with the WTU for a year and a half. We had made progress. The union wanted the 20 percent raises and generous professional development we had offered, but it balked at the reforms we were demanding in exchange. Four months before Weingarten stepped in we had reached a stalemate.
We couldn’t remain in limbo. The reforms had to move forward.
The federal control board that had taken the city’s fiscal reins in 1995 had given DCPS the ability to develop a teacher evaluation system. It needed only to consult with the union, but not reach agreement with it. Lacking movement toward agreement on the contract, I directed my staff to develop a new teacher evaluation system with strong input from our rank-and-file teachers. They did. I called a press conference.
“We must do everything in our power to provide high-quality teachers for every student,” I said, with Mayor Fenty by my side.
We unveiled a new performance evaluation system that would essentially bypass tenure. Instead of everyone being rated as satisfactory, we would finally begin to differentiate within the teaching force. Teachers were rated in one of four categories: highly effective, effective, minimally effective, or ineffective. Ineffective teachers would be subject to termination. Minimally effective teachers would have one more year to improve their practice. If they couldn’t, they would also be subject to termination.
Our hope was that the union would agree to the contract so that we could also recognize and reward the highly effective teachers who could receive double the pay of the old system. With the leverage of the new evaluation system, we thought that the union would see that there was a lot of downside, but upside only if they agreed to the contract.
GIVEN RANDI’S INSISTENCE ON her nonnegotiables and my equally ardent demands, we could agree on one matter: we needed a mediator. We each proposed and rejected a few candidates. We finally settled on Kurt Schmoke, then dean of Howard University Law School. Schmoke had been mayor of Baltimore when I taught at Harlem Park in the 1990s. It was Schmoke who encouraged reforms at Baltimore’s worst schools, so I was encouraged that he would help us reach our goals within the collective bargaining process.
Schmoke made it clear he wanted to come to an agreement in June 2009. We would—a year later—in part because Weingarten did not want to give an inch. She often showed up late to bargaining sessions and left early. She would occasionally look across the table at me and say, “I can tell this is your first serious contract negotiation. This just isn’t the way it’s done.”
She spent a lot of time focused on the evaluation system. Our lawyers instructed us to stay away from the topic. We already were using our authority to unilaterally impose a system. The minute we brought the evaluation system into the contract, our lawyers told us, we would lose that authority, and it would become subject to collective bargaining. Randi knew this, too, so she insisted that we couldn’t continue until we addressed it.
I staunchly refused. Teacher input on the evaluation system was critical, but we’d gotten that. We had held scores of focus groups and work sessions with teachers to get their insights on the new evaluation system. We felt good about how we’d engaged with them on its development. But we weren’t going to be held captive by the union bosses. That’s where we drew the line.
We were also stuck on due process, which described how, when, and why teachers could be fired—and their recourse and review.
I believed in due process and thought it was necessary. I’d seen too many examples of good teachers who had been railroaded by ineffective administrators. Those teachers had to have a structure through which they could appeal evaluations when appropriate. However, due process had come to mean that it was impossible to fire an ineffective teacher because of all the hoops administrators had to jump through. In many other cities, it routinely cost several hundred thousand dollars and several years to fire a teacher because of the process.
In one of the first negotiating sessions with Kurt Schmoke, Randi pulled out the due process procedures she’d negotiated in New York. They set up a cumbersome process for firing teachers, even if they had been accused of assault or sexual abuse. It took years of hearings and reports. It was costing New York millions to pay teachers as they sat idle during their evaluation process. As mentioned earlier, they spent their days in what became known as the rubber room, where teachers who had failed in the classroom had been bounced until their due process had been exhausted—sometimes never. It was the bane of Joel Klein’s life as chancellor.
“No way I can agree to that,” I said. “None.”
An hour into the negotiating session, Weingarten announced that she had to leave to give a speech. All of us were shocked, including Schmoke. After she left, I spoke my mind to the dean.
“The bottom line is we don’t need this contract to move forward,” I said. “I can evaluate teachers under the new process that we just established to get poor teachers out. When our budgets are cut, we also have the ability to lay teachers off based on quality instead of seniority. Agreeing on a contract would be great, but I have these authorities, regardless.
“However, we don’t want to enact these evaluation systems without an upside for effective teachers, too. That’s of critical importance. We want to give them bonuses and recognize them for the amazing work they’re doing!”
Kurt Schmoke listened. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking.
THE 2008–2009 SCHOOL YEAR showed more measurable improvements.
Scores ro
se again in reading and math, though the increases were not as dramatic as those of the previous year. Still, D.C. was no longer the worst-performing urban school district in the nation. That’s a low bar, but we had to come up from the bottom. In our first two years D.C. was the only major city school district to show double-digit growth in both math and reading at the secondary level.
We also started to get a vote of confidence from students and parents. The number of students in D.C. schools had been dropping since 1969. We stabilized enrollments after one year and in 2010, my third year, we reversed a forty-one-year decrease in enrollment and finally grew our student population.
Why?
We could trace the rise in scores and enrollment to specific initiatives. Our D.C. Collaborative paired principals from successful schools with schools that had been struggling. The cross-pollination allowed them to share talent, instructional methods, and professional development. The best example was Scott Cartland. He had been a great success at Janney Elementary in a wealthy, white community, but he requested a transfer to Webb/Wheatley, a low-performing elementary across town in the troubled Trinidad neighborhood. In one year he had changed the school’s teaching and culture.
When I had taught in Harlem Park I used data to track every student. By my second year as chancellor we had started to put in place a similar system to measure every student’s progress. If a student was not operating at grade level, what intervention must we put in place? What math intervention? What on reading? And if a student was not performing at grade level, he had to stay after school for what we called an “academic power hour.”
For the first time in D.C., we opened schools on the weekends and offered Saturday Academies.
We aggressively added seats for three-year-olds. We increased enrollment at prekindergarten and brought families into the system early. We actively worked to keep students and families in the school system as they entered middle and high school. Parents who might have enrolled their children in private schools or moved out of the city were staying in the public schools.
None of these positive changes came by accident.
KURT SCHMOKE WAS A patient man, but he was becoming impatient with the lack of progress in our contract talks. He could see that Weingarten and I did not work well together. Through the spring, it looked as though we might have to declare an impasse.
So he put us in separate rooms and started holding marathon sessions where he would shuttle back and forth instead of having us battle it out across the table. It turned out to be a more effective strategy, though it was frustrating to us. Jason; Kaya; our general counsel, Jim Sandman; and I would spend hours in the room together often just waiting. We were clear about what we were willing to give on and what we weren’t. We’d rather walk away than sign a contract that we felt compromised children. So we often sat, and sat, and sat. . . .
The long hours took their toll. Often both sides were so frustrated that it led to heated discussions. One in particular was when Randi was arguing about a point, noting that teachers would never go for it.
“I disagree,” said Jason. “I think there is a big disconnect between what teachers think on this issue and what the union leadership believes.”
“What do you know, Jason?” Weingarten said, dragging out Jaayyson in her most dismissive tone. “Teachers are union, and union is teachers. There is no difference.” As she said it, she was clearly questioning Jason’s ability to comment on the subject. Never mind that Jason had not only taught successfully for a decade, but that as the National Teacher of the Year, he spent an entire year engaged in conversations with teachers. He certainly had a right to express his thoughts and was a credible voice in the debate, but not to Randi. To her, he was a nuisance.
On June 10, 2009, we met in the AFT offices at five thirty in the afternoon. Schmoke put us in different rooms and refused to let us out until we had made progress, even if it meant staying up all night. He ran back and forth. After midnight the union gave up ground on mutual consent. Both sides agreed that principals could choose to accept or reject teachers who had lost their positions. The union held fast on seniority but showed signs of compromise. We took a break.
At 2 a.m., we came back together and started talking dollars and cents.
“We want across-the-board raises of twenty-four percent,” Weingarten said.
“Are you on crack?” I asked.
Weingarten stormed out.
“I’m done negotiating,” I said.
George Parker begged me to stay. Schmoke separated us. They came down to 22 percent; I stayed firm at 20. We decided to call it a night.
Parker called the next day at noon and agreed to an across-the-board pay increase of 20 percent, but we left open the question of the performance pay system. Could we reward the best teachers? Weingarten seemed unalterably opposed. We still couldn’t close the deal.
A few weeks later I met Weingarten for a drink at Bistro Bis, a fine-dining restaurant down the street from her office. The union had gone back on some of the agreements I thought we had reached. I wasn’t seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
“Let’s call it a day,” I said. “No one can say we didn’t try hard. We both did our part. We just couldn’t pull it off. Let’s accept that we’ve reached a point where it’s clearly not working.”
I felt like I was breaking up with her. She said we were close and spent an hour trying to convince me to attend one more meeting.
“I’m sure we can get there,” she said.
“I’m done,” I said. “Really done. I am ready to call an impasse.”
She asked for a couple of days before I announced anything.
At noon the next day Kurt Schmoke phoned to say the union was willing to agree to the terms I thought we had worked out during our marathon session.
“Fine,” I said. “What about performance pay? I’m not doing it unless there’s an upside for great teachers.”
“I’m working on it,” he said. “But I think we can make it happen.”
EARLIER IN THE SPRING of 2009, during one of our marathon negotiating sessions, Schmoke had come up with an idea that I thought was a stroke of genius.
“I actually think we can come to resolution on everything else,” he said to both sides at the time. “Having listened to you all for a long time now, I think the major issue is individual performance pay. The problem is that this is a nonstarter for Randi, but Michelle has to have it in the contract. It’s a nonnegotiable for her. So here’s what I think . . .”
We were all waiting with bated breath.
“We aren’t going to come to agreement on this, so my proposal is that we not continue trying,” he said.
As I was about to jump up, he gave me the look.
“I think we can give you both what you need, though,” he said. I paused, intrigued. He pulled out his pad, where he had written some very carefully crafted language.
“I propose we insert the following language: ‘DCPS will implement an individual pay-for-performance program, the details to be shared upon implementation. The union will neither endorse nor block the initiative.’ ”
It was brilliant. I could implement pay for performance, but because it wasn’t going to be defined specifically in the contract, the union was free to rebuke it, since it had not actually agreed to it. No one said a word, but we all knew it would work.
I WAS ELATED AS I headed to California for a long weekend getaway. It seemed as if the end was in sight. I was going to meet Kevin Johnson, my longtime friend and adviser who was becoming much more important to me. When I had to resign from his charter school board in 2007 to take the chancellor job, he came out to testify on my behalf at the city council nomination hearings. In 2008 he decided to run for mayor of Sacramento and asked if I could help him craft his education platform. I worked closely with him. During the campaign our relationship changed from the politics of education to the intricacies of romance.
KMJ and I were driving to Santa Barbara fro
m Los Angeles.
“What’s going on? You are excited, I can tell. Spill it!” he said.
Over the course of the drive and a stop at In-N-Out Burger, I laid out where we were and what Schmoke had done.
“That brother is the real deal,” he said. “Seriously. Brilliant.”
After I finished telling him the story he conceded, “Dang, baby. I think we might actually pull this thing off! We’re close! I can feel it. It’s going to happen.”
AN UNEXPECTED AND UNSETTLING chain of events was about to drive the negotiations either off the rails or toward the final destination.
The Great Recession had depressed revenue in governments across the country, compressed budgets, and forced the firings of teachers from San Francisco to Philadelphia. Washington, D.C., was relatively immune thanks to the federal government as the city’s engine of revenue. But D.C.’s 2010 budget was coming up short, and I was forced to cut $43.9 million from the schools.
Cutting budgets is never easy, but in education, where a disproportionately large percentage of expenditures is in personnel, it often means cutting jobs. We would have to balance the budget by cutting teachers. Never a good thing, never easy.
For decades D.C. had followed the path taken by most districts, which was to lay off teachers based on seniority. What few people knew was that we actually had the authority to make the decisions based on quality rather than years in the classroom. I suppose most previous administrations had resisted using this discretion because it would anger the unions. But my priority wasn’t to keep the adults happy. I wanted to minimize the impact the cuts had on students. The way to do that was by shedding ineffective teachers when possible. Some schools had just reorganized with a brand-new faculty. In those schools, new, unproven teachers might have to be let go. But in other cases, principals were able to lay off low performers and keep less senior but more effective teachers. There was no doubt that it was the right move if we were focused on kids.
In order to ensure that the process was not arbitrary, we created guidelines that required principals to show evidence of teacher effectiveness to accompany their layoff recommendations. Among the teachers that would be fired were some who had used corporal punishment, had had sexual relations with a student, or had missed seventy-eight or more days of school.
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