Rhee fires 241 D.C. teachers; 165 cited for poor performance
By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2010; 2:03 PM
washingtonpost.com
Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced Friday that she has fired 241 teachers, including 165 who received poor appraisals under a new evaluation system that, for the first time, holds some educators accountable for student growth on standardized test scores.
"Every child in a District of Columbia public school has a right to a highly effective teacher -- in every classroom, of every school, of every neighborhood, of every ward, in this City," Rhee said in a statement. "That is our commitment. Today, with the release of the first year of results from IMPACT, the educator assessment system, we take another step toward making that commitment a reality."
The Washington Teachers' Union said it will contest the firings.
The dismissals represent the second game-changing development this year in Rhee's efforts to assert more control over how D.C. teachers are managed, compensated and removed from their jobs. It also places the public school system at the head of a national movement -- fostered in part by the Obama administration's $3.4 billion "Race to the Top" grant competition -- to more rigorously assess teacher effectiveness.
Last month, union members and the D.C. Council approved a new contract that raises educators' salaries by 21.6 percent but diminishes traditional seniority protections in favor of personnel decisions based on results in the classroom. The pact also provides for a "performance pay" system with bonuses of $20,000 to $30,000 annually for teachers who meet certain benchmarks, including growth in test scores.
The evaluation, known as IMPACT, is the major instrument officials will use each year to determine teacher effectiveness.
Another 737 educators at risk
In addition to the 226 dismissals, which become official Aug. 13, another 737 teachers were rated "minimally effective," and will be given one year to improve their performance or also face dismissal. Rhee said Friday that job actions were "a more accurate reflection" of the quality of the 4,000-member teacher corps than has been available in the past.
"This is a school district that has had a lot of problems with student achievement," she said.
Rhee declined to speculate on how many of the 737 might face dismissal after next year. But she said that over the next two years "a not insignificant number of folks will be moved out of the system for poor performance."
Union leaders and some teachers have bitterly objected to IMPACT, which was devised in collaboration with a private consultant, Mathematica Policy Research. Although school officials convened teacher focus groups to discuss the plan, it was not subject to collective bargaining. Some teachers call it overly complex and dependent on an unreliable statistical methodology for linking test scores to individual teachers. WTU President George Parker said the program is designed to weed out teachers rather than to help them improve their practice.
"It's punishment-heavy and support-light," Parker said.
The IMPACT-generated dismissals are likely to spark a new round of debate about Rhee's treatment of teachers. D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, who is challenging Mayor Adrian M. Fenty in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary, has made Rhee's management part of his critique of Fenty's education policy.
Last fall, Rhee laid off 266 educators because of what she characterized as a budget crunch. The job action followed a spring and summer in which she hired more than 500 new teachers. The union has filed suit challenging those dismissals. Parker said the union would contest many, if not all, of Friday's firings through the two appeals processes legally available: One would involve directly petitioning Rhee, and the other would result in a hearing before an independent arbitrator. Parker also said that the union probably would collectively file an unfair labor practice complaint with the District.
But poor evaluations are generally not subject to appeal unless the union can demonstrate some procedural error in the appraisal process. Rhee has invested $4 million, some of it from private foundations, to increase the rigor of the system.
Changing the way teachers are graded
There is always turnover during the summer months in D.C schools -- and other school systems -- through retirements, resignations and dismissals of teachers who did not survive their two-year probationary period. An additional 76 District teachers also were dismissed Friday for not having proper licensing as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Law.
But few tenured educators have faced dismissal for poor performance. Rhee said that according to her staff's research, there were no teachers fired for lack of effectiveness in 2006, the year before her appointment as chancellor. Officials said the former evaluation process was cumbersome and time-consuming, with responsibility for assessments falling to school principals already stretched by other responsibilities. Procedural errors -- a missed deadline, a conference not held -- left dismissals open to successful challenge by the union in the appeals process. Teachers complained that some administrators used evaluations to play favorites or settle personal scores.
The great majority of teachers routinely received evaluations showing that they met or exceeded expectations. At the same time, the District compiled one of the weakest academic records of any urban school system.
Rhee, and like-minded leaders in other school districts, contends that the best way to overhaul schools is to intensively monitor the performance of every adult, including janitors, and measure it by multiple yardsticks. For teachers, that includes evidence that their students meet or exceed predicted rates of growth on standardized tests, a metric known as "value added." School districts have experimented with value-added for many years but generally use it as a diagnostic tool to assess weaknesses or determine bonuses. Rhee's use of the method to make high-stakes personnel decisions breaks new ground, and other school systems are likely to follow the example. She has announced plans to significantly expand the use of standardized tests so that value-added data will be available in some form at all grade levels
This year only about 20 percent of the District's classroom teachers -- reading and math instructors in grades 4 through 8 -- were evaluated on test score growth. That's because those were the only grades and subjects for which there is annual test score data from the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System, or DC CAS. Value-added will constitute 50 percent of their evaluation. Officials could not immediately say how many of the 226 fired teachers were subject to value-added assessment.
Under IMPACT, all teachers were supposed to receive five 30-minute classroom observations during the school year, three by a school administrator and two by an outside "master educator" with a background in the instructor's subject. They were scored against an elaborate "teaching and learning framework" with 22 different measures in nine categories. Among the criteria are classroom presence, time management, clarity in presenting the objectives of a lesson, and ensuring that students across all levels of learning ability understand the material.
After the initial observation, according to IMPACT materials, teachers received a "growth plan" outlining strengths and weaknesses and setting out a program for assistance, if needed. At the end of the school year their overall performance -- based on classroom observations, student test scores if applicable, schoolwide academic growth and general contributions to the school community -- was converted to a 100-to-400-point scale. Teachers falling below 175 are subject to dismissal. Teachers scoring between 175 and 249, judged under the system to be "minimally effective." Scores between 250 and 400 are considered "effective" or "highly effective."
Rhee said Friday that 16 percent of the teachers evaluated under IMPACT were rated in the top category. Twenty percent were found to be either "minimally effective" or "ineffective." The rest fell into the "effective" range.
Some teachers say the system has not worked as advertised. A union survey of 1,000 educators earlier this year found that 52 percent answered "no" when asked if they understood what was required of them under the new teaching framework. Seventy-five percent said they were not provided adequate examples, either on video or personal demonstration, of what constituted a high-scoring teacher performance. About the same proportion said they were not provided extra support in areas where they scored poorly on initial observations.
Parker said the survey results suggest that IMPACT should have been introduced as a smaller pilot program so that problems could be addressed.
"They've stepped too far, too fast," he said. |
