The many shortcomings of Galtian superhero school superintendents like Michelle Rhee are well-documented, but part of the reason that we get this kind of superintendent is that the “educational professional” alternative is no better. The experience of the city school district in Rochester is a great case in point.
Last week, we lost the latest in a list of mediocre scam artist superintendents in our urban school district. This one’s name is Jean-Claude Brizard, who ditched his contract to go run Chicago’s schools. Chicago apparently wasn’t fazed about the Rochester teacher’s union 95% vote of no confidence. As the top-notch local reporter Rachel Barnhart documents, Brizard’s tenure was full of bureaucratic waste, bullshitting about graduation rates, and no real improvement in the school district’s status.
The previous full-time superintendent before Brizard, Clifford Janey, went on to become Michelle Rhee’s predecessor. Janey recently quit his $280K/year post in Newark, a job he got after being fired in DC. Janey’s tenure at Rochester was similar to his experience in DC and Newark: a lot of empty promises about change as graduation rates fell.
I can’t really blame these grifters for running their cons in Rochester, Chicago, Newark and DC, because those places were on a quest for Superintendent Chocolate Jesus. Instead of addressing or even acknowledging the underlying reasons for school failure (structural poverty, no job opportunities, crime, drugs, teen pregancy and neglectful parenting), they put all their hopes into an out-of-town savior who can dream up unrealistic programs with the help of overpaid consultants, giving them asinine names like “Great Expectations”.
Rochester did have a decent interim superintendent for a year or two. His name is Bill Cala, and he came out of retirement after running a high quality suburban district to run the city schools for a couple of years. His speech about poverty, inequality and education contains a number of home truths that will almost certainly be glossed over by the next con artist with an Ed.D. who is hired to preside over our urban failure.
E.D. Kain
Very well said mistermix.
mellowjohn
as a chicago teacher, i’m fazed as hell about the brizard choice. but i’d almost be willing to bet that he never shows up here. rahm doesn’t strike me as somebody who readily admits mistakes, but with all the shit coming out about j-c, i won’t be surprised if he quietly “withdraws his name.”
Ron
I think part of the problem is that the superintendent cannot fix many of the problems that Rochester has. As long as those structural problems you mentioned exist, I don’t see how anyone can do anything other than effectively trying to patch up a severed artery with some bandaids. The best they can do is acknowledge where the problems lie and use that to understand where the kids are coming from. Don’t think anyone can change the fundamental problems from the schools. I have a student that spent some time with a teacher at a school in Rochester (I’m not sure about the name but “Edison” comes to mind) and the situation she described was just awful.
Phoebe
I know that wasn’t the point of the post, but it was the part for which I was most grateful. And the Bill Cala link was suh-weet (frat boy pron. “sweet”).
Aaron S. Veenstra
Chicago apparently wasn’t fazed about the Rochester teacher’s union 95% vote of no confidence.
It was probably a point in Brizard’s favor — he won’t give in to the union so teachers hate him, he must be great!
jeff
Clifford Janey’s performance in Washington, DC is not how you describe it. Janey was actually taking a fairly comprehensive approach toward reform. The knock on him was that he was moving too slow. There was a strong preference in some quarters to achieve an overnight miracle — hence the popularity of Michelle Rhee. Janey was taking smaller, but more effective steps. Janey’s efforts led to text books being delivered on time for the first time in recent memory and an increase in test scores. You could say that Janey was fired precisely because he wasn’t a chocolate Jesus.
I don’t know what he did after leaving DC, but I thought his performance here was commendable.
Murc
@Ron:
You have a student who made it out of Edison with their mind and body intact? They were, without a doubt, one of the lucky ones. My mother taught at Edison for five years and it would have driven a lesser woman to drink.
Ron
@Murc: She was basically doing a 4 week period of shadowing some teachers. Reading her journal of that time was truly scary.
Chris
Ha — Anyone who would use Great Expectations as his motto obviously hasn’t read the book.
Scooter Pie
Our local superintendent is an accountant. He runs the district like any good MBA’er: destroy the complex, family-like support structures that high-poverty schools built over years to help the neediest of children and bring in young “reformers” who don’t know what the hell they are doing.
He fired all the long-term principals last year and replaced them with new 30-something Rhee-like disciples that are so lost that they will never be found again in daylight. Scores go down. Teachers are below discouraged and are fleeing in droves. Kids still suffer. And the beat goes on!
If only children and the educational process would conform to business voodoo like a profit/loss statement and all the superior Midas touch of increased productivity. . . .
Dan B
Brizard’s time here was a joke, and Chicago will get what it deserves for hiring him. Superintendent is yet another in a long line of jobs where the worst candidates always seem to fail upward.
EDIT: Then, about 10 seconds later, I click onto Atrios’ site and he made the same “failing upward” comment.
angler
Thanks for the link. Cala makes excellent points about the impossibility of the schools solving the problems of poverty and he lists all the problems of poverty as exacerbated by wealth inequality.
To see what a steep hill there is to climb check the comments by representative “I got mine, f you” suburbanites who call Cala a socialist. The logic runs that because Cala as an educator did not open a job-creating factory like Bill Gates fingers will be put in ears. Cue the next Gates Foundation plan for charters getting taxpayer dough.
christian h.
Clearly as has been pointed out for Rahm the fact that teachers hate the guy is a feature, not a bug. All these baffling hires become understandable once you give up the idea that those who do the hiring care about kids or learning in the least. They don’t. The goal of real-existing school reform is to privatize one of the last remaining public sector enterprises of any size;and in the process crush the unions in that sector. Anything else is incidental.
Karen
What exactly is Galtian? I see that description all the time but I’ve come to equate it with evil, soulless people who would sell children to pedophiles if ordered to by big business and the GOP.
I live in Silver Spring, MD and have seen Michelle Rhee in the news, usually with parents either praising her or despising her. I admit, I don’t know the full story of Michelle Rhee but I believe that she did mean to make a difference. Something has to be done because a lot of the public schools in DC are a war zone. Also, less kids are graduating. I believe in charter schools and magnet schools (like Blair High School in Silver Spring, MD who have had Westinghouse award winners in scientific inventions).
Maybe Adrian Fenty is Galtian too since after he lost the election, Michelle Rhee got out of Dodge.
I do think there’s a big problem with DC public schools. If you feel charter schools and magnet schools are Galtian then where should the gifted students go? Where should the students go that actually want to be in school?
sukabi
so I’ve got a question… who exactly is responsible for hiring school superintendents? The faculty and citizenry don’t have a vote in it… is it the school board’s decision?
from doing a quick google search, it appears that the hiring may be a mostly hidden political process.. and if that’s the case, then all these “failing upward” superintendents aren’t an accident.
Aimai
Karen that’s a false dichotomy. All the kids deserve to be in good schools where they are wanted, welcomed, and taught. The idea that there are gifted kids who deserve a publicly financed private education away from those loser non gifted kids is absurd. Until we’ve successfully delivered theveducation that all the kids need to the greatest number the whole charter school thing is just a bait and switch.
Aimai
Aimai
Karen that’s a false dichotomy. All the kids deserve to be in good schools where they are wanted, welcomed, and taught. The idea that there are gifted kids who deserve a publicly financed private education away from those loser non gifted kids is absurd. Until we’ve successfully delivered theveducation that all the kids need to the greatest number the whole charter school thing is just a bait and switch.
Aimai
saucy
Thanks for this post. The superintendent carousel is an issue that needs much more attention. I would like to see more superintendents like Bill Cala who focus on the root socioeconomic issues affecting educational quality and fewer like Rhee and Brizard who simply blame teachers. Teachers matter enormously, but we’ll never repair the failing schools of DC or Chicago just by focusing on teachers.
Ending local funding of schools — not curricular control, just funding — would be a good start. It’s morally reprehensible that elementary schools are vastly better in wealthy areas than in poor ones. Some part of that difference in quality really does come down to dollars.
Bill Murray
@Karen: Galtian refers to John Galt the hero of Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. Galtian Overlords are basically people that have large amounts of money and think this means they are the best and brightest and that the world (and the country’s laws) should revolve around them and their concerns.
Unfortunately what Rhee mostly appears to have done is to fake a bunch of data to make herself look better
ornery curmudgeon
@Aimai: “All the kids deserve to be in good schools where they are wanted, welcomed, and taught. The idea that there are gifted kids who deserve a publicly financed private education away from those loser non gifted kids is absurd.”
It sounds so good, Aimai, and many would nod their heads in agreement … if you could hear such nice words over the overaged lout lobbing spitballs at the engaged students we dismissively call ‘teacher’s pet’ book’worm’ or ‘nerd.’
I say it’s time to deliver the education that best suits the students: and some students actually ARE better than others. That’s not to say all kids should not be educated, but some kids simply don’t cherish the learning if given any other avenue. IMO ignoring the bookish top end in favor of the sneering middling has only given us rule by the underachieving bullies.
Give the best to the academic achievers and maybe academic achievement will become something valued in our society … this constant catering to the below average IS NOT WORKING.
I have great faith in the human spirit, you see, and believe teachers and quality education is worth more than the benighted self-esteem project America has foundered upon. Mix in an establishment mindset that seeks to close minds and create a stupid populace, and this play to the middle has been an unholy disaster.
James E. Powell
@Aaron S. Veenstra:
Hating unions and being hated by teachers are prerequisites for seriousness in education reform.
Bostondreams
@Karen:
Karen, considering that the majority of charter schools as bad as or WORSE than traditional public schools, your support makes little sense. You have bought into the myth propagated by Rhee and her ilk that these schools are the cure-all, and they simply are not.
sukabi
@ornery curmudgeon: I think aimai’s argument was for quality education in the SAME SCHOOL, not necessarily in the same class room, and to not segregate children into different schools based on aptitude.
athena2
Charter schools are a scam. I have yet to see evidence that they do any better than any other school organized on a similar scale.
sukabi
@sukabi: adding to my comment above, that the reason public education is in such miserable shape, is due to politicians wanting to institute a way to “measure” progress… ie, standardized testing…
school programs have been totally gutted to “teach for the test”, and only those topics that can be easily “measured” are focused on, to the exclusion of everything else…
EVERYBODY suffers in this case… the kids, both the over and under achievers get short changed because the focus is on the specifics of The Test and making sure all students score well. The teachers are judged not on how well they can teach or inspire students to learn, but on how well they can train students to do specific, measurable tasks.
It’s no wonder that dropout rates have gone through the roof, everybody knows when they aren’t being respected, and this system of “testing” is as insulting to the kids as it is to the teachers implementing it.
iriedc
@jeff: You’re right about Janey. He had his faults, but doesn’t belong in the same grifter class as Rhee. BTW — I was a Rhee supporter initially, and am still pissed I let myself be persuaded by her and her promoters. I’ll add that a lot of local DC Ed Reformers I cross paths with can’t stand Rhee, but won’t say so publicly.
iriedc
@athena2: All charter schools are not a scam. Saying so as a Dem, supporter of collective bargining, child of a teacher, AND charter school parent.
JGabriel
@Aaron S. Veenstra:
Maybe that would be true in Indiana or Alabama, but Chicago and Illinois aren’t exactly known as centers of anti-unionism.
.
sukabi
@iriedc: give it a couple of years… most “problems” don’t start to publicly manifest for a while… they fester under a shroud of secrecy until they’re too big to hide.
If you’re convinced your kids are in a “good charter school” then ask to see the funding / grade criteria / rate of graduation stats, ect… most of the school / student stats are cooked by removing or reclassifying students who are “under performing”.
your definition of a scam may vary, but if they are “cooking” the stats, then they are a scam.
iriedc
@sukabi: I’ve seen the scores. The charter school the kids are in has a stellar reputation for openness about the stats — including being frank about the test scores “achievement gap”. In fact, some parents have tried to persuade the school to reclassify and give alternate test to Special Ed students. The leaders of the school will not, and so the test scores have NOT experienced the “miracle” improvements you hear about from other local neighborhood and charter schools. Instead, we’ve have slow steady improvement in the scores and the curricula. It’s representative of many of the smaller, non-corporate Charters in DC which are solid, even stellar.
PopeRatzo
@mellowjohn: Mayor-elect Rahm will never admit to making such a serious mistake before he’s even sworn in.
No, we’re going to have to live with this Brizard con-man for at least a year or so.
Rahm is off to a rocky start as mayor, that’s for sure. I’m surprised that he brought out the anti-union schtick so fast. Chicago might be Rahm’s “home” but he’s still got a lot to learn about this town.
Karen
@Aimai:
Are you saying that the idea that there are gifted students is a scam?
Everyone deserves a great education. I agree there. But I didn’t mention anything about private school, that’s your assumption.
Are you saying that magnet schools are a scam?
Montgomery Blair High School
To quote them:
Are you saying those shouldn’t exist either?
Or is your point that since bad grades are because of bad schools, the idea that anyone is gifted or has high grades is a scam.
You don’t believe in gifted students so you probably don’t believe in talented kids either.
Is Duke Ellington School of the Arts in DC also a scam? Should they take everyone? After all, by your reasoning, by only taking talented students they’re leaving behind the other “losers” (your word not mine) at schools that don’t have the music department nor the drama department that this school has.
Are the kids who “deserve to be in good schools where they are wanted, welcomed, and taught” only heterosexual? How about the GLBT kids who are bullied (by teachers as well as kids)?
The Harvey Milk High School in NY city is high school where GLBT can go to school in a supportive environment. With the logic you use, until all schools are gay friendly, these kids should remain where they’re abused.
I want everyone to get a great education. But I also believe that there are kids that have more potential than others or special needs than others and to say that the schools that fulfil their needs shouldn’t exist is short-sighted and unfair.
Kobie
Brizard’s unpopularity with the teacher’s union is CLEARLY why he was a top candidate for the Chicago job.
And good riddance to bad trash. The guy was a fucking awful superintendent.
mclaren
This interview with David Simon, producer and one of the writers of the HBO show The Wire, says it all:
sukabi
@Karen: way to shift the focus of what aimia was saying… learn to read sarcasm / snark.
The idea that there are gifted kids who deserve a publicly financed private education away from those loser non gifted kids is absurd.
She’s clearly saying she doesn’t have any problem with PRIVATE education. What she has a problem with is taking PUBLIC TAX MONEY away from public schools to fund PRIVATE charter schools. If you want to send your kids to a private school, fine pay for it yourself. Just don’t expect the public via tax monies to finance your kids education at a private facility over their own kids education at a public school.
And that is most of the problem with these “charter schools” and “vouchers”… they take huge amounts of tax payer money to fund PRIVATE schools, that
1) have no intention of enrolling students that aren’t “up to their standards” , ie they “cherry pick” students to skew their “scholastic numbers”
2) contribute to the underfunding and failure of the public school system, which leads to further underfunding… creating a downward spiral that will be near impossible to correct.
3) and don’t have any requirements to meet to show they are performing at least at the same level as the public schools they are “replacing”.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
This post nails Brizard perfectly. I watched him lie about his commitment to Rochester one week before announcing moving to Chicago. People like him are scum.
Morat20
Superintendents are hired by school boards.
School boards are a collection of people elected in a small election in which few people vote, and most of those don’t know who they’re voting for.
The people who run for school board positions tend to either care very much about the education of children (whether they have relevent experience, understanding, or the competence to be in such a position is, of course, a crap shoot due to the small elections) or tend to have a serious idealogical axe to grind.
I watched my local school board for a period of about 6 years. A friend of mine’s father was the head of the board during that time period, and I watched it during the back half of high school and during my bachelor’s to get an idea of how local politics works.
During four of those six years, we had a group of religious nutcases whose children attended private religious schools spend at least 30 minutes per meeting trying to get Creationism taught. They were one vote short for all four years of being able to do untold damage.
I watched mailers going out accusing school board members of wanting to teach kindergarten children to masturbate, flyers accusing members of being ‘in league with Clinton’ and generally every level of villiany and dirty politics you can imagine.
And it’s these guys that choose the superintendent.
If you want a feel for how small the votes are — I personally watched a school board member in our district lose a seat she’d held for almost 8 years entirely due to pissing off a single substitute teacher.
Said teacher happened to be related to a few key individuals, who between their workplaces (including the local high school and the district-wide fine arts program) and their church managed to spread word of what had happend.
The lady lost the seat because she tried to throw her weight around to intimidate a sub into withdrawing a discipline action against her kid. She didn’t lose by much. But she lost.
The entire vote totals for a town of 30,000 plus? Something like 500 to 480.
(Said kid had skipped class. Sub noted it, turned it in, kid had skipped too many days, when straight into suspension. School board member shows up that afternoon, tries to get sub to admit she ‘made a mistake’ and that the little angel had, in fact, been in class).
gelfling545
In Rochester, Chicago & here in Buffalo are there serious educators who really WANT the job of superintendent? These schools have issues that have become ingrained over decades and School Boards are effectively asking for a miracle worker. When no honest administrator will promise them that (or even consider applying) they find themselves someone willing to lie to them.
mellowjohn
@Morat20:
in chicago, the school CEO (not called the superintendent!) is chosen be the mayor. as are members of the board of ed.
Tim Furman
Hey, thanks for writing this post. The Obama administration has co-opted an extremely right-wing, pro-privatization, pro-testing school agenda, and those of us who write primarily about ed policy sometimes wonder why it’s gone basically unreported in the blogosphere. More people need to shedding some light on these Eli Broad bought-and-paid-for superintendents, as well as the Democratic lawmakers who have sold out the idea of a free, comprehensive public education in favor of some bizarre corporate model of “accountability” that doesn’t exist in any successful nation’s schools. Rock on.
socratic_me
@iriedc: All charter schools are not a scam.
My response to this is slightly different that that given by others.
Saying not all charter schools are a scam misses the point. Not all public schools are a scam. But studies have shown that, on the whole, public schools are more likely to give as good as or better education to a wider variety of students. Your experience with an excellent charter is no more powerful an indicator than my experience with several different excellent public schools.
Comrade Luke
The local (Seattle) news just reported that the Seattle school superintendent (Goodlow-Johnson is her name) who got fired a couple of months ago is a finalist for the same role in Newark.
It just continues.
sukabi
@Comrade Luke: She came from the Charleston, SC school district where my sister worked a couple of years ago… Goodlow-Johnson was a nightmare, know nothing and caused lots of problems for the district before she was asked to leave and found greener pastures in Seattle…
grooft
@Karen: A: to the suburbs. Bethesda if you are rich enough or Fairfax if less rich but still rich enough.
Rhee brought scores up by keeping more higher socio-economic parents in the public school system, proving that they could be served in DC. This may have temporarily broken the cycle of out-migration to the suburbs of parents in the elementary school years.
A newly renovated high school is opening one grade at a time in DC (Eastern H.S.) this year. We’ll see if they are successful in luring the the parents from highly educated households to send their children to the beautiful new school that will probably by over 80 percent minority. The percentage of ‘free and reduced lunch’ recipients is the best predictor of whether this school will succeed.
The tipping point on F&RL is around 35-40 percent; racial mix tipping point is uncertain, but less than 20% white doesn’t bode well. Race is a proxy for educational attainment and socio economic class. It may not be accurate, but is the most available data and easiest one to use.
jerry 101
What all the kerfluffle about Brizard misses is the fact that Chicago has made slow, steady, year-in, year-out progress in improving outcomes. 4 year graduation rates for incoming freshman 10 years ago, up through the most recent freshman class to graduate (class of 2010) showed marked improvement.
About 49% back in 2004. A point or two of improvement each year, with 2010’s class achieving a rate of 56%. At the same time, high school enrollment has increased substantially. Drop-out rates have fallen.
The students, teachers, and administrators in Chicago have quietly made significant improvements in outcomes. Having a few thousand more kids leave school with a diploma in hand each year is the best outcome that could happen.
pfunk
@subaki – I agree with you about vouchers, but there’s no such thing as a “private charter school.” Charter schools are, by definition, public, and have to accept all students until their seats are full; if they have more applicants than seats, they hold a lottery to determine admission. As a charter school teacher I fight this misconception often! We’re not a silver bullet by any means, but we ARE working hard to make sure that we serve our students. My charter performs similarly to the local traditional public schools but offers a much smaller, college-focused environment with a close-knit community and high academic expectations. Our demographics match the neighborhood. Many of our students were expelled from a traditional school. We have a slightly higher percentage of students with special needs.
Of course the quality of charters varies both by school and by state, but I work in one, and I can assure you that you’re wrong about them being “private.”
So, to recap:
*Charters are NOT private schools;
1) charters cannot cherry-pick their students (by law);
2) charters ARE part of the public-school system; we actually receive LESS per-pupil funding for the same students than traditional public schools do, in my state, because we don’t receive funding for transportation or building purchase/upkeep;
3) charters can be shut down by the chartering authority if they fail to perform–if they are being allowed to be substandard, then they should be shut down. Period.