DC Teachers Give-and-Take

So I got an email from a very thoughtful and smart person I know who has actual knowledge of the DC education system as an advocate for disabled children. Here's a part of her email:

but isn't the issue not firing people for cause, but rather that it takes years to get rid of teachers who are getting mediocre results? It is those teachers who are just not inspiring that we need to replace--not the ones who would otherwise be subject to discipline.

You know I was raised a good pro-union kid, which a solidarity forever tshirt and all, but sometimes I really do think DC is different. It takes super balls to get anything done w/DC schools.

First of all, I don't think it's just DC schools. I think a lot of people feel this way about most failing school districts. I recall hearing similar criticisms when I was living in Chicago, and Oakland Unified is so in-the-crapper that a state administrator had to be appointed. DC generally has major governance problems (ahem, no taxation without representation) so it might feel more acute, but I think the same argument plays out in most places.

Second, it seems we agree that teachers who warrant discipline can be disciplined, and that there isn't really a chronic problem of abusive teachers at issue here. The problem seems to be, as my reader puts it, "inspiring" teachers. Now, I question the value of this category. In 20 years of education, I can only think of a handful of teachers who were actually inspiring. From the rest, I learned about the Lennie Lenape Indians, trigonometry, gerunds, The Mill on the Floss. If you wipe out everyone who isn't inspiring, you have no one left. This is what I was getting at in my earlier post: "inspiring" is too subjective.

So does my reader mean teachers who have basically given up? The clock watchers? The bureaucrats? I think so. So my question back is, how did those people get that way? What are the conditions in which they work? I am (possibly unfairly) assuming that these teachers face overcrowded classrooms of undernourished children, without current materials, a teacher's aide, or involved and supportive parents. They are a couple of years from a decent retirement. Efforts earlier in their career to get better resources were futile, and possibly laughed at by their peers.

Why exactly is the failure of the DC schools their fault? Do they have all these wonderful things with happy, well-fed children and still they act like insolent teenagers? Why does Rhee make destroying their lives and careers her first priority? When they are gone, there will still be no decent books, healthy children and involved parents, and then Rhee will be the last one standing, and the only one to blame.

A failing city school seems to be a lot like a failing city hospital. Unhealthy patients, overcrowding, people in the ER for the flu, not enough supplies, peeling paint, staff taxed to their limit. But we rarely hear complaints that the healthcare system would be better if the hospital staff were more (euphemistically) inspiring. Diagnoses are missed, infections are spread. That's understood as a resource problem, not a staff problem. A new influx of residents and nurses only props up the system until those individuals are unable to do their job. I just suggest that our education systems be understood in comparable ways.

Finally, I think that if there was real leadership (and not Rhee's Blackberry-dependent petulance), teachers would either get on board with efforts to reform the school or they would leave rather than do the job they were asked to do. I give Rhee another 18 months before she declares victory and moves on. If she wants to stay and make real change, she'll change her attitude.