D.Clow - Maryland

Michelle Rhee

If you were wondering what Michelle Rhee is up to, head to Newsweek’s abundantly-titled “What I’ve Learned: We can’t keep politics out of school reform. Why I’m launching a national movement to transform education“:

The purpose of the teachers’ union is to protect the privileges, priorities, and pay of their members. And they’re doing a great job of that.

What that means is that the reform community has to exert influence as well. That’s why I’ve decided to start StudentsFirst, a national movement to transform public education in our country. We need a new voice to change the balance of power in public education. Our mission is to defend and promote the interests of children so that America has the best education system in the world.

From the moment I resigned, I began hearing from citizens from across this country. I got e-mails, calls, and letters from parents, students, and teachers who said, “Don’t give up. We need you to keep fighting!”…

The common thread in all of these communications was that these courageous people felt alone in battling the bureaucracy. They want help and advocates. There are enough people out there who understand and believe that kids deserve better, but until now, there has been no organization for them. We’ll ask people across the country to join StudentsFirst—we’re hoping to sign up 1 million members and raise $1 billion in our first year…

Though we’ll be nonpartisan, we can’t pretend that education reform isn’t political. So we’ll put pressure on elected officials and press for changes in legislation to make things better for kids. And we’ll support and endorse school-board candidates and politicians—in city halls, statehouses, and the U.S. Congress—who want to enact policies around our legislative agenda. We’ll support any candidate who’s reform-minded, regardless of political party, so reform won’t just be a few courageous politicians experimenting in isolated locations; it’ll be a powerful, nationwide movement.

IITA Image Library

I just had a thought-provoking conversation about my Georgetown Public Policy Review/Michelle Rhee interview post with a DCentric reader who was a teacher at his high school alma mater– a “failing urban public school”:

(Jambulapati’s) post is another example of the ongoing villainization of teachers’ unions, which have increasingly become the favorite punching bag of would-be urban school reformers like Rhee. While Teach for America types may position merit pay and increased accountability as the keys to saving America’s inner city youth, my time as both a student and teacher in a failing urban public school has taught me no amount of creativity or passion can be substituted for parents that take an active interest in their parents’ education.

Put simply, America’s schools are not failing because of unions. They are failing because Americans don’t value education. If you need further evidence, just contrast the way teachers and schools are revered in places like India and China with the way many Americans take pride in their anti-elitism and disdain for academics, nerds and other pointy-headed types.

Of course there are groups within America, most notably the socio-economic elite, who have always seen the value of a good education. Those people usually live places with good schools, or take the time and effort to enroll their children in charter, private or magnet schools. Even the simple act of placing your child in a school outside the one they are assigned to is evidence of parental involvement, and indicates a much larger likelihood of success for the child.

But any urban school district like Washington is sure to have a subset of parents who simply will not choose to be involved in their kids’ education, either through lack of understanding, ability or interest. There are efforts underway to address those types of children, but to my knowledge no one has figured out how to help kids if their parents don’t care. And making parents care is a job too big for the unions, or anyone else really.