D.C.’s ailing public school system looks like it’s about to take a turn for the better. Last week, Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) submitted legislation to the D.C. City Council that would give D.C.P.S. Chancellor Michelle Rhee the authority to fire non-union central office employees. Overhauling the central office has long been a cornerstone of Fenty and Rhee’s educational reform plan, and this legislation will finally make good on that promise. Giving Rhee firing power is an important step toward creating a more efficient bureaucracy that will be better able to meet the needs of D.C.’s public school students.
The central office has long stood out as a notoriously unresponsive and ineffective roadblock to improvement. Last month, the Voice reported that Allison Murtha, a D.C.P.S. special education teacher, still hadn’t received her 2005 signing bonus, despite calling, writing and having the teacher’s union contact the central office. And just this week, The Washington Post reported that Principal G. Lynn Main of Lafayette Elementary School had to contact a textbook publisher herself at the beginning of the school year after waiting for three months for the central office to place a textbook order.
Fenty’s proposed legislation would classify non-union central office employees as “at-will” employees subject to termination for non-disciplinary reasons at Rhee’s discretion. With this power, Rhee should be able to streamline the inefficient bureaucracy. As she told a meeting of the Democrats for Educational Reform last week, progress must begin at the system’s administrative hub.
“If we don’t have high-quality people in these jobs who are willing to be held accountable, then we’re not going to be able to change the system,” she said.
Of course, overhauling the central office, though a meaningful first step, won’t fix the District’s abysmal test scores, crumbling infrastructure or underperforming teachers. These problems must all be addressed by Rhee, hopefully sooner rather than later. New initiatives could include increased training for principals and merit pay for teachers, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg® recently proposed. For now, the D.C. City Council must embrace the all-too-rare opportunity for immediate, concrete action and approve the new legislation.
