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Maverick Teachers' Key D.C. Moment
Michelle Rhee and other Teach for America veterans believe in training great teachers themselves rather than leaving the job to education schools.
(By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)
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Officials at the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the two major teachers unions, would not comment on the rise of TFA or the Rhee appointment, although some D.C. teachers union officials have said they had positive experiences with her.
TFA veterans often express a distaste for education schools, recalling evening and summer courses for teaching certificates that required them to memorize vague educational theories.
Mike Feinberg, 38, a co-founder of the KIPP network, said that when he discovered that a required education school course, offered in a one-week summer session in Houston, could be mastered by reading the textbook, he signed in each morning but then headed for the golf course, sneaking back in each afternoon to sign out.
Robert C. Pianta, 50, incoming dean at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, said that the innovators had a point in that teachers do not have to be trained the same way. Pianta said he is interested in a partnership with Teach for America. "Whether we are going to improve teaching and learning for kids and for teachers will depend on our figuring out what teachers need to know and how to support them in doing well," he said.
The most active innovators often see each other at conferences of the New School Venture Fund, which backs charter schools, and through charter-school or school-management organizations, including Edison, Achievement First, YES Prep, Green Dot and KIPP. Relationships are often close.
Jessica Levin, 42, a leading researcher for the New Teacher Project, where Rhee was president, is the sister of Dave Levin, 37, who co-founded KIPP with Feinberg. The chief executive of the KIPP Foundation, Richard Barth, 40, is married to Wendy Kopp, 39, founder of Teach For America. Chris Barbic, 37, head of the YES Prep charter schools in Texas, roomed with Feinberg and Levin when they were in TFA. But he spent most of his evenings with Natasha Kamrani, 38, who was then executive director of the TFA office in Houston and is now a lawyer, a Houston school board member and Barbic's wife.
"There is a core group of education reformers," Rhee said, "who are driving a disproportionate amount of the great things going on right now."
Andy Smarick, 31, chief operating officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said the appointment of Rhee to become D.C. schools chancellor "is the first case that I know of where one of us has taken leadership of a system instead of trying to change things from the outside."
It will be difficult, he said, to overcome the inertia in many school systems and the widespread belief that "nothing can be done to educate disadvantaged kids until their parents shape up."
Smarick said that notion is flat wrong. "But for as long as people say things like that and believe it, our reform efforts aren't going to get the support they need, and the establishment will have a shield against us."
