Rhee Offers "Teaching Framework" in DC; Prepare for Ridiculous Teacher Complaints

I write this post with some trepidation, as I know that any time I mention Michelle Rhee here I run the risk of thoroughly alienating The Kitten's predecessor, a former DC Public Schools teacher who does not take kindly to the city's Superintendent.

Michelle Rhee and her staff have produced a 200 page "teaching" framework for DCPS, and it will debut on Tuesday in a ceremony presided over by Mayor Fenty. I know little about education, educating, and educators, but I do know a little about the political world and the way stuff like this plays out. Rhee has made a sincere effort to lay down specifics---standards and practices that set out what the district expects of its teachers. To use business analogies, the District is trying to produce a product here, and that product is educated youth. Having to "manufacture" that product at literally hundreds of different "plants", drawing upon widely varying "materials" and relying upon a disparate "labor force", it seems to me that creating a process map and standards makes sense. What Rhee is seeking to do is eliminate variation in the system--a noble goal and one worth pursuing.

But she will be eviscerated for this. The teachers unions will scream. There will be charges of impacting the freedom and innovation of individual teachers. "The Children" will suffer, they claim. Rhee is creating "factories" not schools, they will charge. They will do everything they can to stand in the way of REAL innovation and progress, moving toward the treatment of education more as science than art.

Got get 'em, Michelle.