American Enterprise Institute

February 13, 2008

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

3:30 p.m.	Registration
3:45	Introduction:	Christopher DeMuth, AEI
	Speaker:	Michelle Rhee, District of Columbia Public Schools
	Moderator:	Frederick Hess, AEI
5:00		Adjournment and Wine and Cheese Reception

Proceedings:

Christopher DeMuth:  Welcome, all, to the American Enterprise Institute, for this address by District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who will be speaking on the future of urban school reform. Chancellor Rhee is one of America's most principled, devoted, and effective school reformers. She was previously founder and president of the New Teacher Project, an organization that trains, places, and supports teachers in difficult school environments, and has been a major force for improvements in pubic school classrooms across the country.

Mayor Adrian Fenty's bold decision, last June, to appoint her head of the district schools has already been richly rewarded by her energetic management, determination to instill a new culture of excellence in our schools, devotion to the welfare of our children, and unflinching courage in facing the many complicated obstacles in her path.

Michelle Rhee has, for several years, been involved with AEI's Education Policy Program, with its Director, Rick Hess, our colleague. We're greatly honored that she has continued to keep counsel with us and would return to AEI today. Following her remarks, she will take questions. We'll have time for discussion. Rick Hess will moderate that discussion period.  We'll have a microphone that will be passed around. Please give a warm welcome to D.C. Public Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee.

 Michelle Rhee: Good afternoon. It's a pleasure for me to be here today, not least of which because I haven't been in a whole lot of rooms with this many people in it over the last couple of months, where I haven't been screamed at or yelled at the whole time. Though it could get to that point, in which case I welcome that as well. I think that it will be much, much more interesting and fruitful for us to spend the bulk of the time engaged in discussion and for me to understand what your questions are about DCPS, where we're moving, and why. But I do want to start off by giving you a little bit of context around where we are right now.

 I will start off by saying this has been an incredibly interesting seven and a half months. Definitely the most interesting of my life, and probably the most interesting that anybody has ever had. Everywhere I go, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in what we're doing. I always have a smile on my face. People think I'm crazy, because they say, "If there is one woman in this city who should not be smiling right now, given everything that you're dealing with, it's you." I do, because I think that in many ways we are facing, right now in this city, a once in a lifetime opportunity. I'm very much looking forward to making sure that we are taking advantage of this opportunity.

 So just to give you a little context. I believe, first of all, that we have the leadership in this city necessary to enact the changes that need to take place. In fact, almost on a daily basis, I wonder how urban superintendents across this country, who are not in the same government structure that I am--or even those who are, but don't have as strong a mayor behind them--how they actually do their job day to day.

I cannot say enough about Adrian Fenty. He is unlike any other politician I've ever met. He's probably unlike any other person I've ever met, in his just unrelenting focus on insuring that the school district has everything it needs to be successful. He's showed this in multiple ways. It's been very interesting for me to have watched this play out over the last several months. Because when I first met the mayor, I thought, he seems like a nice man. He didn't totally knock my socks off, but I wish him well in his endeavors in D.C. Then, as he continued to pursue the conversations with me--we at one point had a conversation and I said, "You do not want me for this job." I said, "Because you are a politician, and your job as a politician is to keep the noise levels to a minimum, to keep all of your constituents happy, and that is not going to happen if I take this job. Because the level of true intervention that needs to happen, the things that need to be reformed, and the changes that need to occur, are going to make a lot of people unhappy, and you will hear nothing but noise and opposition for the entire time that I'm there."

And he looked at me and he said, "Do you know what? I have no greater aspiration than to be the best mayor this city has seen and to insure that this city turns into a world-class city.  There is no way that you can have a world-class city unless you have excellent schools, and this,” he told me, "is a thing that I truly believe has been the biggest barrier for the city over the last few decades." So he said, "Frankly, as long as you believe that what you're doing is in the best interests of children, then I have no problem with the noise."

 Because I've been in urban education for the last 15 years, and I've worked through the New Teacher Project with almost every large urban school district across the country, and I saw how superintendents have their hands tied and how leaders in the city often did not have the wherewithal to push through with the transformations that needed to happen. The fact that this man was standing in front of me saying this, I said, "All right. I think I have to just decide that it is possible to change public education; that it is possible for urban districts to reform themselves." I've always believed that, but this was the opportunity to put my money where my mouth was, so to speak.  Because I, before that, had always thought that doing that from the outside and poking and prodding from the outside was the best way to do that. But I never gave up on this belief in public schools and in public education, and in the potential of public school districts. So I said, "Here's the opportunity," and came onboard.

The man has not disappointed me since I've been here. I have gone to this man with the kinds of things that you never want to have to go to your boss with. "We found 5.1 million pieces of paper unfiled, sitting in boxes." That's not a message you want to deliver. The fact that we have 27 schools in restructuring status and another 23 that we felt needed to be closed to right size the district, and a number of other things that we found are not exactly happy news. Every time that I come to him and I sort of think to myself, "This is it. This is the time that"-- Not that he's going to back off of something, but he's going to hesitate for a minute, or he's going to say, "Let's think about this, Michelle."

It has not happened yet. The man has not flinched. He has not blinked once. Every time I come to him, he has two questions for me. He says, "What do you need from me, and how quickly can we move?" He's incredibly serious about sending the message, throughout the city, that schools are the priority, so much so that I have been deemed "teacher's pet" by all of the other agency heads in the city who do not feel that they get as much attention as they should since I've come into town. When I first came into town, he brought all the agency heads together and he said, "No one is allowed to say no to the Chancellor, except for me." So that was a pretty good setup. About six weeks later, when a couple of people had said no to me, as I was trying to open schools, he brought everyone together again and he said, "Let me perfectly clear to you, so that you can go back to your staff and be perfectly clear with them. If I hear that anyone is standing in the way of progress in the schools, you run the risk of being fired." That was even better.

 When we heard from the city that we had a $100 million revenue surplus from fiscal year '07 and the same agency heads were all sitting around the table saying, "Here are the new programs that we want. Here are the new initiatives that we want to do. Here's what we think should happen with the $100 million." He looked up at everyone and he said, "Schools, schools, schools." So $81 million of the $100 million was earmarked to come to the public schools. So you cannot beat a setup like that.

 Unfortunately, this one's worse, so I'm going to get into some of the context. You would hope that the $81 million could have come to more staff in schools, better programs, projects, etcetera, but instead the $81 million is essentially going to fill a hole. One of the things that has been astonishing to me is how the district has operated, in terms of finances. We are, on a daily basis, just up against situations where vendors are coming to me, people who I have sometimes worked with for years.  I absolutely respect what they're doing. They've come to me and said, "We did work for the district, two, three, four years ago.  Here's all the documentation that we did it and we've never been paid, and you owe us $2.7 million dollars." 

We have been in a situation where we clearly know that year to year, we have not been paying people what they were supposed to be paid. One of the first things, as an example of that, I faced when I first came onboard, was I went to speak at a conference that had all of our educators in it. The paraprofessionals came up to me and said, "We are owed retro pay for years and we've never been paid. Can you go get us our retro pay?" I said, "I don't know. Let me go look into it." 

I actually left the Convention Center, went back to DCPS to try to find out what is going on. And it turns out that yes, we do owe these people money, for the work that they have already completed. It was negotiated. All the "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed, and yes, we have not paid this out. And I said, "Why?"  And they said, "Because we have had other priorities, or the money wasn’t there in the budget." This is literally crazy to me. So I said, "How long is it going to take for us to make sure--how much money does it cost, and what time period can we make sure that this happens on?" And we were able to process all of the retro pay for these paraprofessionals because someone was actually finally paying attention to it, prioritizing it, and saying, "This is the right thing to do, paying people for the work that they've already completed."

 So this is a little bit about what we're up against right now. Part of the other reason why I feel such a tremendous amount of hope is that I think that there is incredible public will in this city to see the schools improved. Everywhere I go, people feel incredibly passionately about how we make DCPS a better school district. Now, we might not all agree on what the best way is to get there, and that's okay. Part of my job, as I see it, is, "How do I rein everybody in? How do I get everyone pointed in the same, right direction?" Because I believe that if I'm able to harness the energy that exists in the city, that there is no way that we can't be successful.

I think, in many ways, the sort of final piece to this is, "Does the city have the courage that it's going to take enact the changes, at the level that we need to see them?" So just to give you a little on this. I'll give you a little trajectory of my time here. First, when I came onboard, June 12th, on the steps of City Hall, the mayor announces me as his pick to run the school district. People were extraordinarily unhappy with him at the process that he went through, or didn't go through, according to some people, to choose me. So immediately, the buzz was around, "He didn't follow the process," and people were happy about that.

 Then after a few days, that sort of subsided. People looked up and said, "Not only do we not like the process, we don't like this person either. She is, in many ways, the diametric opposite of what people wanted or were expecting. You are 37 years old.  You are Korean-American. You've never run a school district before. You are not from D.C. What do you possibly have to offer us?" So the bar was very low at that point. No, not so bad.

 So I spent the first 11, 12 weeks or so completely external facing out in the community talking to every possible person that I could, just to get a sense of, "What are the proprieties?  What are the frustrations of people? What's working? What's not working?" that sort of thing. I think during that time people came out of meetings with me, or places where they heard me talk, and they said, "Okay, what she said makes sense. Maybe this woman's got some potential." Then I think my stock started rising a little bit.

Just as that started happening, I'd say the honeymoon period ended when I said, "Okay, we need to pass this personnel legislation." So this personnel legislation was legislation that we introduced to City Council, that asked for the authority to turn central office employees into at-will employees. This was a very interesting sort of turn of events. I started the New Teacher Project 10 years ago, and ran it for those 10 years, very much focused on, "How do we bring the best people, not only into public education, but how do we bring the best people into the New Teacher Project as an organization?"

 So when I came into DCPS, I looked at the landscape of things. I started getting to know people. I did what I think a lot of good managers do when they come into a very, very troubled system, and people who are not doing their jobs. I started firing people. The General Counsel, a few weeks in, dragged my poor Deputy Chancellor, Kaya Henderson, in the office with me. He shut the door and said, "You have to stop firing people." And I said, "Why? If people are incompetent and they're not doing their jobs, they need to be moved out of the system." He said, "Welcome to DC Public Schools. We are not an organization where you fire people. It just doesn’t happen here." And I said to him--this was truly in earnest. I said, "I've been talking to a lot of people across the city who are telling me that we do have the ability to move ineffective staff members out of the system. If they're not serving kids well, then its the systems, the processes that exist. So you need to tell me about those systems and processes." The General Counsel said to me, "Well, there are only two ways essentially that you can fire an incompetent employee."

So I said, "Great. Tell me route number one." He said, "They have to have done something egregious." So I said, "Okay, that's good, because a lot of these people are egregiously incompetent. I'm good at putting that in writing." He said, "No.  In this district, egregious means essentially two things. You have to have hit a child and have it on videotape, because apparently having the Principal and several other staff members observe it is not enough documentation. Or you have to have stolen money from the district and you have to have the bank receipt to show it." He said, "Those are the egregious things."

 I said, "Well, all right. Tell me thing number two then.  How can this happen?" He said, "Well, you have to show a recurring pattern of ineffectiveness." I said, "Okay, these people did not just become ineffective when I walked in the door. Clearly, we ought be able to show a recurring pattern of this." He said, "No, the problem with that is that people in this school district have not had a performance evaluation in the last five years. In order to show that there's a recurring pattern, you have to show documentation through performance evaluations. Essentially, because nobody's had a performance evaluation, we are not able to show that documentation."

 So that sort of led me to this place where I said, "We have to start operating in a different way, and this is about a culture shift that has to occur in the central office," which is why I introduced the legislation. A lot of people, when I introduced it, and I think both sides of the fence had a completely skewed perception of why I was doing it or what I was trying to do. I had the sort of anti-union folks saying, "That's the greatest thing we've ever heard. You're going to completely clean house. You're going to get rid of every single person or make everybody reapply for their job. This is great." And I was saying, "No. That's actually not what I want to do. We do have some incredibly hardworking, very competent people within DCPS, and I would not want to do anything that would discourage those people from continuing to work with us, so I'm not going to make everybody reapply for their jobs. I'm not going to fire everybody or that sort of thing." They were a little disappointed when I said that.

 On the other side of things, we had people who were saying, "This is the worst idea ever, because this is about job protection, job security. You have to focus in on those things."  So probably one of the most interesting days that I've had since I've been here is the City Council Hearing that was on the personnel legislation because--and I think in many ways, that experience and that day, which was by the way, an extraordinarily long day, as my City Council Hearings are. It sort of embodied some of the very issues that exist in the city, in that very, very little discussion was happening around students, or schools, and student achievement. Most of the discussion was around adults, adult issues, adult jobs, etcetera. So we had a number of people say, "You have to think about people's jobs and job security."

I had one City Council member at one point say to me, "Well, a lot of people that you may be moving out of the system are people who are older. They might not have a whole lot of job prospects, if they're terminated from the system. So what about those people?" And I said, "I don't care, and I don't know. That's not my job. My job is to educate the kids of this city and to make sure that we have a staff who can effectively do that. If we have to move people out and they might not have as many opportunities, that may be something that the City Council has to worry about, but that's not part of my job as the Chancellor of the School District."

 In all of the conversations about this--I actually had one conversation I thought was very interesting. Somebody said to me, "Don't you think that it is possible to remediate an ineffective teacher, so that they can become professionally developed and improve their practice?” And I said, "Perhaps.  But let us not let children languish in their care in the meantime. Because as a parent of two children in DCPS, I will tell you that if the Principal and other people in the school knew that there was an ineffective teacher and my child was assigned to that teacher's class, and we then were going through that year, and my kid and 24 other kids are not learning how to read, because we are trying to remediate that adult, then what, in essence, are we doing? We're putting the rights and privileges of adults over what is in the best interests of the children."

 I'm not interested in creating a system where we are willy-nilly making decisions about people. I think that that is absolutely the counter of what we want to do. I think we want to create a system where effective educators are recognized and rewarded for their efforts, in a way that has not been done before anywhere in this country. In fact, we are working on a number of initiatives that will get us there. I want to make sure  I am, in many ways, a bigger advocate for effective teachers than any other urban superintendent in this country.  But the operative word in my mind is "effective," effective teachers. I feel that there is a great deal that we have to do in order to get to that place.

We have, again, sort of on the one side--I have a lot of people coming to me and saying, "Great. You're going to clean house. You're going to get rid of all these people." I don't ever paint anything with sort of the broad brushstrokes, because I have a tremendous number of people who come to me on a regular basis, as I'm out in schools, who say to me, "Look, I get it. I know you're all about accountability. I have looked at my last year's DC CAS scores. I've looked at my benchmark assessments.  I know that my kids are not achieving at the level that they should be. Now what?" And they ask this in earnest.

 It strikes me that teaching right now, is a very different proposition than teaching was even 15 years ago, when I started.  It's a very different ballgame right now. Unless we are giving teachers and educators the tools through which they can improve their practices, we are going to be doing a disservice to them and therefore their children. It's been, I think, a little disheartening for me to see how little there is out there right now, in terms of best practices and partners and that sort of thing, who can get to the nitty-gritty level of what I think so many of our educators need. That is, how can you look at the data for the achievement levels of kids in your classroom, and how can you pull that apart? So how can you, for example, look at the last eight weeks of lesson plans that you implemented, look at that in relation to the data about whether or not those kids mastered those skills or not, then determine, "Okay, this is why the kids did not succeed, or did not master those skills," and then help them create another eight weeks of lesson plans that address those deficiencies. Then at the next benchmark assessment, you can actually see progress. That is the level of professional development that our teachers need. I think this is not a DC-only situation. This is a situation, I think, that exists in schools across the country, is that we are not seeing where that level of professional development is happening and can be provided, at scale to teachers.

 I think that if you look, right now, at the situation that we're in and what we have to do to meet our goals, we have an incredibly long way to go. So people tend to ask me three things, in general, when I'm out in public. They say, "What is it that you're trying to do? What are you going to do to get there?" And then third, "Why is it that you think you're going to succeed in this?"

 So I'm going to address all three of those. First, in terms of what is it that I'm trying to do. I'm very clear about this.  My goal is nothing short of making sure that this is the highest-performing urban school district in the country and a district in which we close the achievement gap, and we finally show that it is absolutely possible for an urban public school district to provide an excellent education to poor minority students, where their environmental status and realities are not an excuse. I think that when we do that, not only will it insure that every single child in the city gets an excellent education, but I think it will send reverberations across this country, and it will take the excuses away from other schools and other districts, where that is not happening.

 This is an unbelievable undertaking that we are facing right now because--just as an example, at the secondary level, we have an achievement gap of about 70 percentage points in some of our subject areas, between our poor minority kids and our wealthier white kids, 70 percentage points. You cannot walk into a school in this city and talk to one of our kids and believe that that has anything to do with anything but the fact that we, as the adults in the city, are not doing our jobs and are not doing right by these kids. Because the children  it is blatantly apparent to me, every time I talk to kids, that our kids have unbelievable potential. In fact, probably the best conversations that I have on a day to day basis are with students.

 I'm going to tell you a couple stories. The other day, I met with some students from a high school, one of our failing high schools in Anacostia. One of them emailed me and said they wanted me to come out and meet with some of the students. I went out. A group of students were there. They were incredibly prepared. They had their list all typed up, of the things that they wanted to talk to me about. The things ranged from them saying, you know, "We have on average about 15 teachers absent a day. How can you expect us to learn when the teachers aren't actually showing up to teach us?" I have a good answer for that one. When I asked them, "What is it that I could do, that you believe would have the biggest impact on the education that you're getting everyday?" The first thing out of their mouths was, "Bring us more great teachers." They didn't say, "Put Pizza Hut in the school," and that sort of thing. They were saying, "Great teachers."

 Interestingly, they started telling me about one of the teachers in their school. They said, "This guy is the greatest teacher ever. You need to bring us more teachers like him." This guy is a Teach For America teacher. They're telling me this story about how this guy parks himself at the McDonald's after school, down the street. He tutors kids in precalculus at the McDonald's. If you're hungry, he buys you a hamburger, and he will sit there all night long until you get the math concept. They love this guy. They can't get enough of him. Every single one of the kids talked about this man.

 So I went and found this guy. It turned out, I had talked to him before. I asked him, "So are you going to stay another year? Are you going to stay next year?" He's in the midst of his second year with Teach For America. He's like, "I don't know. I'm so tired." This kid is like 23 years old. He looks like he's been beaten up. He's so tired. He started telling me a little bit about his day to day life. Not only is he spending half of his $40,000 salary on buying kids hamburgers at McDonalds, but he spends most of his periods subbing in other classes. He believes that, even if it's Spanish, or English, or whatever, he can actually give the kids something during that period instead of having the kids watch a movie. So he spends a lot of his prep periods in other people's classes covering.

 He's saying, "I don't feel like there is an environment here. There's not a whole lot of other people who have the same mindset that I do about what needs to happen here, so it's very disheartening at times," is what he told me. So we are not creating an environment in which a lot of great educators and teachers can be successful. I frankly think that there is a tremendous amount that we can do about this. Because the bottom line is that, if you look at what we're doing now and what we could be doing to better recognize and reward teachers  

 I'm going to give you one example. People talk all the time about how difficult performance pay is. So if you look at the performance pay plans and programs around the country--I don't think that any of them, quite frankly, are all that good. When I came onboard, we were told that we, through the New Leaders for New Schools Program, got a TIF Grant from the Feds, and we had a pot of money that we were supposed to use specifically on our performance pay pilot. I said, "There are two guiding principles that I want to use in this pilot. The first is that we're going to base the awards solely on student achievement; and the second is that I want to recognize dramatic gains with a dramatic reward."

 We put together something called the TEAM Awards. We did this in conjunction with the unions, and said, "Every school is eligible. The criteria is that you had to have seen a 20 percentage point gain in Reading and Math separately, in order to be one of the school's chosen." We had three schools that actually met that criteria. So I show up, right before Christmas. We have the teachers there. I said, "Here's the story. We have these TEAM Awards." They had never heard of this.  They didn't know what was going on. We said, "Congratulations.  We're going to give every teacher $8,000. We're going to give every counselor and other ancillary staff member $4,000; every custodian and clerk, $2,000."

What I think is important about this, and just let me say for a moment, that the U.S. Department of Education said that we couldn't spend any of the money on non-instructional staff. So we actually raised the money and found money elsewhere to pay the custodians and the clerks and the other people. Because you can't see those kinds of gains in a school just by the classroom teachers. You have to have every single adult working toward that goal in order to see those kinds of gains, and we wanted to recognize that amongst the entire staff.

 So I announced this, and the teachers, they went bananas.  I mean, they're singing "Hallelujah," and crying, and clapping.  Afterwards, they came up to me and they said, "Okay. We are trying to figure out how we're going to split up the $8,000."  And I said, "No. Every single one of you gets $8,000." They were that happy when they thought they all had to split $8,000.  Imagine the mileage once I said, "No. Everybody gets $8,000 separately."

The system is not perfect yet. We're working on how to modify it, to improve it even more. Overall, the feedback on it has been very positive. What we've heard from educators is, "Are you going to continue it on next year? Can more schools be eligible? How can we make sure that we're also in the know about how this can work?" So I don't necessarily think that pay for performance plans have to be as complicated as people make them out to be. Sometimes you just have to do things, and be dedicated to modifying from there.

 Let me go back to the kids for a second though, because that was the first thing that they talked about, was teacher quality. The second thing that they said to me, I think was fascinating. They said, "So we hear that the school is going to be closed. That's what the rumor is." I said, "No. Your school is not slated for closure, but your school is a school that's in restructuring status, and here's what that means." And so I explained No Child Left Behind. I talked about AYP, and I talked about the fact that because the school had not met AYP for five years, they were now in restructuring status, and laid out the five options that I had.

 The kids were listening the whole time and they said, "Okay"--one of the kids raised his hand and said, "I think that you should go with the option of bringing in an external party to help manage the school." I was like, "Really?" And he said, "Yes. We need a governance change here." That's the word he used: governance change. And he said, "I like the administrators here a lot. They really do work hard, but they need help. They do not know what they're doing, and they do not have what it takes to turn the school around." So I said, "That's interesting that you say that. I'm looking at all of the options," because those are the only five options that I have. So one of the things that I'm considering certainly is that. I said, "It's interesting that you say this because if, for whoever reason I decided to do that, there would be a lot of opposition in the community to doing something like that." He said, "I'm willing to bet you that the opposition is going to come from people who don't go to school here every day, and who don’t see the reality of what we have to go through day in and day out." He said, "I've been here for three years now and I will tell you that this is not working, and unless something significant happens, it's going to continue to not work."

 I had one little girl there, she was a twelfth grader and she was arguing just as vehemently as this young man was, she said, "Even though I'm not going to be here, when whatever happens, happens, I feel like I have to be a voice for the students. Because if we don't voice this opinion, then how many students are going to come after us who are going to have the same fate that we did?"

And I had gotten in trouble at this particular school, because I had gone in a few months before, and I addressed the kids and I said to the children, "You are not getting the education you deserve." The kids went, "Wow." They were like, "Yes!" And then I talked to some of the faculty afterwards and they were very, very upset with me. They said, "You told the kids that they were not getting the education they deserve and now they feel like they're sort of entitled to run risks.” I said, "No, that was not the intention of what I said. But I did want to be very clear and straightforward with the students."

The staff, I think, took it personally to say that I meant that they were not providing the kids with the education they deserve. That, we can argue about back and forth. The bottom line is that there are some incredibly hardworking people, like the guy who sits at the McDonald's every night in that school, and many others. But the bottom line is that you can't look at the achievement levels in that school, where 7% of the kids on grade level; 7% of the kids are proficient, and say that those kids are getting the education they deserve. Because if you do say that, then you are someone who has extraordinarily low expectations for the kids.

 We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us. We have a situation where I have 144 school buildings. I have just gone through the majority of the classes, and I'm just going to finalize it at the end of the month. We're closing 23 of those schools, and then we have another 27 schools that are in restructuring status for this year. They will require a significant intervention going into next year. Then 33 more that will, unless they meet AYP this year, come online to be restructured next hear. So I think that there is a tremendous opportunity for us to work collaboratively with lots of different folks in the community, with educators from across the city and across the nation, to say, "What can we do in these schools that is significantly going to change the educational outcomes for these students?"

 Going back to my original point on this, it's going to take a lot of courage because the bottom line is that, whereas many people were saying, "Yes, we like you. We think you're enthusiastic. We're backing your change and your reform agenda."  As soon as you start implementing the change, a lot of the people, who said they wanted change, are like, "Wait a second. Not that kind of change." Or "not that fast"; or "not that much"; or "we don't like the process." Already, there has been a significant amount of pushback, to say, "We don't like this change." I think that it is going to be a real test as to how we can move the agenda forward; how we can insure that the changes that we know need to happen can be implemented. Quite frankly, I think in many ways, it's going to be race against the clock.  Because we have to be able to show that these changes that we're making are going to produce results for kids. Unless we're able to do that, then we're not going to see the momentum, and we're not going to have the capital that we need to be able to continue on with the reform agenda. I do think, in many ways, it's going to be a difficult road to hoe.

Everyone that I talk to, and Joel Klein and I talk frequently, he said, "You can't expect to see the kind of change that you want to see, on the academic front for five years." I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I can't wait five years." The kids can't wait five years for this kind of change. But we know that the district is not in the state that it's in now because of something that happened overnight. It didn't happen over the course of a year, 18 months or two years. It's been many, many years of operating in this way and so it takes many years to fix it. The question is, are we going to be able to see enough progress in the time period that we need to, to be able to push forward on these things?

 But I have a tremendous amount of confidence that we're going to be able to do this. This is why people think I'm nuts.  I truly believe that we are going to do this. I believe that we have to do this. The bottom line is that public education is supposed to be the great equalizer in our country. It's supposed to be the thing that insures. It doesn't matter if you're black or white, rich or poor. If you go to school, work hard, and do the right thing, then you can live the American dream.

But the bottom line is that is not the reality in Washington, D.C. today. The reality is that if you live in Tenleytown versus if you live Anacostia, you get two wildly different educational experiences. That is the greatest social injustice imaginable, because we are still, in this day and age  In this day and age, we are still allowing the color of a child's skin and the zip code that they live in to dictate what their educational outcomes are, and therefore their life chances and their life dreams. That has to stop. We have to stop that.

 So the last question, again, that people ask me is, "So why do you think you're going to be able to do this?" I think for a few reasons. First, I'd say, especially over the last 10 weeks or so, I've had a number of situations where I have been sitting in a room full of people and they're screaming at me or whatever it might be. I sort of say, "You know what? I get it. I get why six people have come into this job in the past 10 years, six incredibly hardworking, smart, well-meaning people and have not been able to accomplish much." Because if you take this stuff personally at all, you are a goner.

In fact, in the midst of all the school closure meetings, my mother was in town. She said, "You know? I used to be so worried about you when you were kid, because you didn’t seem to care what anybody else thought about you. I thought you were going to grow up to be really antisocial." She's like, "This seems to be serving you well now." And I said, "Yes." Because the bottom line is that I don't take it personally, and I don’t actually mind having people scream at me day in and day out.  Because they are expressing a frustration that is real and that in many ways is warranted.

This school system has failed to serve the children of the city and the parents and the families of the city for far too long. There have been empty promises. There has been, I think, inaction. There's been a lack of responsiveness. So I completely understand where the frustration is coming from. I don't mind, any day of the week, standing in front of a group of people who are frustrated and hearing that and taking that in. I don't mind it at all.

 The second thing is that I think I have very different, in some ways, sort of a motivation or outlook on my job here. I am not a career superintendent. This will be a one-shot deal for me. I'm not thinking about the next superintendency that I have to secure. The bottom line is that in this job, you have to know that you could get kicked out of town tomorrow for the fact that they didn't like the suit that you wore, or you looked at somebody funny. That's just the nature of this job. I believe that if I were to operate in such a way where I was thinking about my longevity, thinking about the political relationships and those kind of dynamics, that's, I think, where people get into trouble. Because then you're not operating in a way that you believe is the right way to operate, but you're trying to jockey your way through the system.

 I'm operating in a completely different way. I believe that the right way to do this is to make every single decision every day as a decision that I think is in the best interests of the kids. God forbid something happens to me tomorrow, I can leave, saying, "You know what? Every single decision that I made was a decision that I believed was the right one." The bottom line is that we're going to operate in a different way in the city.  We've already begun to do it. We are going to put adult priorities and privileges aside and we are going to make every single decision and do every single thing that we do in what we believe is in the best interests of kids. I think that when we start to operate in that manner, and we do that over a sustained period of time, that we will see the dramatic transformation in D.C. that we need to see. Thanks.

Question & Answer Session

Frederick Hess: Thanks, Michelle. We have about 25 minutes.  I'm Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy at AEI. The way this is going to work is, the microphone is right here. Please wait for the mic. Please do us the favor of identifying yourself by name and affiliation. And everybody's much more interested in hearing what Michelle has to say, than what we have to say. So please, actually ask a question. Why don't we start right here.

 Questioner: What are your plans for improving math education?

 Michelle Rhee: One of the things that we are doing right now is really focusing in on what our academic plan is going to be. I think that is the most important thing that we can be doing because we can set the goals however lofty we want to, but unless we actually have the nuts and bolts around how we're going to get there, it's all going to be for not.

I'd say in terms of math, we're looking at a number of things. Right now, I'll say very frankly that they're very, very nuts and bolts. We are looking at identifying the students who are far below grade level and we're looking at significant and very structured interventions for those students. We're looking at how we utilize out of school time to insure that those interventions are being implemented; and on the teacher training front, which I think is incredibly important, particularly in math education.

We're in a circumstance where we are looking at the curriculum. We don't necessarily think that the curriculum that we're using at every grade level is the curriculum that we're going to be using moving forward, given the budget issues and whatnot. Our ability to purchase new textbooks is limited. So what we're doing instead is focusing our professional development for teachers very much on data and data-driven decision-making and data-driven instruction. Because that, I think, will set a very strong foundation for the teachers, that will be in play no matter what grade level they teach; no matter what subject area they teach; no matter what curriculum they're using. So I'd say we're at, just sort of the beginning stages of that.

 Questioner: I'm President and Founder of Cornerstone Schools, Washington. We serve 150 kids, low-income kids, most come in under grade level. After two years, they're on grade level. But my question for you is, out of the 150 kids we have, 30 are receiving the scholarship funds. I'm just wondering if you have an opinion on whether that program should continue, or if you see a bright future for that program, as it is essential to what we do, serving the kids?

 Michelle Rhee:  So you're referring to the vouchers? I believe, very strongly in choice in education. I believe that for far too long choice in education was something that was reserved for wealthy families out in the suburbs who can afford to pull their children out of the school and send them somewhere else. I think that one thing that D.C. has done very well, as a city, is provided choice across the district.

 A lot of people ask me whether I'm in favor of the voucher.  They ask me whether I'm in favor of charters or putting caps on charters and that sort of thing. I look at this very differently. I think that we have 100,000 school age children in this city and my goal is to insure that every single one of those children gets a quality education in a great school. I'm much less concerned about what kind of school it is; and more concerned with the fact that we should, very diligently, make sure that the schools that are being successful and that are servicing kids well, that we look to reward those schools, expand those schools, and take them to scale. And that the schools that are not serving kids well are closed down and replaced with better options for parents.

 So that's overall how I feel. I would say also though that I'm very competitive. I believe that it is absolutely possible to create a school system where we have great neighborhood schools in every single section of the city. So that if parents choose to send their child somewhere else, or choose to take advantage of a program, that is absolutely their prerogative and their priority and I would never do anything to limit that choice and that experience. But I do also think it's important to have, as an option, a neighborhood school that has an incredibly strong and compelling academic program for children, where the parents can rest assured that their children will be receiving a high-quality education in a safe environment.

 Rick Hess: So just on the scholarship program, does that mean you are comfortable with it? You are not comfortable? You're ducking the question, at this point?

 Michelle Rhee: I'll say this. Again, choice is important. I don’t want to do anything that limits choice. I think that my focus right now has to be less on, "Do I back the voucher program? Do I not back the voucher program?" And more on "How do I create incredibly high-quality options amongst the DCPS schools?"

I do think that part of the problem that we face, you know people like me face in these jobs, is you get pulled in all these directions. You get pulled into these political fights and debates and that sort of thing, and it takes me away from the core of what I should be doing every single day, which is, "How can we improve the quality of instruction that's going on every single day in DCPS schools?" So I'd much rather be focused on that.

 Questioner: You've got time with our elementary and middle school kids, but our high school kids have such a limited amount of time. How are you going to increase the time and the opportunities available so they have a chance of leaving with the kind--at least the basic education that they need?

 Michelle Rhee: This is what keeps me up at night, I will tell you that. What to do with our high schools is significant.  So we are, I'll be honest again, we're doing triage right now, basic triage in our high schools. As an example, we just spent a number of weeks doing an audit of every single transcript of every twelfth grader that we have in the city. What we found was astonishing. We had a significant number of kids who are not on track to graduate and by all indications, through no fault of their own. They were not assigned to the right classes. We have an inordinate number of children who are retaking classes that they have already passed.

 We have kids who are actually high-achieving kids, who are now in their senior year, who are taking one course because they've already taken all the courses that the school offers.  So part of what we're doing right now is based on that audit.  We're doing a few things. We had to do major scheduling changes because we found that a pretty significant percentage of these kids who are not on track to graduate could be on track to graduate by the end of the year, if we had some significant scheduling changes, which we thought were well worth it. So we did that.

 The second thing that we put in place is a much more robust credit recovery program for those students, that's going to be implemented starting the end of this month. So that the kids who can't, just through a scheduling change, graduate. They would be able to through evening classes, recover some of those credits and still graduate on time. We're also very much focused on alternative environments for some kids, because of a number of reasons. We have lots of discipline issues with some groups of kids. They are not getting the services that they need. We believe that they would be much better served in a different environment. So we're focused on some of those types of things.  Those are the sort of triage type things.

 Sort of longer term what the vision is for secondary schools, I think is probably going to be one of our most significant challenges. I, personally--This is why I think I differ from a lot of people who are in the policy realms, and particularly in the education funding realms, who say, "High school is too late." I fundamentally do not believe that high school is too late. I have seen firsthand how children can actually be reoriented, starting from ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade, to be focused in on college. It's a difficult proposition. Sometimes we're not going to be able to get kids exactly to the grade level by the time they graduate, but I believe that we get them oriented in the right way.

 One of the things that I have been thinking more and more is that I'm a big believer in the fact that character precedes academic achievement. I believe if you can properly give kids life skills--discipline, focus, hard work, effort  that those skills will actually allow them to gain academic skills that they need longer term, and allow us to be in a dynamic where though they might not graduate from high school on grade level, they can still be oriented toward college and do well there.

 So our focus at the secondary level is going to be very much how would we reengage students in their learning process.  I think it's going to be a lot around intervention. It's going to be a lot around themes and certain focus areas for kids.  Then, this might seem trivial, but another thing that we're looking at is how we use the out of school time to engage kids.  In so many of our schools, I mean, one of the complaints that the group of students that I met with the other week, had was, they said, "We're not going to have a yearbook because there's no yearbook group. There's no yearbook." Now, how can you possibly graduate from high school in this country and not have a yearbook? That's a basic right of passage that these kids are not going to have.

So we have to make sure that every single one of our schools--that we're outlining what those extracurricular activities should look like. You should have yearbook. You should have debate. You should have these sports, all of these things. I think that when you have those things and when they're well resourced, then children can take pride in their school.  They can really feel like it's a holistic experience that they're having. I think that their investment levels are going to go up through things like that.

 Questioner: My question to you, Chancellor, is as a private citizen and taxpayer, what can I do to help you in the fight? I congratulate you for what you've accomplished up to this point.  How can I be of service and other parents that are in the community, with the D.C. Council and City Commissioners, and all of those types of individuals?

 Michelle Rhee: I think that there is a lot that the public can do. First of all, you can help continue to advocate for the reforms I'm implementing. It's very difficult, and it's going to require a tremendous amount of courage on the part of our elected officials. If I have learned one thing since I've been here, I've learned that it doesn't take a whole lot of people to sway a City Council member from one side to another on issues.  I think it's important because, oftentimes-- As I travel across the city and I talk to people, everyday people, whether it's in forums like this, whether it's in schools that I'm at, speaking engagements, or in the grocery store and laundry mat. I see people everyday, who come up me and say, "Keep doing what you're doing. Don't let those people drive you out of town. Stay strong."

 I do think the vast majority of the population in this city, truly believe that these are the things that need to happen. But those are the kinds of people who go to work every day. They don't necessarily think that they should go to City Hall or send the emails and the phone calls. It does matter. It does help, for those elected officials to know that there are a significant number of citizens in Washington, D.C. who want to see these reforms happen. So I think advocating on that front is important.

 I'd say the second thing is in a very, very hands-on way.  So we are trying to engage everyone we possibly can in improving academic achievement for our kids. We are launching a program where we are putting a call to action out to citizens asking for people to volunteer to tutor kids in our schools. Where we've identified the kids that we think could benefit the most from one-on-one tutoring and we're just going to put out a big call.  So I think it can be as hands-on or as hands-off as you want. There are a lot of opportunities to do that.

 Questioner: Do you believe that the public should be excluded from your process? Do you believe that the District of Columbia has a culture of mediocrity? And is process not important?

 Michelle Rhee:  I would say, is D.C. a culture of mediocrity? No. Because what the city overall wants to see right now is excellence in their schools, so I don't believe that at all. Do I believe the public should be excluded from the process? Absolutely not. One of the things that you and other folks in the city have said is that, for example, the public has not been part of the school closing process, which I absolutely disagree on.

 When we made the initial recommendations to the Mayor about what schools should be closed and what process we were going to go through, we said, "Here is our initial recommendation list.  We are going to go through two months of community engagement, where we go out in the community. We hear what people's concerns are. Then after that process, we are going to turn in what our final recommendations are." Based on those meetings, we made significant modifications to that list. A lot of people came back and said, "Wow!  They were listening."

 Now, I would say what is interesting about that though, is that I had a number of meetings. I took every single meeting that somebody requested of me about the school closings. Part of the interesting thing that came of that is I got a lot of feedback after we made the modifications, a list of people who said, "I didn't believe you when you said that you were still open. I thought that you'd already made up your mind. You really were listening. Thank you so much, and this was a real process."

 And I have other people who said, "You weren't listening at all, because you didn't do what I told you to do." I think there's a difference here, that people need to understand, which is that "hearing" people doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to do everything that people want me to do. There's no way that I can operate like that, and there's no way, quite frankly, that you can go through a school closing process and have everyone come out happy, unless you don't close any of those schools. So it's not possible.

 But I do think that community engagement is important. I think that we will continue to operate in a way that we continue to reach out to the community. We get their input in these things. But input does not necessarily mean that that is the way that it's going to happen. The greatest thing that I can do and the way that we've operated to date that has been very effective is to be very open, to continue to meet with people, to take the feedback and input that they're giving us that is incredibly valuable. Making the modifications, but also being very clear, that just because you come and sit with me, does not mean that what you want to happen is going to happen. The school closing process, and even some of the detractors early on to the process, have agreed that what the final outcome was, was very fair and very favorable.

This might get me in a little trouble, but I'm going to say it anyway. So many people want to come and “help.” Then, when I say, "Thank you for sharing. We're not going to move forward with that," they get very angry. They're like, "I'm offering you help and you're not taking my help." The bottom line is we cannot have a reform effort that is being driven and led by lots of different people. It's going to be driven and led by me. I'm very clear on what we need and what we don't need, and where we need to go.

 Frankly, you talk to, whether it's funders, national funders, they all want to push their agendas. We have the Feds who want to push their agendas. The bottom line is that my job is to keep all those people at bay, and move my agenda forward, and money will allow me to do that. I think though, as a new administration comes in, one of the things that I am most worried about in that transition is, "What is going to happen to No Child Left Behind?" Because I will say that, I do not think that NCLB is perfect. I think that there are some serious modifications that need to be made to it. But it would be a grave, grave mistake if the Democrats came into office and obliterated this law. That potentially would cripple not only me, but other urban superintendents like me. 

I am a Democrat. I'm a card-carrying Democrat. I always have been my whole life. But I will say that the way that the Democrats have approached NCLB and the rhetoric that they're spewing right now about it, just makes my stomach turn every time I hear it on the news. So quite frankly, that’s what I'm most terrified about.

 Questioner: I wonder if you might talk about the sort of financial and educational "chicken and egg" problem with special education and private placements and all of that?

 Michelle Rhee: Oh, my goodness. Oh! So, for those of you who don't know, we spend an inordinate amount of money on special education in this city. We spend about $74 million a year transporting a few thousand students. It amounts to about $18,000 per child, per year. When I heard that figure, I said, "Well, we could buy the kid a Saturn in the first year and a driver every year after that for $18,000 a year. We have to be able to transport them for less." Then if you look at the out of districts, or the non-public placements on top of that, it's over $200 million a year that we are spending.

 We spend about a third of our budget every year on special education. I think it's important that our special needs students get the services that they need and deserve, but I also think that we can do that in a way that does not drain resources away from the other students in this district. Quite frankly, if you look at what's going on, there is a cottage industry that has cropped up here, that has been based on special education and the incompetence of DCPS.

 So let me give you a couple of examples. We found out that we were sending children to a special education facility that cost $227,000 a year per kid. I thought this was the craziest thing I'd ever heard, so I asked one of my special assistants to look into this. He came to me one day and he said, "Okay. I've been looking into this, and how many kids and how they got sent.  We have this one woman who for one kid, she didn't fill out a form she was supposed to fill out. And for the second kid, she didn't have a meeting she was supposed to have. Both of these resulted in these children getting sent to this $227,000 a year placement."

 So I said, "All right. I've got to meet this lady." My assistant called her and said, "Ma'am, we'd like you to come up to a meeting at the Chancellor's office at 5:00 today." She said, "Well, I'm going to have to check with my supervisor on that." He said, "Ma'am, the Chancellor is your supervisor.  She's everybody's supervisor." Then she said, "Well, I'm going to bring my lawyer then." He said, "Bring whoever you need to bring, just show up at 5:00."

 So the lady comes in and we sit down.I said, "First of all, I understand that there's a question about who you report to."  She said, "No, no, no. I'm good. It was a mistake." I said, "All right. So you're going to have to help me understand this." I showed her the files and said, "This kid didn't file the form. This kid didn't have the meeting. Help me understand what happened."

 And she said, "Well, you need to understand that I am a very busy person. I have way too many kids in my caseload, and you can't expect me to do everything. Things are going to fall through the cracks." I said, "No, you need to understand that if you believe this job is too big for you, then you need to find a new job. But if you are going to take the paycheck home every other week, then you have to take personal responsibility for everything in your purview, and you literally, by doing these two things, these mistakes, these things that fall through the cracks, cost the system a half a million dollars. Do you understand what a half of million dollars could do in a school, in terms of extra resources--teachers, books, etcetera?" And she looked at me like I was speaking a different language. She was like, "That's not fair."

 And we have law firms in this city and lawyers in this city who understand how we don't operate, and understand how to navigate their way through the system, so that they can take advantage of all these things, and insure that our non-public placements are through the roof. So we actually have to put in place a number of things that are going to stop that. The first and foremost in my mind is, "How do we build the capacity within the district to effectively serve those kids?"

So we are actually piloting a number of things for the next school year that I think are going to allow us to build our capacity. We are calling on a lot of experts from across the city and the nation, to help build that capacity. I’m very excited about those things and believe that they will ultimately result in those kids getting a better education within DCPS and then us being able to have a better utilization of those dollars.

 Rick Hess:  I'm going to take the last question myself. Michelle, I'm curious. The best day on the job so far?

 Michelle Rhee: The best day on the job so far? I mean, I will tell you. I love my job. I think I have the best job that a person could possibly have, because if you look at the potential of our kids  I would say any day that I have, where I'm out in the field talking to kids, is a great day on the job. There is just such tremendous potential. You can look at the data and say, "Oh, my gosh. You've taken on this impossible challenge."  But if you look at things from this other perspective, that this is a very manageable reform effort that we're taking on, in that, going into next year, we'll have about 120 schools. I can touch 120 Principals and have relationships with them directly.

 I have a policy where I tell teachers and parents to email me directly when they're not getting what they need, and I solve the problem directly. When you have a school district of our scale and our size, you can do that. So, in combination with the fact that we've got the leadership; we've got the public will; and quite frankly, we have the resources.

 I honestly think that this is the best job in the world because we're going to be able to finally show that minority kids can achieve at the same high levels. And finally insure that we are allowing every single child in the city to reach the American dream, and I don't think that there's any day that I could spend doing anything else that would be better than that.

[End of Transcript]