The Education Exchange: Could New Mayor End D.C. Teacher Evaluation System?

PAUL PETERSON, HOST:

This is the Education Exchange with Paul Peterson. I am the director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University. In 2007, the schools in the District of Columbia, under the direction of Chancellor Michelle Rhee, introduced a pay-for-performance plan, often called a merit-pay plan. Over the next 20 years, students in D.C. have been making extraordinary gains in reading and math, well above those nationwide. But those reforms are now in danger. Janice Lewis George, a socialist Democrat, has just won the Democratic Party nomination for mayor of Washington, D.C., and she’s almost certain to become the next mayor. Now, Lewis George has promised the Washington Teachers Union, the WTU as it’s called, she’s promised the WTU that she will drop teacher evaluation essential to this merit-pay program. Well, to discuss this dramatic turnabout in the nation’s capital, I have with me on the Education Exchange, Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. school system, today a partner at Equal Opportunity Ventures. Thank you, Michelle, for joining me on the Education Exchange.

MICHELLE RHEE: Thanks for having me, Paul. It’s always a pleasure.

PETERSON: Well, Michelle, we want to get into the current situation, but can you first explain to our listeners what happened back when you were the chancellor of the D.C. school system? First of all, describe the program itself. What was the merit-paid program that was put into place? Then we’ll go into the politics.

RHEE: Sure. So just as a little bit of background, which I think some people know, but others do not, is that when Mayor Adrian Fenty took over mayoral control of the schools in D.C. in 2007, D.C. public schools were the lowest performing school district in the nation. We were the only district in the country that was on high-risk status with the U.S. Department of Education, mostly for the misuse of federal funds. And we just had a pretty dismal situation in terms of student achievement where only 8 percent of the city’s eighth graders were performing on grade level in mathematics. At the same time, 98 percent of the teachers were being rated as doing an excellent job. So, there was this real disconnect between student achievement. and teacher performance that we knew we needed to fix. And when we started the reforms, specifically around the teacher evaluation and pay for performance programs, it was really interesting because we did some surveying and the vast majority of both teachers and principals did not like the existing performance evaluation system. And so you would think that that would be like the clarion call for change. Well, everybody wants change until change actually happens and you start implementing it and then everyone, you know, gets skittish. But we knew that based on the data and based on sentiment that we had to significantly change the system. And so, what we did was we developed a new teacher evaluation system where at the time that we introduced it, 50 percent of the teacher evaluation was based on student academic growth. And then the other 50 percent was based on a number of factors, including how the school overall was doing academically on growth measures, the individual contributions of the teachers, and then general professionalism, etcetera. And at the time, it was pretty much unheard of to have student performance factored into a teacher’s evaluation. And it was interesting because back then at the time, I went and did a…I spoke to a Wall Street Journal conference of CEOs, and they asked me, what’s the most innovative thing that you’re doing right now? And I sort of explained the fact that we were restructuring the performance evaluation in that way. And one of the CEOs asked me the question. They were like, well, 50 percent; why wouldn’t it be 90 percent? And I said, look, sir, you don’t understand. Right now, it’s 0 percent, right? We’re going from 0 to 50. That’s a pretty huge difference.

PETERSON: But there was another side of it. You had some professional people coming in and spending some time in the classroom, observing the teachers. Wasn’t that a pretty big, important part of your performance pay plan?

RHEE: Absolutely. And this was important because this was based on feedback, Paul, that we were getting from teachers. So, teachers were saying to us that in the previous model, the way that teachers were evaluated essentially was all coming down to one observation that happened either per semester or per year. And people would say, my principal would come in; they’d look at what I was doing for 10 minutes, and that was, you know, evaluation done. And lots of teachers were saying, things like, I teach three-year-old kids on the autism spectrum, and my principal was a high school gym teacher. They don’t really have the content knowledge to effectively assess my practice. And so based on that, we developed something called the Master Educator Program, where we identified incredibly high-performing teachers across the district. We trained them in this Master Educator Program, and then they were doing evaluations and observations. And basically, they would go in five times a year, not once a year. Three of those times, mind you, were unannounced observations.

PETERSON: So that’s the other thing about the way in which observations are typically done in school districts is they tell the teachers on Thursday morning at 10 o’clock; we’re going to have somebody observe you.

RHEE: That’s right. And then, so what you often see is like the dog and pony show come out for the observation. Right. And this is interesting because kids would tell, give us that feedback all the time, and they were like, yeah, when the when the principal comes in, then my teacher does things that like they don’t do any other day of the year. Right. But they’re putting on a show. And so, we actually felt like it was important to have three of those observations be unannounced observations so the master educator could get a really clear sense of what was going on in the classroom like every day. But that was, you know, while that brought some level of anxiety because it was different from how people used to operate, I think on the flip side of that, teachers were so grateful for the fact that these master educators really were experts in their subject area, and their grade level, and the quality of feedback that they were getting from these folks was unlike anything that they had previously gotten. So, it was sort of like balancing those two things.

PETERSON: But still, you were getting a lot of criticism, and you came up with an idea called the Green Path and the Red Path. And I always thought that was such a brilliant idea. So, what was the Green Path, Red Path story?

RHEE: So basically, there were two pieces to what we were doing. There was the actual teacher evaluation part, but then we also wanted to tie how people did on the evaluation to their compensation so that highly effective teachers who were teaching in high-need subject areas and high-need schools actually had the ability to get paid sometimes almost double what they were in the old system. Right. And so, it was a very significant pay for performance system. It was the kind of pay for performance system that had been unheard of before so before that time there had been some efforts to you know pay teachers usually a few thousand dollars more right for certain things but this is the first time that you were talking about literally like doubling somebody’s salary so it was very, very significant and essentially we knew that it was not going to go over easily, right? And that this was not something that everybody was going to embrace. And one of the things that George Parker, who was the president of the teachers union at the time said, which was very compelling to us was like, look, we have a whole lot of teachers who came into the profession and who came into the district with a different set of expectations, and we thought that was fair. So, what we decided to do was to create two tracks, we had the green track, we had red and green which you know in retrospect may it may not have been the best color choice but…and the green track was like you are going to be evaluated in this way. You have huge possibilities for bonuses that you can earn if you perform well, etcetera. And so, we decided that all new teachers would go onto the green track and that for existing and veteran teachers, they could make the choice to go on the green track if they wanted. If they chose to, they could stay on what we called the red track, which was more similar to what they had been on before.

PETERSON: But they wouldn’t ever get a chance to make this extraordinary salary.

RHEE: That’s right. And so, it was interesting to kind of watch the trajectory of that, like over time, because at the beginning, there were a number of veteran teachers who were choosing to stay on the green track.

PETERSON: You mean on the red path?

RHEE: I’m sorry, on the red track. But what happened over time, and a lot of those folks, I think, chose the red track because of fear of the unknown, right? And there were certainly a lot of rhetoric happening all from the union side of people saying like, oh, they’re just doing this so they can get rid of veteran teachers. Because one of the things about going on the green track is you gave up your tenure and your seniority rights. Right. Because this was a new model. And so a lot of folks thought, well, oh, they’re trying to get rid of veteran teachers and more highly paid teachers. Right. And this is the way that they’re going to do it. And so, you—But over time, you would see veteran teachers who had chosen the red track, but somebody else who was also a veteran teacher in their school chose the green track. And they’re like, well, wait a second. Miss Jones chose the green track. And over the last couple of years, she’s been able to pay for her daughter’s wedding and buy a new car and go on vacation. And here I am sitting on the red track. She’s still here, though, right? And so more and more teachers. actually started choosing the green track. And so there was a trajectory towards it.

PETERSON: Well, I know you did this only because the mayor backed you 100 percent. And then Mayor Fenty was really; he’s the person who chose you. He was the person who supported you. He was the person who mobilized the governmental agencies to help make sure the schools adapted. How important is the mayor for school reform in Washington, D.C.?

RHEE: I mean, it was absolutely critical. We could not have done anything that we did in D.C. were it not for, one, mayoral control, but two, mayoral control with a bad mayor is no better than a dysfunctional school board. We had what I would consider the best mayor that you could possibly have and he just 100 percent supported what we were doing. He understood it. He understood that there was going to be a lot of noise and pushback. That didn’t bother him because he was focused on the outcome, which is making D.C. public schools more effective for the kids in the district. So there is zero doubt in my mind that we would not have been able to accomplish what we did, and we would not have been able to set the foundations for 20 years of gains since then, were it not for Adrian and his bravery and courage.

PETERSON: Well, he was so brave he was defeated. And then you resigned. So, it was really sort of a dramatic ending to see, you know, the politics turn against you. But did the plan go down when you were defeated, when he was defeated and you resigned?

RHEE: No, I think one of the most heartening things about the foundation that we set early on is just how stable it was and how it was able to continue over time. And a lot of that is because the person who succeeded me in the job, Kaya Henderson, had been there with me hand in hand over the first four years. She continued that trajectory over the five years that she was chancellor. And that really sort of set the foundation for sure. And that foundation still remains today. In fact, George Parker, the teachers union president, when I was there, told me that he had recently done an assessment of the current teachers union contract. And he said between 90 and 95 percent of it, of what we negotiated back then, is still in place today.

PETERSON: Well, you were very fortunate to have George Parker as the head of the Washington Teachers Union, but he had to fight off a lot of opposition from union leaders around the country. Wasn’t that the case?

RHEE: Absolutely. According to George, he was fielding calls all the time from other teachers union leaders in other cities saying, like, what are you doing? You’re setting a bad precedent. You’re making my life harder because now our superintendent is coming to us and saying, look at what they’re doing in D.C., can we do something like that? But he also said he got pressure from other non teachers, but other union leaders across the country who were saying, hey, you can’t step out of line here. You know, you got to toe the union line. And so, I think the courage that George Parker showed as a leader, and he also was ousted from office shortly after Adrian was, unfortunately. But so often people who are in elected positions, as you know, will make calls that allow them to stay in office as opposed to making the calls that they know are the right things for students. And I think we were incredibly fortunate in both Adrian and George to have leaders who were more about doing what was right for kids than for them.

PETERSON: President Kennedy wrote a book on this before he became president. It was called Profiles in Courage, but it was only six stories. There are not many profiles in courage in politics. So, this is certainly one of them.

RHEE: Yeah absolutely, for those two men, it’s undeniable.

PETERSON: So now tell me about the current position in the district. Janice Lewis George seems to be saying that she wants to go back to the old system. Is that really the case, or have I misinterpreted the storyline that’s out there?

RHEE: Well, she has publicly stated that she would like to roll back impact, which is the teacher evaluation and compensation system. You know, it’s still left to be seen what will actually happen. And I would hope, you know, oftentimes people say things to get elected and then when they get into office, they realize, wait a second, we actually have to do something else. I would hope that is the case here because I think, I mean, when the new mayor takes office, my hope would be that that person really looks first at the results. Like what has been accomplished in D.C. public schools over the last 20 years, going from the lowest performing school district in the country to leading the nation in gains. So, I would hope that they would first take a hard look at that. And then the second thing that I would hope is that they would really get a broader perspective from teachers about what is working and not working as opposed to just kind of listening to this very narrow voice of the teachers union. Because one of the things that I think people find very interesting is the fact that when George and I were negotiating this groundbreaking contract at the time in 2009, we got a lot of pushback from the national unions who didn’t want it to go to a vote, right? Because they were saying the teachers are not going to like this. We can’t take it to a vote. We can’t take it to a vote. Interestingly enough, when we actually did take it to a vote, it passed 80 percent to 20 percent.

PETERSON: Wow.

RHEE: And what it showed us was that the vast majority of people were not the ones that were arguing against this, and a heck bent on like trying to stop this from happening, right? And so I would say the same thing to the new mayor is, you know, instead of listening to sort of a narrow constituency who has a very kind of clear point of view and a clear agenda, really make sure that you’re listening more broadly to the teachers because if you look at some of the surveys and polling and data that has happened over time amongst teachers about the evaluation and the pay for performance system, you will find that there is tremendous support for this. And D.C. public schools has gone from—When I took over the district, we were the lowest paid teachers in the region. And one of the goals that George had was I want our teachers to be the highest paid teachers in the region. We actually achieved that, right? But it was through this paper performance system. And so those are all things that I think need to be really carefully considered before any major changes are made. And I think it would be unfortunate if the most, you know validated through research, validated human capital kind of reform system that has taken place over the last couple of decades in this country, and that has produced the results that it has, would just be undermined for political purposes. I think that would be a big mistake.

PETERSON: Right. There are some really good studies of what happened there in D.C. and have tracked things over time, and they validate what you just said, that the performances in D.C. are real. They’re not just paper.

RHEE: It’s not just the student achievement, which is obviously the most important thing, but the other thing that has increased significantly over time has been teacher retention, and teacher retention of the highest, most highly effective teachers in D.C. looks significantly better than it does in other urban districts.

PETERSON: Well, now, Congress has a veto over any decision that is taken by the government in the District of Columbia. Can you imagine Congress getting involved in this if Louis George actually tries to undo your plan?

RHEE: I don’t know, honestly. I think that politics have changed significantly since I was there. When I was there, we had both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who were supporting our efforts, to be honest. And because they knew that, the situation that we were under and they wanted sort of better results for kids. I fear that now, politically, things are much different than they were before. And I wonder whether Congress could muster a bipartisan coalition of people who look at the data again, look at the data instead of the political dynamics to say; we have to do something about this. I’m not sure, to be honest.

PETERSON: Well, now, Lewis George has supported charter schools. At least she said during the campaign that she wanted equal funding for charter schools. And charter schools are a big part of the story in the district because a high percentage of students are going to charter schools. And I think that’s continuing. How does the charter school story connect with the performance pay plan? Was that sort of part of the story? You needed to do something about the district because of the pressures that the charter schools were placing on the district?

RHEE: Certainly. I mean, well, you know, when we took over the district, between 30 and 40 percent of the kids were in charter schools, and that number was rapidly increasing every year. And so, I think even the people who didn’t want any change to happen in their ideal world, we would have continued down the road that we had been for decades. Even they were looking up and saying, oh, my gosh, if we don’t do something, then 10 years from now, 20 years from now, there might not be a D.C. public school system because it might be an all charter system. So, I think that fear was what helped Adrian to win mayoral control of the schools to begin with. And it certainly… I utilized that pressure a lot in pushing for our reforms to say, look, we can either make sure that the district is reforming, or we can hand more of these schools over to charter schools, your choice. And I think one of the gratifying things, and this is important right now, Paul, because with the rise of Education Savings Accounts these days, you are seeing more and more parents opting out of the traditional public-school district. And so many traditional public-school districts across the country right now are really, having crises around student enrollment. And, you know, one tack would be like to sort of hunker down, put your head in the sand and try to, you know, wait it out. But what we did, and I think, is a lesson to other traditional public-school districts across the country, is we leaned into being more innovative than the charters. And embracing new models and new ways of doing things. And as a result of that embracing of change, we completely reversed a downward trajectory in student enrollment. And I think now student enrollment in the traditional school districts is higher than it’s been in decades. And so, I think that’s a lesson to other district leaders right now who are sort of struggling with enrollment declines is, like, don’t hunker down and put your head in the sand. Like, really figure out, how can we be at the pointy end of the spear on innovation instead? And I think, you know, things like the aggressive teacher evaluation and paper performance system is one thing that needs to be considered.

PETERSON: Well, Michelle, I know you have a hard stop and I have to let you go, but I want to ask you one last question, which is, how about your current role at Equal Opportunity Ventures? Can you tell us a little bit about that in a few words?

RHEE: Yeah. So, I will say that at the end of my career in K–12 public education, I became a bit of a curmudgeon. I was like, you know what, we actually know what we need to do for kids. We just refuse to make the hard decisions associated with it. And so, I kind of pulled out of education. Now I’m back in from this venture capital lens. And I have to say, I’ve been reborn as an optimist again because every day I get to meet with founders, who are building something that they think is going to change the world. Our firm only invests in companies that are somehow helping to move economic mobility in our nation, particularly focused on low-income communities of color. I lead our education investments. And I am really bullish right now because I’m seeing so much being developed that I think could be game-changing for our kids. So, it’s really exciting to be in this role.

PETERSON: Well, thank you very much, Michelle, for joining me on the Education Exchange.

RHEE: Paul, it’s always a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

PETERSON: I’ve been speaking with Michelle Rhee. She’s the former chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools. I am Paul Peterson. This is the Education Exchange. Please join me for our new podcast released on the Education Next website every Monday at noon Eastern time.