When Education Next ran its Braveheart story on D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Beltway insiders scoffed, saying it was only a matter of time for her, just as it had been for the medieval Scottish nobleman. Teacher unions have too much clout to be confronted directly, went the conventional wisdom, and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is just too clever for this political neophyte, it was said. Any sensible school superintendent knows you don’t fight the unions, just settle for small-scale changes. To learn how to survive, just check out Boston. That’s the conventional wisdom.
But, lo and behold, test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress for students in Washington, D.C. have risen more than those of students from any other participating big city. And this week we learn that Michelle Rhee has negotiated a pay-for-performance contract that sets a standard for other cities to match.
Meanwhile, the nervous governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, is wondering whether he should sign the merit pay bill that is landing on his desk. Let’s hope braveheartism is contagious.
By
Paul E. Peterson
Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Senior Editor of Education Next, a journal of opinion and research.
Peterson is a former director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and of the Governmental Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. He received his Ph. D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the German Marshall Foundation, and the Center for Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is the author of the book, Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning (Harvard University Press, 2010).
Peterson was a member of the independent review panel advising the Department of Education’s evaluation of the No Child Left Behind law and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force of K-12 Education at Stanford University. The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center reported that Peterson’s studies on school choice and vouchers have been among the country’s most influential studies of education policy.
