Thursday, January 8, 2009

Marc Fisher Asks if Working Together Might Be a Better Approach in DCPS -- The Broad Acres Story

In Today's POST Marc Fisher raises questions about Rhee's approach extrapolating from Montgomery County's effort to turn around its highest poverty, lowest performing school. If anything, he understates the extent to which the union/management collaboration was the key. Read the case study to the right here about Broad Acres written by the Mooney Institute and used in courses at Harvard University to illustrate the difficulty of turning around a low performing school. We wish Fisher had read the case.

2 comments:

AVParodi said...

I found it quite revealing that immediately after quoting Montgomery Country Education Association President Bonnie Cullison that "You cannot make it happen in a district where you set up conflict" Fisher goes on to suggest that Rhee can succeed by creating conflict simply because she has "turned DC politics on its head." Fisher seems to be another person so enamored of Rhee that he can't see the forest for the trees. I truly wonder, truly, what his coverage would be if Janney had operated in the same fashion with the same results - the raise in test scores (none of which have been called into question but should given the chatter about cheating) the disarray, the trips to Sacramento during the Hart ES debacle, the firing of a principal at a successful school and replacing her with the wife of one of her deputies, etc., etc. Does anyone think Fisher's coverage would be as bending-over-backwards as it is in this article or any of his other articles? Just a simply query.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion these three points are the most important to take away from the article:

1)Training/support for teachers is crucial especially when working with high needs children. This happens best by utilizing experienced teachers.

2)A child's outside of school life does affect his/her ability to learn. Therefore, plans should be put in place to try to meet these needs possibly through wrap around services in the school and/or collaboration with other agencies.

3) A positive and respectful relationship between the school leadership and the Union is indispensable in efforts to raise student achievement.

I hope Ms. Rhee can learn from others.