Search This Blog

Friday, October 15, 2010

Improving DC Metro's School System: post-Chancellor Rhee era

Chancellor Rhee is leaving after a tumultuous three something years to improve DC's school system, an improbable task to turn around a system rife with bureaucratic inertia, inefficiency, bad teachers, inflated budget, and nasty DC politics in any amount of time.

On one hand, the DC school system needed someone as committed as her to do something for the kids.  On the other, the very DC politicians who brought her would not let her stay to do her job.

She is smart, witty, ambitious, and hard-core.  What's wrong with that?  She did not want to mix politics with the future of the kids.  But this is Washington, DC.  A city where politics supersedes everything else.  Even as critical and tender an issue as the future of the kids. 

On the eve of her departure, a report came out today in The Washington Post about how to improve DC Metro's school system.  It is an interesting and insightful study about economic integration as a tool to improve the performance of the students.  But this is just a study.  Policy decisions would come later.  Much later after Chancellor Rhee has left town.

Here's a link to this study:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/14/AR2010101407577_pf.html

Courtesy: The Washington Post

No comments:

Post a Comment