Was Michelle Rhee’s Data Success at D.C. Schools the Result of Cheating?

Eager for Spotlight, but Not if It Is on a Testing Scandal

By MICHAEL WINERIP Published: August 21, 2011 nyTIMES

WASHINGTON — Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?

Michelle Rhee has refused to talk to USA Today reporters about a schools scandal.

Ms. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington public schools from 2007 to 2010, is the national symbol of the data-driven, take-no-prisoners education reform movement.

It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.

Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” John Merrow.

At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. “We were totally stunned,” Mr. Merrow said.

She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. “The principal seemed dazed,” said Mr. Merrow. “I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.”

And yet, as voracious as she is for the media spotlight, Ms. Rhee will not talk to USA Today.

Cheating on High-Stakes Tests: Michelle Rhee, have You No Shame?

When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?

By Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its “shining stars.”

Marvin Tucker raised questions about high test scores of daughter Marlana, right, now 16, that showed math proficiency despite her struggle with the basics when she attended D.C.’s Noyes.

Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes’ students scored “proficient” or “advanced” in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.

Because of the remarkable turnaround, the U.S. Department of Education named the school in northeast Washington a National Blue Ribbon School. Noyes was one of 264 public schools nationwide given that award in 2009.

Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes’ staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.

A closer look at Noyes, however, raises questions about its test scores from 2006 to 2010. Its proficiency rates rose at a much faster rate than the average for D.C. schools. Then, in 2010, when scores dipped for most of the district’s elementary schools, Noyes’ proficiency rates fell further than average.

Glaring Example of Rhee’s Reform

Private contractor failed Dunbar High’s students, D.C. says

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 14, 2010; 10:52 PM

More than two years after an outside contractor was hired to run one of the city’s most venerable schools, D.C. officials said Tuesday that Dunbar High remains plagued by a litany of troubles: Nearly half the senior class is not on track to graduate, more than 100 students are taking courses they’ve already passed and the campus is growing increasingly unsafe.

Interim Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson made those findings and others public to justify her decision last week to oust Friends of Bedford, the New York-based contractor that former chancellor Michelle A. Rhee retained to turn around the 822-student school.

“In general, the building seems to be in turmoil at all times,” Henderson wrote in a termination letter made public this week. “Well after the school day begins, many students are wandering around the building, strolling to class with absolutely no sense of urgency.”

While problems at Dunbar have festered for months, the situation has turned into an early test of how Henderson and Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray (D) will respond to school reform efforts that appear to go awry. On Tuesday, after a week of news describing disorder and disarray at the school several months into the academic year, Gray and Henderson joined Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) in an attempt to turn the page. They gathered at the school on New Jersey Avenue NW to unveil the design for a long-planned $100 million new Dunbar to open in fall 2013.

On Adrian Fenty on the Bill Maher Show

How Bill Maher got D.C. school reform wrong

Washington Post, November 6, 2010 By Valerie Strauss

The myth-making about the course of D.C. school reform and why Mayor Adrian Fenty was voted out of office in the nation’s capital continued last night, this time on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

Maher invited on as a special guest the ousted mayor, who has been busy writing his own political epitaph so that it sounds just the way he wants it.

He and his former schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, have recently co-authored some opinion pieces — The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have published them — presenting essentially this narrative:

They pushed excellent school reform in the District. They weren’t nice about it, but they were doing the right thing and helped the schools. It’s just that too many recalcitrant folks in the city didn’t want to go along, either because the work was too hard or because they had vested interests in a different agenda.

Last night Fenty said more of the same.

Bill, did you know that there is a big back story as to why Fenty’s lost and it wasn’t that people didn’t want to do the hard work of school reform?

Did you know that a lot of people in the city don’t think Fenty and Rhee were the saviors of the school system? That the rising test scores for which they claim credit were in large part a result of reforms put in place before they took over the schools? That Rhee instituted a teacher-evaluation system that doesn’t work as advertised?

Did you know that Fenty had won every district in the city four years ago but turned off his majority black constituents in part by appointing non-blacks to arguably the 10 most influential positions in the city besides the mayor?

Bill, you should have done a little more homework on this one.

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Rethinking Schools on Michelle Rhee

Proving Grounds • School “Rheeform” in Washington, D.C.

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Fall 2010By Leigh Dingerson

Washington, D.C., is leading the transformation of urban public education across the country—at least according to Time magazine, which featured D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee on its cover, wearing black and holding a broom. Or perhaps you read it in Newsweek or heard it from Oprah, who named Rhee to her “power list” of “remarkable visionaries.”

But there’s nothing remarkably visionary going on in Washington. The model of school reform that’s being implemented here is popping up around the country, heavily promoted by the same network of conservative think tanks and philanthropists like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton Family Foundation that has been driving the school reform debate for the past decade. It is reform based on the corporate practices of Wall Street, not on education research or theory. Indications so far are that, on top of the upheaval and distress Rhee leaves in her wake, the persistent racial gaps that plague D.C. student outcomes are only increasing.

Chancellor Rhee helicoptered into Washington in 2007 promising to change the culture of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Many cheered. But we weren’t counting on the new culture coming straight out of Goldman Sachs. Suddenly, decisions were being made at the top and carried out with atomic force. Parents have been treated like consumers—informed about options and outcomes but denied a seat at the table. The district’s teachers have been insulted in the national media, fired or laid off in record numbers, and replaced by less credentialed and less experienced newcomers. The model views teachers as a delivery system, not as professionals. High turnover is not just the result—it’s the goal. Principals, too, are isolated and expendable. The district lauds the educational mavericks—principals whose “crusades” are described as “relentless” and “methodical”—those who see themselves as an army of one. We are becoming a district where the frontline workers are demoralized, people are looking out for themselves, and trust is all but gone.

Quotes From Michelle Rhee

Michelle Rhee’s greatest hits

Washington Post-October 14, 2010 Valerie Strauss

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee gave us many reasons to remember her when she is gone.

There’s the schools she closed. The teachers she fired. The contract she signed with the Washington Teachers Union. Her frequent use of the word “crap.”

Here’s some quintessential statements that Rhee made as chancellor. Thanks for many of these to my colleague, Bill Turque, who often stood alone in his strong coverage of Rhee’s tenure.

I think my favorite is the one about taping students’ mouths shut.

Let me know what I’ve missed.

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“We will no longer describe failure as the result of vast impersonal forces like poverty or a broken bureaucracy.”
July 2007 confirmation hearing
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“My job is to hear all the input, and then as the leader, then decide which are the things that I think are going to move student achievement forward in this district. And I have to make those decisions. That doesn’t mean that I’m not listening. It just means I have to choose to take into consideration all of that input.”
During an interview with The Washington Post’s editorial board in January 2008
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“I’m a serial monogamist, not a job hopper,” she said in a June 2008 interview, adding that she was prepared to stay for two full terms of Mayor Adrian Fenty. That plan went awry when he lost last month in the Democratic primary to Vincent Gray, chairman of the D.C. Council.
–

Addressing teachers at an August 2008 back-to-school rally at the D.C. Convention Center, she said the following, referring to the closing of 23 schools that uprooted hundreds of teachers, buyouts and relentless pressure put on teachers to raise standardized test scores.

“I know I haven’t made your jobs easier this last year. I’ve heard all the rumors. ‘Rhee is trying to get rid of the veteran teachers. Rhee is trying to get rid of the black teachers.’ … I understand the anxiety.”

“What I need is for you to have trust, in me and in the school district. I know that trust doesn’t come overnight, and I have to earn that trust.”
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“I think if there is one thing I have learned over the last 15 months, it’s that cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated.”
September 2008 Aspen Institute’s education summit at the Mayflower Hotel

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“People often say to me the teachers unions are here to stay, that they are big players, that I have to find a way to get along. I actually disagree with that. It’s important for us to lay out on the table what we’re willing to do, but what our bottom line is for kids. The bottom line is that if you can’t come to agreement then you have to push your agenda in a different way, and we’re absolutely going to do that.”
September 2008 Aspen Institute’s education summit at the Mayflower Hotel

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“People tell me the unions are an inevitable part of this [school reform]. My thing is, what has that gotten us so far? All the collaboration and holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’?”
2008 round table at the Fordham Institute.

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“The reality in Washington D.C. is if you live in Tenleytown versus if you live in Anacostia, you get two wildly different educational experiences. It’s the biggest social injustice imaginable. What we are allowing to happen in this day and age, we are still allowing the color of a child’s skin and the Zip code they live in to dictate their educational outcome, and therefore their life outcome. … We are robbing them every single day of their futures. And everybody in this country should be infuriated by that.”
In a speech at a D.C. restaurant in May 2008

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“Korean people are not the most tactful. I grew up with Korean ladies who’d say, ‘Gee, you’ve put on some weight.’ It has for as long as I can remember driven me crazy when people beat around the bush instead of saying, ‘Look, I need you to do this.’ ”
Quoted in a Washington Post Magazine profile by Marc Fisher, September 2009

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Rhee was pictured on the cover of the Nov. 26, 2008, edition of Time magazine, holding a broom while standing in a classroom, a symbol of her determination to sweep out the old and bring in the new. From that cover story by Amanda Ripley:

Then she raises her chin and does what I come to recognize as her standard imitation of people she doesn’t respect. Sometimes she uses this voice to imitate teachers; other times, politicians or parents. Never students. “People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning,’ ” she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. “I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’ Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job.

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“I have talked with too many teachers to believe this is their fault. I know they are working furiously in a system that for many years has not appreciated them — sometimes not even paying them on time or providing textbooks. Those who categorically blame teachers for the failures of our system are simply wrong. “
Rhee wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post published Feb. 9, 2009.

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“I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?”
Feb. 9, 2010, to Fast Company magazine.

She sent a report to D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray in February 2010 saying that she had fired 10 D.C. teachers for administering corporal punishment and two for sexual misconduct since July 2007. This was different from an account she gave after the Fast Company interview, in which she said that five had been suspended for corporal punishment and one was under investigation for sexual misconduct.

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“When you cut our budget by $20 million, you didn’t call me to ask me if it was okay to cut summer school or not.”
Said to the D.C. Council on Oct. 29, 2009, in a hearing after she laid off 266 teachers Oct. 2, saying she had just discovered a $43.9 million shortfall in the 2010 budget. The panel was angry because it had cut the school budget $20.7 million July 31, 2009, as part of a citywide belt-tightening, but at the time, Rhee kept hiring new teachers. She actually hired more than 900 teachers in the spring and summer of 2009.

Then, last April, it became public that Rhee had found that there really was a $34 million surplus in the school system budget back in February. Why didn’t she reveal the surplus earlier? She said:

“We got this information very late in the game. The most important thing is for people to look forward.”

–

In August 2010, she offered two anecdotes to a group of new teachers, both of them describing her struggles 18 years ago as a fledgling second-grade teacher at Baltimore’s Harlem Park Elementary, which she said was “the worst and in many ways definitely the toughest year of my entire life.” Reported by Bill Turque on his D.C. Schools Insider blog.

The first:

Rhee said she had poor class-management skills, recalling that her class “was very well known in the school because you could hear them traveling anywhere because they were so out of control.”

On one particularly rowdy day, she said she decided to place little pieces of masking tape on their lips for the trip to the school cafeteria for lunch.

“OK kids, we’re going to do something special today!” she said she told them.

Rhee said it worked well until they actually arrived at the cafeteria. “I was like, ‘OK, take the tape off. I realized I had not told the kids to lick their lips beforehand. …The skin is coming off their lips and they’re bleeding. Thirty-five kids were crying.”

Later, Rhee tried to clarify in an e-mail, saying that the students’ mouths weren’t covered. “I was trying to express how difficult the first year of teaching can be with some humor. My hope is that our new teachers will bring great creativity and passion to their craft while also learning from my own challenges.”

The second:

This involved an after-school trip to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor that Rhee took with four students as a reward for good behavior.

As she drove them home, she asked where each of them lived. Three gave their addresses, but despite repeated attempts, the fourth would not respond. It was early evening and the school was locked, meaning she did not have access to their emergency contact information.

“I start to panic … my heart is beating 100 miles a minute,” she said. Then the other three children, sensing her worry, chimed in. She recalled one little boy saying:

“Lawwwd Ms. Rhee, whatchu gonna do!!!!??” Rhee boomed, drawing a big laugh. “Lawwwd Ms. Rhee, whatchu gonna do!!!!??”

Rhee said she eventually found a neighbor who was able to take the girl home.

Asked by Turque about what the teachers thought about her anecdotes, she said:

“The feedback that I got was positive and folks said my stories were humorous and helpful.”

You can listen to Rhee’s address to the teachers here.

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“Yesterday’s election results were devastating, devastating. … Not for me, because I’ll be fine, and not even for [Mayor Adrian] Fenty, because he’ll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C.”
Sept. 15, 2010, a day after Fenty lost the Democratic primary to Gray

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What Will Happen to Michelle Rhee’s “Reforms”?

Michelle Rhee will leave plenty of unfinished business in D.C.

By Bill Turque

Washington Post Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee often said that she viewed the overhaul of the D.C. public schools as a task that would stretch across two four-year mayoral terms and that she was prepared to see it through.

I’m a serial monogamist, not a job hopper,” she said over breakfast in June 2008, citing the 10 years she spent running the New Teacher Project, the nonprofit group she founded before coming to the District.

The defeat of Rhee’s political benefactor, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), abruptly curtailed that scenario. But embedded in planning documents, speeches and D.C. Council testimony is the unfinished business of the Fenty-Rhee era. Some of it remains obvious and beyond dispute.

Like Fenty and Rhee, presumptive mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray and interim chancellor Kaya Henderson want rising test scores, a narrowing achievement gap, improved teacher quality, expanding enrollment and higher graduation rates.

But some of the key strategies for reaching those goals are now in limbo. Whether Gray will allow Henderson – a top Rhee deputy – to pursue the unfinished business with complete fidelity remains to be seen.

Here are some key issues to watch:

Rhee Resigns

Michelle Rhee resigns as D.C. schools chancellor

By Tim Craig and Bill Turque Washington Post Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Presumptive mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray introduced Kaya Henderson on Wednesday as the interim chancellor of D.C. public schools and vowed that reforms launched under Michelle A. Rhee would continue when he takes office in January.

“We cannot and will not return to the days of incrementalism,” said Gray, who appeared at a mid-morning news conference with Rhee, Henderson and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who will formally appoint Henderson at Gray’s request. Gray, the D.C. Council chairman, beat Fenty in the Democratic primary election last month.

Gray also said that while he has “no intention of micromanaging DCPS,” he asked Henderson to keep the school system’s senior leadership in place until at least the end of the current school year. Henderson is regarded within the Gray camp as a potential permanent successor to Rhee.

The group took only a handful of questions from a hotel conference room packed with journalists, and neither Gray nor Rhee shed light on what they called a “mutual decision” to part ways.

In a prepared statement, Rhee said that leaving after nearly 31/2 turbulent years was “heartbreaking,” but she said Gray “deserves the opportunity to work toward his goal of ‘One City’ with a team that shares his vision, can keep progress going and help bridge the divide.”

“In short, we have agreed – together – that the best way to keep the reforms going is for this reformer to step aside.”

In brief remarks of her own, Henderson told reporters, “I’m excited about where we are, and I’m thrilled that the management team has agreed to stay on to continue this process.”

Rhee survived three contentious years that made her a superstar of the education reform movement and one of the longest-serving school leaders in the city in two decades. Student test scores rose, decades of enrollment decline stopped and the teachers union accepted a contract that gave the chancellor, in tandem with a rigorous new evaluation system, sweeping new powers to fire low-performing educators.

But Rhee will leave with considerable unfinished business in her quest to improve teaching, close the worst schools and infuse a culture of excellence in a system that has been one of the nation’s least effective at educating students.

Fenty, who opened the news conference and introduced the outgoing chancellor, praised Rhee for taking on what he called “the thankless job” of running D.C. schools. He said she had exceeded his highest expectations during her tumultuous tenure. “It’s not just the results all of you know so well … but it’s the excitement that she brought to the school system.”

Fenty also lauded Henderson, saying, “I have had the opportunity to work with her, and I have as much confidence in Kaya’s ability to run the school system as anyone who has ever known her.”

The move won immediate support from the Washington Teachers’ Union, which has long battled Rhee. “I think leaving sooner is better than later, so there will not be all this speculation,” said union head George Parker. “Making a decision will relieve the tension.”

Response to Superintendents’ Manifesto: The bankrupt ‘school reform manifesto’ of Rhee, Klein

The bankrupt ‘school reform manifesto’ of Rhee, Klein, etc.

By Valerie Strauss  | October 9, 2010

There are so many things wrong with the new “school reform manifesto” signed by 16 school district chiefs — including New York’s Joel Klein and Washington’s Michelle Rhee — and published in The Washington Post that it is hard to know where to start.

There’s the intellectual dishonesty and scapegoating: It starts by saying that everybody is responsible for improving schools but then proceeds to bash teachers, and doesn’t say a single thing about the responsibility of superintendents.

After eight years as the czar of New York City’s public schools, Klein might want to stop blaming other people for his failures.

There’s historical myopia: The document says kids are just sitting around waiting for adults to do something, without noting that adults have been pushing eight years for test-centric reform favored by many of these superintendents with disastrous results.

There’s misinformation:

As President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents’ income — it is the quality of their teacher.

Wrong. Research actually shows that the home life of students is the single biggest determinant of school achievement. School chiefs can ignore it all they want, but that doesn’t change the facts. (Of course this is no excuse for leaving lousy teachers in schools, but there is equally no excuse for ignoring outside factors and blaming good teachers for things beyond their control.)

The document, published in The Post’s Outlook section and available here, makes the same tired call for more charter schools, the end of teacher tenure, etc., etc. — all change initiatives guaranteed not to work.

We’ve heard it before, but, apparently, these superintendents felt the need to repeat it now, apparently to piggyback on the publicity of the wrong-headed education film “Waiting for Superman,” and the defeat in D.C.’s primary of Rhee’s political patron, Mayor Adrian Fenty.

The manifesto was initiated by Klein and Rhee, who gave it to Michael Casserly, executive director of the nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools. He then worked to persuade other schools bosses to sign on, according to a knowledgeable source.

The Washington-based council is a coalition of 65 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems and the only national organization exclusively representing the needs of these schools. Its mission, according to the Web site, is to promote the cause of urban schools and to advocate for inner-city students through legislation, research and media relations.

The organization also provides a network for school districts sharing common problems to exchange information, and to collectively address new challenges as they emerge in order to deliver the best possible education for urban youths.

Casserly, who has led the organization since 1992, is well-known in school reform circles, if not to the general public. I asked Casserly why he helped Klein win support for the document, and he responded by e-mail: “Part of the job.”

The document uses jargon that effectively calls for linking standardized test scores to teacher evaluation, a scheme that several recent studies concluded is ineffective in improving student achievement.

That doesn’t stop today’s reformers, who are obsessed with “data” and with using business practices to run schools, which are really civic institutions that should be operated on a civic model. Says the document:

“Let’s stop ignoring basic economic principles of supply and demand and focus on how we can establish a performance-driven culture in every American school.”

Um, don’t most businesses fail?

One of the signatories, Andres Alonso, the chief executive of the Baltimore City Public Schools, just signed an important agreement with the teachers union that calls for multiple measures to evaluate teachers, though this wasn’t acknowledged in the manifesto, leaving it a mystery as to why Alonso signed on.

You can read the rest of the nonsense here and come to your own conclusion.

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By Valerie Strauss  | October 9, 2010; 2:55 PM ET
Categories:  D.C. Schools, School turnarounds/reform | Tags:  baltimore contract, baltimore schools, council of great city schools, joel klein, klein and rhee, michael casserly, michelle rhee, reform document, reform manifesto, school manifesto, teachers, teachers and assessment, washington post

In Baltimore, proof that school reform can be collaborative and effective

In Baltimore, proof that school reform can be collaborative and effective

ROBERT McCARTNEY Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 7, 2010

Michelle A. Rhee vs. Randi Weingarten. Heroic schools reformer vs. obstructionist union boss. In much of the media and the public mind, the national debate over education has been oversimplified into a grudge match between those two strong-willed women.

It’s not the whole story, and it’s self-defeating to think it is. That black-and-white caricature about the choices in education – recently highlighted in the celebrated documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” and on Oprah Winfrey’s television show – confuses and undermines the discussion of how to fix urban schools.

To get a clearer picture, you need look no farther than an hour’s drive north in Baltimore. There, schools chief Andres Alonso has achieved substantial educational progress through ambitious reform efforts similar to Rhee’s – but without alienating teachers and parents.

Moreover, Weingarten, who as head of the American Federation of Teachers helped oversee more than two years of contentious negotiations with Rhee over the new D.C. teachers contract, has just agreed with Alonso on a groundbreaking proposed contract in Baltimore that in some ways goes further than the historic pact approved this year in Washington. That adds fresh evidence that Weingarten, despite being cast as the Wicked Witch neglecting students on behalf of greedy teachers, is open to moving reform forward.

The success in Baltimore is important partly because it forces us to think differently about what’s special about Rhee, just as she’s probably on her way out of office after the landslide election loss of her patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

Rhee’s many supporters have defended her confrontational approach to school reform by saying it was the only way to break through decades of resistance from entrenched interests, particularly in the teachers unions.

She fired teachers abruptly and on vague grounds? Rhee’s backers say it was necessary to get rid of bad instructors. Closed schools with only limited discussion in the community? No time to wait. Posed with a broom in a classroom for a Time magazine cover? Got to show we’re serious about this.

There’s some truth in that argument. In my view, Rhee’s most valuable and durable accomplishment has been as a public agitator who blew up complacency. She raised awareness of the urgent need to improve poor city schools and focused attention on the unions’ role in creating obstacles to change.

However, Baltimore’s experience demonstrates that Rhee’s tactics aren’t the only ones that yield results. Some experts say a more collaborative, low-profile strategy is more successful in the long run because it preserves trust and confidence with teachers and the community.

“What Baltimore shows is that you can bring real change to urban schools without a lot of acrimony,” said Jack Jennings, president of the independent Center on Education Policy. “The national foundations and some reform groups have made [Rhee] into a poster girl because they just want change, and she’s a highly vocal advocate for change. But others have brought about just as much change as she has, and I would guess that their reforms would last longer.”

Alonso, like Rhee, has fired teachers for unsatisfactory performance. But he’s been clear about the grounds, having principals take time to do it through the existing evaluations process. Alonso has also closed many schools with low enrollments but added other options, including new grade 6-12 schools run by external operators. He’s improved communications with the city by expanding the office of community engagement.

Since Alonso took over as chief executive of Baltimore City Public Schools three years ago, test scores and enrollment are up, and dropout rates are down.