PUH-LEEEEEEEEZE
It’s about d*mn time people hit the streets in protest of the current state of education within the District of Columbia.
According to reports the major points of contention with protestors were (1) Lack of communication (2) unfair firing practices (3) disruption to the students educational service delivery and (4) the way it was handled.
Though it is agreed that all of the aforementioned are grievances that definitely need to be addressed, at no point did Chancellor Rhee talk to anyone face to face about anything. She continues to write email messages, post messages on the DCPS website, and send messages to the press using others to take the tomatoes to the face that are intended for she and Fenty. It’s hard to imagine that two years ago, TIME magazine felt it necessary to put Rhee on the cover of their publication.
Many chuckled at her audacity to boast as the HEAD of schools when in actuality there was an DC OFFICE OF THE STATE SUPERINTENDANT OF EDUCATION that got absolutely no recognition from the current administration nor Chancellor Rhee (who is in charge of the LOCAL system only) as the legal education administration office charged with overseeing Public schools and services. Rhee came in to her position with guns blazing. She came in without taking a moment to observe what worked and what didn’t. She asked no questions and moved according to the wishes of “divested” residents who did not experience the worst of the schools by any stretch of the imagination. She determined that purging the system of all of the “bad apples” would be the only way to get the school system back on track, but what she did instead was throw the baby out with the bathwater.
No Child Left Behind-federal law requires that all staff providing instruction directly to children and youth be certified in the subject area for which they are teaching. All schools across the nation were required to have such teachers in all schools by last year. Essentially, Chancellor Rhee is not even listening to the FEDERAL government regarding compliance to the law. People have a right to be angry about the total indignity both Rhee and Fenty have shown the citizens of the District of Columbia.
It was also quite contentious that no one used the opportunity to unearth the significant decrease in enrollment and the continued delapidated school environments with faulty wiring and antiquated everything. At the end of the day, the educators, who are charged with providing education to their students should have also used the forum to improve the academic conditions of not only themselves but of the students that they were originally hired to serve.
According to reliable sources, more protests are being planned.
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