September 2010 Archives

[UPDATE: Mrs. Bush announced details of the new principal-training initiative this morning. For the full story, read my article here.]

Former first lady Laura W. Bush is set to announce a new nationwide initiative today aimed at changing the way America's principals are recruited and prepared—and how they run schools.

The announcement, to be made at a high school in Dallas, marks the first major effort of the George W. Bush Institute, based at Southern Methodist University.

The Bush Institute has an admittedly ambitious goal: By 2020, it hopes to have certified or otherwise influenced the preparation of 50,000 K-12 principals, or half the nation's principal ranks.

In the first year, an estimated 200 aspiring principals will take part in the programs across the country, with plans to build up, said James W. Guthrie, a senior fellow and director of education policy studies for the Bush Institute. The initial cities committed to the initiative are Dallas: Fort Worth, Texas; Indianapolis; St. Louis; Denver; and Plano, Texas. Other cities and participating organizations will be announced later.

The initiative, called the Alliance to Reform Education Leadership, includes partnerships with business schools and with nontraditional providers, such as Teach For America and New Leaders for New Schools, as part of the Institute's goal to "augment the pipeline" of people pursuing the principalship, Guthrie said.

One example is already underway at Indianapolis' Marian University, where the initiative is working with the college of education. The Marian University Academy for Teaching and Learning Leadership has recruited 31 members for its inaugural cohort, not only educators who have come through traditional programs, but some who were trained via Teach For America and career-changers from the business field.

The certification program will include an emphasis on systems thinking and viewing leadership as responsive service, rather than a power mechanism. The goal of the Marian program is to produce 500 school leaders over the next five years, initially for Indiana and the Great Lakes region, but eventually perhaps nationally.

The alliance between business schools and education leaders is not without precedent. Harvard University has run its Public Education Leadership Project through a partnership between the Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education for many years, and the university launched a new education leadership doctorate this fall that gives students cross-disciplinary training from the business and education schools, as well as Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, which focuses on public policy and service.

The Bush Institute will serve as a convener of the various consortia and make available modules of education leadership content to help fill in the gaps the business school partners may have. It also will establish a board of examiners that will make a set of standards to help evaluate the candidates in the various sites.

Each principal-preparation program will look somewhat different, but that is by design, Mr. Guthrie said, providing a laboratory upon which to study the institute's principles.

"I don't think we know enough to prescribe," he said. "We're letting 10,000 flowers bloom and we will evaluate, evaluate, evaluate and see what works."

I'm in Dallas now and I'll have more details and reaction to the plan after the announcement.

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The spotlight continues to burn brightly on suspected cheating in the Atlanta public school system. Over the weekend, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper reported that federal authorities are looking into whether fraud was committed when test scores were improperly boosted.

The district told the AJC it hasn't received any formal requests for information yet.

News of a potential federal investigation comes on the heels of an announcement last month by Gov. Sonny Perdue that he was appointing his own special investigators to look into the test-score cheating allegations in Atlanta and in Dougherty County, which includes Albany.

The paper's education columnist, Marueen Downey, writes that she's skeptical the pair of investigations will produce much, especially in the way of information from elementary school children about an exam they took 18 months ago.

I still wonder if either investigation will produce any significant results. The success of both probes depends on the willingness of employees at suspect schools to either confess or turn in their colleagues. And the latter could only happen if teachers or administrators witnessed cheating or were told about it later. It would not be enough to maintain that cheating must have happened because the test scores were too high.

A report released in August from an Atlanta schools-commissioned group found there was reason to look at serious disciplinary action against more than 100 Atlanta teachers and principals. The report found widespread testing irregularities in 12 schools, and Superintendent Beverly Hall removed those principals just before the school year started.

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An unlikely trio—a Democratic mayor, a Republican governor and an Internet phenom—have teamed up in an effort to make an equally unlikely city a national focus of education reform, and they hope, educational excellence.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive officer of Facebook, have launched an effort to change the long-beleaguered Newark school district.

The big announcement will air on The Oprah Winfrey Show today, but the trio got on the horn with more than 200 reporters a short while ago to share their hopes for this effort, which may soon bring $200 million over five years for Newark schools.

"We believe our city can lead the nation in showing what a district and community can do when it pulls together and puts our children at the center of our community focus," Booker said.

Forbes magazine this week estimated the 26-year-old social-media network founder is worth $6.9 billion.

Zuckerberg's true worth is hard to know—Facebook remains a private company despite many entreaties from conglomerates seeking to purchase it. The value, Forbes said, comes from the investment companies have made in Facebook in the past year in return for shares of ownership.

Zuckerberg's donation is through the auspices of a new foundation he's launched, Startup: Education, which he funded with $100 million of his own Facebook stock. The stock will be sold and liquefied to raise the funds for Startup: Education.

The goal, he said, is to give Booker and Christie the flexibility and resources they need to start new programs and build to scale existing ones with potential. Zuckerberg said he placed no restrictions on what the money could be used for, nor conditions on the types of reforms to be pursued.

While he likes the work of organizations like Teach For America and KIPP, the Facebook founder said he wanted to invest in a school district because it would be the place that could potentially be the largest lever for change. Newark, he said, "is a place ready for real reform that has great leaders."

"I am really committed to making sure this works in Newark. I think we are going to learn a lot from seeing how this evolves," he said.

Separately, Mayor Booker has created the Newark Education and Youth Development fund, a vehicle for raising $100 million to match Zuckerberg's funds, as well as a separate $50 million for another youth effort.

Booker is no stranger to education reform. He led an effort that brought a $20 million charter school fund to the city and made Newark one of the most fertile grounds in the country for charters.

Joseph Del Grosso, President of the Newark Teachers Union, and Randi Weingarten, President of the parent American Federation of Teachers, released their own response to today's news. It includes a theme familiar to anyone who has ever heard Weingarten speak: collaboration.

"To make the most of this opportunity, all of us have to work together, put aside our differences and get behind a shared vision of what Newark's students need to succeed in college, life and careers," they wrote. "The voices of frontline educators need to be respected and valued at every stage, especially when translating broad concepts into lesson plans, teaching methods, school conditions and resources that will affect students and teachers every day, in every classroom in every Newark school."

Christie and Booker will jointly choose the next Newark superintendent. Booker has long sought mayoral control of schools, which have been state-run for the past 15 years. The governor still has authority over the schools, but has brokered a deal with Booker in lieu of the two pursuing a change to state laws to give the Newark mayor direct control of schools.

Christie said they will pick a new leader within a few months and that he and Booker, both with three-and-a-half years left in their terms, will need to demonstrate results in that time. Christie announced last month that he was not renewing the contract of Clifford B. Janey, who is in his third year as the superintendent there.

Skeptics have noted today's big announcement comes as a less-than-flattering portrayal of Zuckberberg, Adam Sorkin's "The Social Network," opens today at the New York Film Festival and hits theaters Oct. 1. (Check out this must-read Zuckerberg profile by Jose Antonio Vargas in The New Yorker to learn more about the young Internet phenom.)

Zuckerberg said he was so concerned the two events would get conflated together that at one point he considered making the donation anonymously. Booker confirmed this, saying he lobbied hard against anonymity, noting it would make Newark residents skeptical and that many are already connected with Zuckerberg because they use Facebook every day.

What's next? Booker said he would begin community discussions to help craft a plan for Newark's schools that has buy-in and is based on the standards and aspirations of Brick City residents, noting that Newark's most successful efforts come from grassroots support.

"This has to be a process of inclusion. This is the fundamental starting pillar," the mayor said. "No individual can succeed. We must turn to the community. We must come together and assert our community standards values and principles for achievement."

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A new report out this morning on graduation rates at New York City high schools finds that a student's 8th grade attendance rate was the strongest predictor of whether that student would later graduate with his or her peers.

The report, released today by the New York City-based Campaign for Fiscal Equity, also found that students who are English-language learners, overage for their grade, had physical or learning disabilities, or scored poorly on 8th grade reading and mathematics exams were also less likely to graduate.

These students sometimes were clumped together in schools. The report notes, for instance, that 30 schools enrolling fewer than 10 percent of first-time 9th graders in 2004 attracted more than half of the students scoring at the lowest levels on state tests.

"Our report calls for an intensive concentration of resources on pre-high school remediation and on policy reform to reduce absenteeism and provide better school opportunities to students with academic challenges," CFE Executive Director Geri Palast said in a release.

"Absent meaningful change, it's conceivable that within a few years, New York City will have a school system in which the majority of students—and the overwhelming number of those who are disadvantaged—have, not just poor test scores, but no high school diploma and reduced life prospects," she continued.

One of the group's recommendations is that more funds be directed toward those elementary and middle schools with the highest concentrations of disadvantaged students. CFE is perhaps best known for winning a landmark lawsuit arguing that New York state chronically and unconstitutionally underfunded city schools.

The report also recommends a recalibration of the school-accountability system to put a higher focus on attendance and the expansion of "educational option" schools, a type of alternative school the district launched in the 1980s that CFE believes would provide more challenge for high- and low-achieving students alike.

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While D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has been enjoying a post-election vacation the past two days, a comment she made the day after her boss, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty lost a bid for a second term, has gained much traction, even causing some of her supporters to scold her.

As I wrote in my story about Rhee's tenure we posted this morning:

The question is whether Ms. Rhee will stay and finish that work. The chancellor said she will confer with Mr. Fenty and Mr. Gray before making a decision, a meeting expected to happen this week.

But at the Washington premiere of the new education documentary "Waiting For 'Superman,'" Ms. Rhee suggested she's heading for the door.

"Yesterday's election results were devastating, devastating," she told the crowd during a panel discussion after the film was shown, according to The Washington Post. "Not for me, because I'll be fine, and not even for [Mr.] Fenty, because he'll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C."

The chancellor apparently was concerned enough about that quote, especially after it landed on The Washington Post's front page this morning, to send in a note just under an hour ago clarifying her remarks.

This week I used the word "devastating" to describe the potential effects of the D.C. mayoral election [front page, Sept. 17]. I want to be very clear: In using this word I was not criticizing D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray. I was describing the perception by some that this election had been a referendum on reform of the D.C. schools itself. If the results were to be read as a repudiation of reform, that indeed would be devastating for D.C. children, for the city and for children throughout the country who are so dependent on successful school reform efforts.

Rhee had much more to say about the election, what she's working on this school year in D.C. schools and lessons learned while leading the school district in my interview with her on Wednesday afternoon. Listen to the chancellor in her own voice in the video below.

In other D.C. education-related news, Kerri Briggs, resigned this morning from her post as D.C.'s state superintendent of education. Briggs, like Rhee, was an appointee of the mayor.

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In the wake of District of Columbia Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's Democratic primary loss this morning, a significant slice of the endless punditry and chatter in the blogosphere has focused on the role Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee played in the election and what her future holds.

But Rhee says she and the mayor have no regrets about the pace of reform they undertook in trying to fix one of the nation's worst-performing school districts upon her arrival in June 2007.

"What a lot of people were thinking was it was too much or too fast or something like that," Rhee said. "But I think we can rest soundly at night knowing that we really believed that that sense of urgency was necessary. We didn't want to wait another day knowing that another D.C. child was not getting the education they deserve so it was only the best intentions we had in terms of the pace of reform."

The chancellor said she's enormously grateful to Fenty, who lost the primary election to Vincent Gray, the city council chairman, for being true to his word to stand with her in every decision she made, no matter how high the cost.

"He told me he was willing to risk his entire political career to make the schools better and that's exactly what has happened," Rhee said. "I had the good fortune of communicating with him yesterday about this and he said 'I don't think that I will ever do anything as important as what we have done over the last three years in improving the schools and I have no regrets.' That was just touching for me to know from his vantage point, even knowing in many ways it cost him this re-election, we did the right things for kids."

I sat down this afternoon to talk with the education world's most sought-after woman to talk about her three-and-a-half year tenure at the helm of D.C.'s schools and what the future may hold.

Rhee says she's made no decision about whether to stay or go, and would talk more about her future with Fenty and Gray when she returns from a long-planned vacation with her fiancee, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

"I'm confident that we'll be able to decide on a path forward that's in the best interest of this school district," she said.

You can read, and see more of my interview with Rhee on edweek.org and in the next edition of Education Week, including what she sees as the markers of change in D.C. schools over the past three years, how having the resources of an entire city government has helped her make changes, and what she's learned about communicating.

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The future of District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is uncertain after her boss, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, lost yesterday's Democratic primary to challenger Vincent C. Gray, the D.C. Council chairman.

Delays caused by the use of new voting machines and procedures meant the election picture did not become clear until the wee hours of the morning. Because D.C. is heavily Democratic, and there is no Republican mayoral candidate, Gray's primary win essentially assures him victory in November's general election.

Before the voting was over Tuesday, CNN's John King asked Gray if he would keep Rhee on if he became mayor, a question Gray has studiously avoided answering in any direct fashion over the past six months. His answer to King: We'll see.

For her part, Rhee, who campaigned for Fenty in her capacity as a private citizen, has strongly hinted in the past that she would not work for Gray, but she has not ruled it out.

The American Federation of Teachers, whose local affiliate, the Washington Teachers' Union, endorsed Gray, wasted no time in issuing a statement congratulating him.

"The AFT is confident Vincent Gray will bring a culture of positive, sustainable progress to City Hall, through leadership, hard work, a willingness to listen and engage, and a commitment to ensuring that parents, community members, and elected leaders are all rowing in the same direction," AFT President Randi Weingarten said.

Robert McCartney, a Washington Post columnist, says Gray should find a way to get Rhee to stay.

"He ought to try to have her stay," McCartney wrote. "That would infuriate many of his supporters, so he needs to move slowly. It also might be an impossible quest, because it's not at all clear that Rhee is willing to even consider working for Gray. In his victory speech early Wednesday, Gray hinted Rhee might be replaced.

"But keeping her would be the right thing to do for the city, its students, education reform, and Gray and Rhee themselves."

Keeping Rhee as chancellor, McCartney said, means Gray would be living up to the vision of his "One City" campaign, and Rhee would live up to her mantra of putting the interests of kids above those of adults.

As I have written over the course of this year, Rhee has played a significant role in some Washingtonians' decisions on whether to vote for or against Fenty, but his loss comes primarily at the hands of citizens who said in several polls over the past year that they enjoyed the improvements in education, crime reduction and economic development during the Fenty administration, but found the mayor to be arrogant and unwilling to listen.

So what's next for D.C. Public Schools? We plan to bring you answers from some of the players involved this afternoon, so stay tuned. And in the next edition of Education Week, we'll take a look at what's happened in D.C. since Rhee took over in June 2007, with thoughts on this progress and perils from a cast of characters that includes the chancellor herself.

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Adrian M. Fenty's bid for for a second term as the District of Columbia's mayor is now down to the final hours as voters head to the polls today to decide between him and challenger Vincent Gray, who is the city council chairman.

The race has been closely followed nationwide for reasons more than familiar to regular readers: Fenty is the boss of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, whose ability to inspire both adoration and enmity among voters has played a significant role in this contest.

A poll released earlier this month by The Washington Post shows that while 41 percent of registered Democrats see her as a reason to vote for Fenty in today's primary, 40 percent say she is a reason to vote against the mayor.

And as our Stephen Sawchuk recently wrote, the outcome of this race could have major implications on teacher policy. Rhee has created a teacher evaluation system and negotiated a teacher contract that are both widely seen as models for other "reform"-minded school districts to adopt.

Fenty received the endorsement last week of Democrats for Education Reform.

"Mayor Fenty pledged to make the tough choices that would benefit students, even if those choices weren't popular with powerful special interests—and he's done just that," said Joe Williams, DFER's executive director, in a statement. "Now those same special interests are desperate to roll back reforms and have lined up behind Mayor Fenty's opponent. That support will compromise Mr. Gray's education agenda to the point that the reforms that took so long to accomplish will start evaporating the moment he takes office."

One endorsement the mayor did not receive was that of President Barack Obama. Jon Ward of the Daily Caller says the president missed a major opportunity in not giving his vote of confidence to Fenty because of his willingness to stand up for many of the education reform principles the Obama administration favors.

The Fenty campaign, which has trailed Gray in recent weeks, is playing hardball down to the wire, even saying yesterday that D.C. could lose its $75 million in Race to the Top funds if the Fenty-Rhee reform plans are changed.

Fenty himself cited some of the tough changes he and Rhee have made as a reason some voters are angry with him in a recent interview with the DCist, a local publication.

"The thing that has caused us to have an uphill battle more than anything is that we closed 27 schools, or that we fired half the central administration, that we made employees at-will, that we went against the taxicab drivers, we went against the unions and fired employees when they were doing wrong, and on and on it goes. This city isn't completely used to that yet," he said.

Gray has been endorsed by the Washington Teachers' Union, which has sparred with Rhee regularly over the past three years, and is regularly praised in ads paid for by the American Federation of Teachers' political arm saying he's the right choice.

"The WTU strongly believes that Vincent Gray's lifelong dedication to children, the community and most importantly, education make him an excellent candidate for Mayor," the union wrote in an endorsement posted on its website. "In addition, his passion and commitment to students and teachers in the District has had a positive impact on the community, especially his advocacy in support of early childhood education."

Gray's education plans, like Fenty's, call education D.C.'s No. 1 priority and call for the continuance of mayoral control but he's refused to say whether he would keep Rhee if he becomes mayor.

What will happen if Fenty were to lose today? Despite the endless prognostication across the blogosphere for the past few months (including what Rhee calls the sexist assumptions she's going to decamp to California to join fiancee Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson), the reality is no one knows for certain.

Win or lose, change is likely in some form.

[UPDATE 2 p.m.: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave Rhee's work his own endorsement this afternoon when asked by White House reporters if the chancellor would survive a Fenty loss. Duncan said he wasn't sure what would happen, but that the progress made was a reason D.C. was a Race to the Top winner last month.

"What I do know is that D.C. has made tremendous progress educationally over the past three years," the secretary said. " D.C. was a school system that was, frankly, historically a disgrace to the country, and it was amazing to me that the nation's capital school system was allowed to languish for so long and students were allowed to suffer for so long. And by any measure, by every measure, D.C. has made real and substantive progress."]

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A new proposal may clear the way for some New Orleans schools to return to local control, rather than spend another five years in the state's recovery school district.

Louisiana's superintendent, Paul Pastorek, will make the recommendation to the state's board of elementary of secondary and elementary education tomorrow, reports The Times-Picayune newspaper.

Pastorek told The Times-Picayune that schools that show consistent academic improvement would be eligible to leave state control and return to local control after gaining community input.

The proposal is anything but a done deal. The board will vote on it in December, but before then, it has to hold at least one hearing in New Orleans. And while many in New Orleans want to see local control return at some point, there's widespread disagreement about what it should look like. The old school district and its board are best known for poor fiscal management, allegations of corruption and failing schools.

New Orleans's schools have spent the past five years under state control since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in August 2005. For more on how education has changed there in the past five years, I commend to you the series my colleagues wrote on five-year anniversary.

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President Obama will address America's schoolchildren in his second back-to school speech Tuesday in Philadelphia.

The president's address will be given at 1 p.m. EST at Julia R. Masterman School, a middle and high school magnet in Philadelphia. The public school, which has ranked No. 45 on U.S. News and World Report's list of top high schools, boasts of sending 93 percent of its students on to college, according to Rita Giordano of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It serves students in grades 5 to 12, including the mayor's daughter.

The White House and the U.S. Department of Education have been notably silent this year on the details, no doubt trying to avoid the massive furor that erupted last year, which caused a political drama that went on for nearly two weeks. The debate over Obama's speech rose to such a level that even former first lady Laura Bush was compelled to publicly defend him.

Last night's announcement, coming after days of inquiries from education reporters across the country, gave no details on what Obama plans to say, but it is likely he will emphasize personal responsibility and the importance of graduating high school, as he did in last year's address.

School districts found themselves scrambling to figure out how to deal with the controversy, as some parents called demanding the school not show the speech, while others demanded everyone should see the address.

With very late notice this year, districts find themselves with an even shorter window to prepare and make accommodations. Arlene Ackerman, Philadelphia's superintendent, told the Inquirer she got the call just yesterday that Masterman would host the president's speech.

The Katy, Texas, school district has an opt-out form for concerned parents and the Houston Chronicle reports most districts in its area are leaving it up to principals to decide whether the speech will be shown or not. In a number of cases last year, schools decided to tape the speech and show it later on as part of a lesson for students.

The president's speech will be streamed live on the White House website and likely by several broadcast outlets so students can watch live (Obama didn't take Jay Mathews' advice not to speak midday.)

If you need a refresher, here's Obama's back-to-school speech from last year:

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Richard M. Daley, who has served as Chicago's mayor for 21 years, announced Tuesday he will not run for re-election in 2011.

The announcement was widely viewed as a surprise among political observers. Daley has not only had an outsize influence on America's politics, but also its education system.

For the majority of his term as mayor, Daley has also had control of the nation's third-largest school district. The Illinois legislature granted him the power to appoint the district's chief executive officer in 1995 (he already had some control over its school board from a 1989 reform law) and he appointed a team later that summer.

Daley's leadership of the school district has been both praised and panned. One of his signature initiatives, Renaissance 2010, which closed low-performing schools and opened new charter and contract schools across the city, has been the subject of increased criticism from those who say the district's school closings and transformation plans have stoked neighborhood tensions.

His first two school leaders, Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan, went on to become national education figures in their own right: Vallas as the leader of Philadelphia schools and then New Orleans' post-Hurricane Katrina school system and Duncan as President Barack Obama's education secretary.

Chicago-style school reform has loomed large in Obama administration policy, but reports continue to show a mixed bag of results for those reforms. The plague of school violence against school-aged Chicagoans prompted presidential attention.

For more on the history of Chicago school reform, check out this handy timeline from Catalyst Chicago.

Who will take Daley's place? The political universe is waiting to see if Chicagoan and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will run. He's expressed interest in the job in the past.

What will Daley's impending retirement mean for the city's schools? Too early to tell, but you know we'll be watching.

[UPDATE (5:29 p.m.): A pair of retrospectives on Daley's schools legacy with differing opinions.

RiShawn Biddle of Dropout Nation says Daley, whose record includes successes and failures, helped reshape the conversation about what must be done to improve urban education and forced other mayors to take a larger role in education.

Meanwhile, Chicagoan Mike Klonsky wishes the veteran mayor good riddance, saying the mayor turned the school district into yet another avenue for patronage and top-down policies.]

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The Denver public school district received some welcome news about its complicated pension debt arrangement, which became 11th-hour campaign fodder last month in Sen. Michael Bennet's successful bid to keep the seat he was appointed to.

The Denver Post's Jeremy Meyer reports that the nation's two top credit-rating agencies gave a favorable nod to the complex deal, saying it is stable.

The district's finances ended up as part of the former superintendent Bennet's campaign after The New York Times ran a front-page story on the financial transaction, which created derivative-backed certificates with a promise of lower rates for debt repayment and the potential to earn hundreds of millions more for the district.

The viability of that deal came into doubt after the stock market crashed, but Tom Boasberg, the district's superintendent, has said the deal should ultimately save the district money going forward.

"It's a very strong statement from both rating agencies that demonstrates the financial strength and stability of the district and should put to rest the political mudslinging we have been seeing in the Senate campaign and the erroneous information contained in last month's New York Times article," Boasberg told Meyer.

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With less than two weeks before District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty's fate is decided by voters, it is clear that for many, another person is a strong factor in voting for or against a second Fenty term: Michelle Rhee.

A new poll released this week by The Washington Post shows that while 41 percent of registered Democrats see her as a reason to vote for Fenty in the Sept. 14 primary, 40 percent say she is a reason to vote against the mayor.

The hand-picked school chancellor has made friends and enemies across the city with her aggressive approach over the last three years to fixing one of the nation's long-floundering school districts.

Since Rhee took the helm in 2007, the 45,000-student school district has shed dozens of central office employees, closed decrepit and failing schools and seen modest improvement on local and national standardized tests, moves that have won her fans around the nation.

But her personality and fast-moving approach have earned her the enmity of many teachers and longtime civic leaders.

"We've always known that the aggressive reforms we have pursued would stir opposition," Rhee told The Post. "The fact that people are saying that what we're doing is more of a reason to vote for the mayor than not shows that many people see the progress we're making."
This election year has been a rocky one for the Fenty-Rhee team. As early as January, public polls indicated the duo's popularity was on the decline. A poll released that month by The Post showed even though D.C. residents believed the schools had made progress and that teacher quality had improved, their opinion of Rhee herself had declined.

The relationship between the chancellor and the teaching force became even more strained this winter, after Rhee took several days to explain comments she made to a business magazine that inferred several of the 266 teachers she dismissed last fall had physically and sexually abused students. In the end, just one of those teachers was being investigated for sexual misconduct, and was not in a classroom at the time of the layoffs.

Rhee and Fenty won a clear victory this spring when the district brokered a long-awaited agreement with the teachers' union on a much-watched teachers' contract some national observers say could become a model for how teachers are compensated in other cities. Teachers approved the contract by a wide margin in June, and after numerous delays and intra-administration fighting, the contract was cleared for approval by the city council.

The mayor's political troubles, to be sure, are not all related to Rhee. City residents give him credit for improving education and other parts of the city, but have said he is arrogant and unwilling to listen to divergent views. That has given his challenger, Vincent Gray, the city council chairman, a lead in most recent polls. Fenty has taken to going to some key voters to personally apologize to help boost his fortunes.

Whatever the result on Sept. 14, it will likely have implications for D.C. education going forward. We'll keep you posted.
[
UPDATE (6:18 p.m.): Gray and Fenty debated today, and Bill Turque of The Washington Post has a fact-check on their claims up on his blog. ]

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