"I'm not used to seeing good ideas coming out of Prince George's County, Md., the most troublesome of the Washington area's suburban school districts. When superintendent John Deasy, a very creative educator, left Prince George's last year for the big bucks and power of the Gates Foundation, the district's reputation took another blow. But my colleague Nelson Hernandez reveals that Deasy left behind him a remarkably clever plan for teacher and principal bonuses, something those of us uncertain about this latest hot fad should be watching carefully for the next few years.
Deasy's chosen successor, Bill Hite, has preserved the FIRST (Financial Incentive Rewards for Supervisors and Teachers) plan and announced the initial round of $1.1 million in bonuses. The money went to 279 employees in 12 schools, the teacher bonuses averaging around $5,000 each."
Would suburban parents send their kids to D.C. schools?
[This is my Local Living section column for Dec. 3, 2009]
A leader in the national effort to raise the achievement of low-income children once told me how she became, to her amused surprise, one of those rare suburban Washington parents who pay tuition to send their children to D.C. public schools.
She grew up in a white, blue-collar family far from Washington. Her children attended economically diverse schools, but when she got a big job in D.C. the people at her new office, despite their shared commitment to improving urban education, told her she would be nuts to put her kids in the D.C. system. Uncertain what to do in a strange new city, she bowed to this unanimous view and bought a house in Montgomery County, never anticipating what happened next.
One of her children didn’t like the Maryland schools. She dreamed of life on the stage and wanted to attend the Duke Ellington School of the Arts on R Street NW. This parent had raised her children to care about the nation’s ethnic and social divisions. She couldn’t say no to her daughter attending a well-regarded public school that happened to have a large number of disadvantaged students, even if it was going to cost her $10,000 a year.
