Four Years On, Checking in With Rhee’s DC ‘Army of Believers’–like her, they’ve failed
Written by Julia Lawrence for Education News. Read the entire article here.
“During Michelle Rhee’s tenure as the head of the Washington D.C. public school system, she presided over a wide-ranging staffing overhaul that saw over a third of the district’s principals and administrators fired and replaced. Rhee’s 2008 recruits were called “an army of believers” by a the non-profit New Leaders for New Schools. It has been four years since that revolutionary event, and The Washington Post’s Bill Turque checks in to find out what happened to the the army since then.
The news, it turns out, isn’t great. It isn’t really a surprise since the new hires were often placed at the most difficult and struggling schools in the city, and those are notorious for extensive staff churn. Still, the attrition rate is high, even when that factor is taken into account. Turque estimates that nearly 60% of people who were hired by Rhee in 2008 are now either out of the district entirely or are in positions different from where they began.“
“During Michelle Rhee’s tenure as the head of the Washington D.C. public school system, she presided over a wide-ranging staffing overhaul that saw over a third of the district’s principals and administrators fired and replaced. Rhee’s 2008 recruits were called “an army of believers” by a the non-profit New Leaders for New Schools. It has been four years since that revolutionary event, and The Washington Post’s Bill Turque checks in to find out what happened to the the army since then.
The news, it turns out, isn’t great. It isn’t really a surprise since the new hires were often placed at the most difficult and struggling schools in the city, and those are notorious for extensive staff churn. Still, the attrition rate is high, even when that factor is taken into account. Turque estimates that nearly 60% of people who were hired by Rhee in 2008 are now either out of the district entirely or are in positions different from where they began.“
