<p>This is typical in politics, it highlights one of the big problems with jobs controlled by political appointment, people claim to want something, get it, and then are angry when things change they don’t want to change. Without going specifically into the Rhee issue per se, since I don’t know enough about it, this is typical of what has been going on a long, long time.</p>
<p>A century ago Lincoln Steffens wrote about “reform administrations” brought in to ‘clean things up’ when corruption and the like got people angry enough to ‘throw the bums out’ and do things the right way (i.e jobs done through civil service, not political hacks, end the graft and giving out city services to reward backers and so forth)…and what happened time and again? The reformers either became corrupt themselves, or were thrown out of office…and why? Because the people ‘disgusted with corruption and mismanagement’ often didn’t really want reform, they wanted to be on the ‘inside’ on the corruption, but were outside, and wanted to try and ‘get theirs’. Other found the cost of reform was high to them, that suddenly the payoffs in the form of things as simple as a load of coal in the winter or ‘pocket money’ from the local political clubhouse disappeared. It is what is happening here in NJ, where the governor ran on a platform of slashing state spending and cutting taxes…and people are realizing there is a cost to do that, they discovered that slashing spending affected them, too, something they may not have thought about (one school district near me cut back their sports programs and AP programs, because of a loss of state aid,and also the school budget had been slashed because of anti spending fever, and people were up in arms; meanwhile people in that district strongly supported the governor and were all for cutting taxes and such…). I suspect the same is going to happen with all the candidates talking about radically cutting spending and taxes, people may not like the cost of that when it hits home.</p>
<p>Education is especially subject to this. NYC Public schools outside some specialized programs have the same problem other inner city areas have, students from bad backgrounds, budget constraints, and issues with incompetent teachers. The city also had a bloated board of education, and the schools were run by local community boards that people hotly contested were ‘local control of schools’. The schools were a mess, and corruption was rampant, and a lot of money was not getting into the classroom. So they pushed through reforms, put the schools under the control of the Mayors office and chancellor, got rid of the local boards (replaced them with some sort of school committees involving local people) so that hiring and firing and accountability were standardized…and what happened? Despite not being happy with the status quo, many complained that this was ‘ignoring the local people’ (a term I see with the Rhee situation bandied about), and so forth; and what was this about? patronage hiring of administrators, aides and so forth, basically the local boards were patronage mills, often hiring people who were unqualified, incompetent, and in many cases gross corruption, including boards getting paid by people seeking jobs. And there was outright graft, money meant for programs paying for ‘seminars’ in resort locations for board members, and in many cases downright theft…but because people saw that as a benefit to local people, they didn’t want it abolished, they saw that as a right of theirs, despite the fact that people in the community were angry that the schools stank to high heaven. </p>
<p>From the little i have read about the DC situation, it seems like part of the anger against Rhee was in fact that, as someone pointed out, people were upset when firing supposedly incompetent teachers meant seeing more then a few local people let go who weren’t performing under the way Rhee was governing (and I suspect this is going to happen going forward all over the place, with government jobs, that a lot of people assume there is this massive waste in government that if they just cut that, we can cut taxes and spending and not fire your next door neighbor or cousin or whoever, doesn’t work like that).</p>
<p>Rhee also was the victim of organized political activity by the UFT on a national scale. I know of Randi Wiengarten pretty well, and despite claims of wanting reform and such, I also know she is a bare knuckles fighter for the teachers unions and their prerogatives, I saw what she did in NYC, and like many political bosses of all kinds, they fight that way, this election was most definitely helped by the UFT wanting to get rid of Rhee. </p>
<p>I don’t know if Rhee is a saint, but I do know that the DC schools are a mess, that they are for the most part prototypes of poor public schools, and if with the new administration I see reverting back to form,incompetent teachers and administrators basically almost impossible to fire, reforms at best token efforts to appease people, the people are going to find the cost to that. And the question here is, by at least in their view saving the jobs of their neighbors and friends, if they potentially are sacrificing the future of their kids to keep those jobs, is it worth it? And what happens to the kids, when because of failing schools they have little hope for the kind of jobs that can keep them in the middle class. One of the truths in cities is that the African American middle class are heavily invested in government/civil service jobs, and given the larger trend that seem to be happening out there, those jobs may not be readily available to their kids…and what happens without a good education?</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how this plays out, i suspect that in DC they will appoint a chancellor “committed to change” but doing it ‘listening to the people’, and what you will see are some token reforms the unions and others are willing to give up as sacrificial lambs to ‘improvement’, but when you look at results (assuming they don’t water down the tests and otherwise game the results, as many school districts have done), I suspect you will see little change there. This has happened many other places, and even in NYC, because of the power of Bloomberg, the results are mixed, and it is likely once he is out of office that you will see a return to the same old same old. </p>
<p>BTW, before thinking I am blaming the inner city schools or a particular group or anything, I am not. When it comes to education, specifically public education, a lot of people talk a big game, but in policies around education get very nearsighted and parochial, that instead of doing what is best for the kids in the long run, for the future, they sacrifice that to short term political expediency and opportunity, which IMO is like during a hard winter eating your feed corn, the last thing you should do; might get you through the rough times, but it also means next spring not having enough to plant for the future.</p>