Rhee Dismisses Principal of School That Her Children Attend
By Bill Turque, Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 9, 2008; B06
LINK

Oyster-Adams Principal Marta Guzman can recall the ripple of anxiety that ran through some faculty members last summer when they learned that the new D.C. schools chancellor, Michelle A. Rhee, had chosen the bilingual school for her two daughters, a kindergartner and a third-grader.

But Guzman, an educator with more than 30 years' experience, said she wasn't concerned. The dual-immersion program, where native English and Spanish-speaking children learn side by side, has long made the Cleveland Park school among the city's most coveted, with high test scores and a national Blue Ribbon for academic achievement. Every year, parents from outside its attendance boundaries vie through a lottery for a handful of spaces to enroll their children.

"I thought it was a good thing," she said of the Rhee children's enrollment.
This week, Rhee fired her.

Guzman received a form letter from Rhee informing her that she was out of a job effective June 30, one of at least two dozen principals whose contracts for the 2008-09 school year were not renewed. Guzman said she was given no reason for her dismissal, either in the letter from Rhee or at a Monday meeting with Assistant Superintendent Francisco Millet.
Rhee said through her spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson, and by e-mail that she could not comment on Guzman's situation because it was a personnel matter. Millet did not return a phone message. Guzman said that when she met with Rhee last month, the chancellor was noncommittal but did say she would "recuse herself" from any final decision about Guzman's tenure.
Guzman's departure has stunned many Oyster-Adams parents who wonder why, in a city filled with under-performing public schools, Rhee would sack a principal who has presided for the past five years over one of its few success stories. The move has also heightened ethnic and class tensions within the school's diverse community. Eduardo Barada, co-chairman of the Oyster-Adams Community Council, the school's PTA, said Guzman was toppled by a cadre of dissatisfied and largely affluent Anglo parents with the ear of a woman who was both a fellow parent and the chancellor.
"I believe there are some parents who want to control and dominate," he said. "They want to silence the Latinos there."
Claire Taylor, council co-chairwoman, said she "absolutely respects Eduardo's position" but doesn't agree with it. "From what I've seen of Michelle Rhee, she is an exceedingly fair person who wants what's in the best interests of the students," she said.
Taylor added that ethnic and class divisions are the norm at Oyster-Adams. "A leaf falls and there are issues," she said.
Taylor was one of a group of Oyster-Adams parents, both white and Latino, who dined with Rhee in November and aired complaints about Guzman. Among the issues raised with Rhee, who took notes, according to another attendee, were Guzman's alleged lack of organization, reluctance to delegate and sometimes-brusque style.
Asked to discuss the dinner, which was at the home of another parent, Taylor said she was "not going to get into intra-school politics."
Guzman, the daughter of Mexican immigrants and who marched with Cesar Chavez as a young teacher of migrant children in California, has spent most of her career in bilingual or ESL programs. She helped found Virginia's first language-immersion program at Francis Scott Key Elementary school in Arlington County and was principal of Weyanoke Elementary in the heavily immigrant Annandale area.
She received high ratings after joining Oyster in 2003. An evaluation signed by Millet in November 2005 read: "Teachers and staff in this school were doing an incredible job. . . . The principal is an effective instructional leader and has created a true community of learners, which has made a powerful impact on academic achievement." Asked for a look at her 2007 evaluation, Guzman said she had misplaced it.
She said she understands that dismissal is always a possibility for principals. She also concedes that it has been a difficult year, dominated by Oyster's merger with Adams Elementary, creating a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade dual-immersion program spread over two campuses with 525 students. She said that she lacked adequate staff to deal with the complicated expansion and that she and Millet clashed frequently.
Still, she said she thought secrecy and intrigue largely contributed to her ouster: "I basically think this has been done with gossip and innuendo."
Guzman said she wasn't aware of any specific complaints that Rhee had, either as a parent or administrator. The chancellor has kept a low profile at the school, Guzman said, sharing pickup and drop-off duties with her ex-husband, lawyer Kevin Huffman. Rhee, who lives in Brightwood, is not the only Oyster-Adams parent who is a top schools official. Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso also has a son there. He did not return a phone message to discuss Guzman.
The first sign that her job was in jeopardy, Guzman said, came last month, when Millet convened a meeting of Oyster-Adams teachers to discuss her leadership. Guzman, who was not invited to the meeting, said she learned from a teacher that Millet began the meeting by announcing that a national search was underway for her replacement.
She quickly asked for a meeting with Rhee, who told her about the dinner meeting. Rhee said parents were frustrated by Guzman's lack of organization and "not comfortable with her" on a personal level.
What particularly rankles Guzman is why it took five months for Rhee to disclose the parents' back-channel complaints. "If she wanted to work on this, she could have called me in November," Guzman said.
Several supporters of Guzman said the principal deserves something approaching due process, although principals serve at the pleasure of the chancellor on yearly contracts. "I'm not saying the criticisms are not true, but this is a woman who has spent her whole life educating children," said Pedro Aviles, an Oyster-Adams parent. "Now she's being treated by a very impersonal system in a very inhumane way."
Maureen Diner, who has a fourth-grader at the school, said Rhee's silence is not seemly for a chancellor who came into office a year ago promising reform.
"Anybody asked not to return deserves a process, at the very least a community meeting," Diner said. As for Rhee, "she talked about creating a culture of accountability. At the same time, she needs to be accountable for her own actions."

Principal's firing upsets school community
May 10, 2008 - 4:14pm

Patricia Guadalupe, WTOP Radio

WASHINGTON- The recent firing of Oyster Adams Bilingual school's principal has left parents angry.

Several hundred people gathered in the school's cafeteria Friday to discuss the dismissal of Marta Guzman and plans for new leadership.

Guzman has been principal at the school since 2003. This week she received a letter from D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee that she would not return to her job next year. Guzman joins a list of two dozen principals whose contracts were not renewed for the 2008-09 academic year.

Oyster Adams is located in Cleveland Park and is noted for its diverse school population, where English and Spanish speaking students learn together. The school has been one of the few bright spots in the city's education system by having some of the best test scores and being nationally recognized as a Blue Ribbon school.

That's why Guzman's dismissal has left some parents dumbfounded and seeking answers from the chancellor. Parents say they don't appreciate feeling disrespected and shut out of the chancellor's decision making process. Some have talked about protesting outside of Rhee's office Monday.

Several parents question Rhee's objectivity since she has two children who attend Oyster Adams. Her office did not comment Friday about the uproar.

"I think the least she could have done was to get our opinions," said one father. Other parents at the meeting described the situation as "tasteless" and "classless."

Guzman says she hasn't received a reason for her dismissal, but a group of parents complained to the chancellor about her management style. They described the principal as being disorganized.

If that's a reason to get rid of her, Guzman tells WTOP it's like the "pot calling the kettle black."

"On an average I have had a (different) superintendent each year. Talk about disorganization downtown," she says. "It's absolutely incredible."

Parents say Rhee should have heard both sides before making a decision.

"The argument should have been brought to the whole community," says one mother. "Each argument has two sides and she should have heard it."

(Copyright 2008 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)


Patricia Guadalupe, WTOP Radio
WASHINGTON-
The recent firing of Oyster Adams Bilingual school's principal has left parents angry.

Several hundred people gathered in the school's cafeteria Friday to discuss the dismissal of Marta Guzman and plans for new leadership.

Guzman has been principal at the school since 2003. This week she received a letter from D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee that she would not return to her job next year. Guzman joins a list of two dozen principals whose contracts were not renewed for the 2008-09 academic year.

Oyster Adams is located in Cleveland Park and is noted for its diverse school population, where English and Spanish speaking students learn together. The school has been one of the few bright spots in the city's education system by having some of the best test scores and being nationally recognized as a Blue Ribbon school.

That's why Guzman's dismissal has left some parents dumbfounded and seeking answers from the chancellor. Parents say they don't appreciate feeling disrespected and shut out of the chancellor's decision making process. Some have talked about protesting outside of Rhee's office Monday.

Several parents question Rhee's objectivity since she has two children who attend Oyster Adams. Her office did not comment Friday about the uproar.

"I think the least she could have done was to get our opinions," said one father. Other parents at the meeting described the situation as "tasteless" and "classless."

Guzman says she hasn't received a reason for her dismissal, but a group of parents complained to the chancellor about her management style. They described the principal as being disorganized.

If that's a reason to get rid of her, Guzman tells WTOP it's like the "pot calling the kettle black."

"On an average I have had a (different) superintendent each year. Talk about disorganization downtown," she says. "It's absolutely incredible."

Parents say Rhee should have heard both sides before making a decision.

"The argument should have been brought to the whole community," says one mother. "Each argument has two sides and she should have heard it."

9NEWS NOW EXCLUSIVE: Terminated Principal Talks
Date created: 5/7/2008 3:57:38 PM
Last updated: 5/8/2008 4:41:12 PM

WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) -- Veda Usilton says she and the 30 principals who are being terminated by school Chancellor Michelle Rhee support the reforms that are taking place in DC schools.

The principal at Garnet Paterson for the past eleven years is also a product of the city schools.

Usilton says he hated seeing and hearing reports of how DC students were finishing at the bottom in most standardized testing.

She expected changes, under the federal "no child left behind" law, School Chancellor Rhee is required to overhaul 27 schools that failed to improve reading and math scores.

Her regrets are that the additional resources that came this year to Garnet Paterson and other schools were not available in the past and that she and the other principals are being "terminated" when they have worked hard and still have a lot to offer.

For more on this story go to Bruce Johnson's blog.

Written by Bruce Johnson
9NEWS NOW

Rhee dismisses dozens of District principals
May 6, 2008 - 9:17am

WASHINGTON (AP) - As many as 30 principals at D.C. schools won't be reappointed for the next school year.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has begun notifying them. Letters went out Monday.

The dismissals are effective June 30 and are the latest in a series of aggressive personnel moves. Rhee is required by the federal No Child Left Behind law to restructure 27 city schools that have failed to make adequate progress. The list includes 10 high schools, 11 middle schools and six elementary schools.

Rhee's spokeswoman says the number of principals to be dismissed would probably be between 24 and 30.

The names of the dismissed principals have not been released.

Local
Mayor Fenty names two choices for school reform watchdogs
Dena Levitz, The Examiner, 2008-05-06
WASHINGTON -
LINK

Nearly eight months after a legislatively set deadline, Mayor Adrian Fenty has submitted to the D.C. Council the names of two education researchers chosen to serve as independent judges of the city’s public school reform.

The two watchdogs were promised in the mayoral schools takeover legislation passed in June 2007, and the posts were supposed to be filled by Sept. 15.

But the mayor and Chancellor Michelle Rhee have only now finalized their selections. The two men recommended are recognized experts in school reform, Kenneth Wong and Rick Hess. The council will vote on whether to appoint them.

Wong, a professor at Brown University, has written and edited several books on urban school governance. He has also served as an independent evaluator for school reform in Philadelphia, which, like the District, has a long history of failure.

Hess is the resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and is a faculty associate at the Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance.

The two were selected from a pool of about a dozen candidates following a national search, said Dena Iverson, the mayor’s spokeswoman.

Their work will be paid for with private funds.

“We have a donation agreement for $750,000 for five years; the fund is separate from the D.C. government,” Iverson wrote in an e-mail.

Wong told The Examiner that he and Hess will release their first oversight report in September and then craft four more annual reports.

They will take a hard look at the management and business practices of the school system’s leadership and students’ academic achievement.

“The idea is that we’ll work very closely,” Wong said. “I bring a nationwide perspective ... and he will bring his understanding of local issues.”

The lack of independent evaluators surfaced during a Feb. 22 D.C. Council oversight hearing when Council Chairman Vincent Gray scolded Rhee for dragging her feet on the process.

“When you wanted the reform legislation passed, you were banging on our door. ... Yet we ask for something and it takes months,” Gray said.

The chancellor told Gray at that time that she would recommend someone within a month. However, it took a full month longer. Wong said he was approached about being an evaluator in late February or early March.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com

Principal of Rhee's children's school one of those given the hook

Oyster-Adams Principal Marta Guzman is one of the Principals who are not being offered a new contract come next school year. Why make's Guzman's impending unemployment so newsworthy? Oyster-Adams is where Chancellor Rhee's children attend school.

Guzman received a form letter from Rhee informing her that she was out of a job effective June 30, one of at least two dozen principals whose contracts for the 2008-09 school year were not renewed. Guzman said she was given no reason for her dismissal, either in the letter from Rhee or at a Monday meeting with Assistant Superintendent Francisco Millet.

Rhee said through her spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson, and by e-mail that she could not comment on Guzman's situation because it was a personnel matter. Millet did not return a phone message. Guzman said that when she met with Rhee last month, the chancellor was noncommittal but did say she would "recuse herself" from any final decision about Guzman's tenure.

Guzman's departure has stunned many Oyster-Adams parents who wonder why, in a city filled with under-performing public schools, Rhee would sack a principal who has presided for the past five years over one of its few success stories. The move has also heightened ethnic and class tensions within the school's diverse community. Eduardo Barada, co-chairman of the Oyster-Adams Community Council, the school's PTA, said Guzman was toppled by a cadre of dissatisfied and largely affluent Anglo parents with the ear of a woman who was both a fellow parent and the chancellor.

"I believe there are some parents who want to control and dominate," he said. "They want to silence the Latinos there."

Well, it wouldn't be DC without a little race paranoia thrown in for good measure.

Posted by Nathan at 5/09/2008

Labels: Chancellor, DCPS, Oyster-Adams, Rhee

2 comments:

Mari said...

Your Mom fires your teacher's boss. That must make things very uncomfy.
8:40 AM
FCPS ESL Teacher said...

I worked with Francisco Millet in the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) when he supervised the County's ESL teachers. He was terrific! While I don't know the exact details surrounding Marta Guzman's lack of contract renewal, I *do* know how fortunate I felt to teach in a system Francisco supervised. Francisco and the other works at FCPS are committed to helping good people do good work for kids. FCPS has great schools because of people like Francisco. DC students, parents, and teachers, you are lucky. He's a good person who will help make your schools better.

Michelle Rhee - Newsweek, December 31, 2007

Forbes. com Commentary
Michelle Rhee, 01.23.08
WASHINGTON, D.C. -
LINK

For far too long, the schools in our nation's capital have been failing our kids.

Though we have among the highest per-pupil expenditures, we have among the lowest academic performance levels. According to the national assessment of educational progress data for the 2006-2007 school year, compared to other states, the District of Columbia ranks last in reading and math scores of our fourth and eighth graders. The only state to come close to this dismal performance level is Mississippi. We have the largest achievement gap between black and white students in the fourth grade. We have schools in this District that show a 10% proficiency rate for their students. To respond to these numbers with anything but radical change to reverse them is an insult to the dignity, potential and creativity of our children.

Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer in our country. The hope is that our public schools will ensure that every child, regardless of their life circumstances can achieve at the highest levels and live the American dream if they work hard and do the right thing.

That is far from our reality. Here, in D.C., the education that a child receives if he lives in Tenleytown is far different from what he would receive in Anacostia. We have an achievement gap between white and black students at the secondary level of 70% in some subject areas--70%.

I know first-hand from speaking and working with our children that our poor and minority students have potential and ability that rivals anyone. You can tell when you meet them, when you talk to them, when you hear their stories. Our students aren't achieving, not because of their aptitude, but because we, as the adults in this system, are not doing our jobs to serve them well.

For years, the District of Columbia public school system has been crippled by a growing and non-responsive bureaucracy. Calls and e-mails are ignored. Employees are not paid. Parents take time off of work to fill out forms only to have them lost. Textbooks sit in warehouses. This is the worst possible example we can set for our students: People are so used to receiving poor service that they expect disappointment and invisibility. We communicate our expectations to students through the learning environments we create. In a school where lights stay broken, walls erode and unsanitary conditions prevail, we tell students that we do not expect great things to happen there.

We have had a system that was not set up to serve kids, and we are changing that. The mayor and I have worked with the DC Council to pass the personnel legislation that will allow us to create a culture of accountability in the central office that serves our schools and families. Ultimately, we are changing the system so that it is no longer about the needs and preferences of adults, but rather about what we owe our kids.

With central support, and through theme-based schools giving choices to parents, increased incentives for teachers and innovative academic programs that have in the past been exclusively offered nationally, we will be leading in education as our nation's capital should be. In our case, the support of the mayor has been critical, and as one of the only large urban districts to adopt this change in governance of our schools, I believe that the District of Columbia public school system will be a model for urban school reform.

When political will backs the innovative practices and courage needed for reform, it absolutely is possible to turn around a school system. New York City, for example, has shown significant gains in student achievement. I am encouraged by the model of a portfolio of schools, something Chancellor Joel Klein has successfully led and which especially befits implementation in D.C. as a smaller system than NYC.

Chancellor Klein and I also share the belief that an outstanding principal, given the support he or she needs, is indispensable to driving the remarkable gains we need in student achievement in a school. I am looking closely at his example in creating our own Principal Leadership Academy. While all of my initiatives for the District of Columbia public school system will be led according to the size of our district, the needs of our students and my vision for school reform based on the work I have done with urban districts nationwide, ultimately the end result will foster a college-going culture throughout the District, adding options for students that have never been there before.

On a national level, No Child Left Behind directed attention to an injustice that was allowed to exist for too long. Students in urban districts in particular have been underserved without accountability to national or even state standards. From the perspective that includes best practices for urban school districts, the legislation has to be reauthorized without softening accountability measures.

While I would recommend revisions to No Child Left Behind legislation that would encourage the benefits of performance pay, increase support for struggling schools and motivate high performance in addition to ensuring baseline requirements, I am convinced that the firm accountability measures that No Child Left Behind introduced must be preserved.

Michelle Rhee is chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.

--Interviewed by Deborah Orr

Why Parents Saved The Oyster School
by Alexandra Starr

Land Grant School Building The parents’ association gave a chunk of the playing field to a residential developer to build a safe new school.

There aren’t many Washington, DC, public schools for which parents will camp out overnight in hopes of enrolling their children. But before the James F. Oyster Bilingual Elementary School adopted a lottery system in 2002 to allocate the few open slots for students living outside of the school’s boundaries, more than 100 DC parents would regularly spend a night sleeping out. The enticement: a superb bilingual education.

Oyster classes are more or less evenly divided between native English and native Spanish speakers, and instruction is 50% in English, 50% in Spanish. By the time students graduate from the so-called dual- immersion program in the sixth grade, they are fluent in both languages.

The promise of bilingualism isn’t an empty one, judging by my recent visit to one of Oyster’s sixth-grade classrooms. Even though the 22 students clearly come from a range of ethnic backgrounds, it’s difficult to detect an accent when the children speak in either language. As is the norm at Oyster, the class is led by two teachers, one Spanish-dominant and one English-dominant. In one corner of the classroom, Eduardo Gamarra, a Peruvian, quickly marches his students through a drill in irregular verbs. On the other side, Skidra Blandford has assembled the other half of the students in a semi-circle, where they ponder a statement from Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: “To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.” The students quickly begin regaling her with stories of how they have made that connection in their own lives.

Such linguistically rich, thoughtful teaching has helped cultivate strong parent loyalty to Oyster. That bond proved critical to saving the school when it was slotted to be closed in the early 1990s. The 1926 school building was so decrepit and unsafe—it violated both fire and asbestos codes—that the school district intended to shutter it and farm students out to other schools. Oyster’s administration and parent teacher association would not allow that; eventually they crafted a solution that tapped private money to rebuild the physical plant, at no expense to taxpayers.

Behind the PTA’s Miracle. While the Oyster’s public-private partnership has won national attention, the school did have special advantages that could make its success hard to copy. In particular, Oyster benefited from an enviable location: It is near a metro stop in Woodley Park, a very desirable neighborhood. Mary Filardo, whose three children attended the school, led other Oyster parents in creating the non-profit 21st Century School Fund to attract private funding. A chunk of the playing field was offered to developers interested in building an apartment complex; in return, the developers would be expected to construct a new school. The fund helped oversee the bidding process, and the city ultimately accepted a proposal from one called LCOR Inc. Construction began in 1998.

For the next 3 years, Oyster students were shifted to a temporary location in a much less desirable part of town. “It speaks to the belief people had in the school’s mission that parents stuck with us through those years,” says Oyster Principal Marta Guzmán.

The new school was worth waiting for: The 47,158- square-foot building has indoor parking, water fountains for each classroom, and large, spacious teaching areas. Under the terms of the agreement, LCOR will not pay property taxes for 35 years, but rather is obligated to pay $804,000 annually to cover the $11 million revenue bond used to construct the new school. The Oyster deal turned out well for LCOR: Two years ago the company sold the apartment building for a profit of more than $20 million. Although the 21st Century School Fund helped guide the process, the city ultimately negotiated the deal, and Filardo believes the contract should have guaranteed the city a piece of the selling price if the apartment building were sold. Marta Guzmán’s assessment: “People in government are better at assessing political risk than economic opportunity.”

The Parents’ Involvement Goes On. Oyster is still the beneficiary of very active parent involvement: The PTA raises funds to compensate for school district cuts. They’ve picked up the tab for teachers-aide salaries and for maintaining a well-stocked library.

Parents value the cultural interchange as well as the dual-language education. Of the 409 students enrolled for the last full school year, 12% were African American; 3%, Asian; 54%, Hispanic; 31%, Caucasian. While all across the country students generally segregate along ethnic lines by the time they reach upper elementary grades, that isn’t the case at Oyster. “The kids are so integrated as a group,” says Serena Wiltshire, a former PTA president who has three children in the school. “And it continues after the kids graduate to the local Deal Junior High School,” says Wiltshire. “Parents who have children in Deal tell me that the only cafeteria tables you see where there’s a real mix of nationalities are the ones with kids who came from the Oyster School.”

That sense of community is strengthened by the way that dual-immersion instruction casts speaking a language other than English as an asset. The traditional model for educating English-language learners—namely, pulling children out for separate catch-up classes for part of the school day—implicitly casts a non-English fluency as an obstacle. But at Oyster, the languages are equally treated and speaking both is the norm.

“Here, both English and Spanish-dominant children get a chance to shine,” says fourth-grade teacher Danielle Fuller. “That means everyone feels valued.” She reflects fondly on a native English and a native Spanish speaker she taught 2 years ago, who had become best friends and were still inseparable. “It’s hard to see where it would have happened outside of Oyster,” she says.

Bilingual in English and Spanish, Alexandra Starr has covered education for BusinessWeek. She writes for many national magazines.

This article originally appeared in NRTA Live & Learn, Spring 2006.