On Saturday the Wall Street Journal editorial board gave D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee the credit she deserves for upending the long-held fallacies promoted by the Washington Teachers Union. She would offer good teachers substantial pay increases in exchange for tenure, among other reforms,
Ms. Rhee's proposal has caused a meltdown among leaders of the Washington Teachers' Union, and negotiations have collapsed. The Chancellor has raised the stakes, announcing the district would seek to dismiss tenured teachers who are ineffective. She has also hinted she'll go around the union by creating more nonunionized charter schools, or getting the federal government to deem her district in a "state of emergency."
Plucked from a nonprofit by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Ms. Rhee (a Democrat) has spent the past 18 months puncturing other education taboos. She closed 23 failing schools and restructured 27 more. She fired nearly one-third of the district's principals and reduced a bloated bureaucracy. She dismisses as "complete crap" the argument that students can't learn because of disadvantaged backgrounds.
And it is happening to a group that is running low on credibility. In D.C., just 12% of eighth-graders are proficient in reading and even less are proficient in math. Nevertheless, the WTU has managed to argue that tenure should be part of the solution.
Then again, this is the same network that would tell you free health benefits for life (for teachers) is in the best interest of the child, but letting that same kid leave a failed school for a successful private school is not.
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