SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2010
R
KLMNO Local Opinions WRITE FOR US
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CLOSE TO HOME Local Opinions asked readers to weigh on Tuesday’s primary.
Here’s a sample of their observations. Read more at
voices.washingtonpost.com/local-opinions/.
THE DISTRICT
What Fenty needed to hear As someone who has spent years as a public relations and public
policy professional in Washington, I’ve been mystified over these past months as to why there wasn’t someone in D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s circle with the guts to tell him the truth about his actions and manner. Obviously, Fenty needed to hear that despite his accomplishments, he was suffering from problems and shortcomings that threatened his reelection chances. The Sept. 16 front-page story “The unmaking of a mayor” makes clear that several of Mr. Fenty’s advisers and friends did try to make these points, only to be shot down. Well, soon Fenty will be gone, but professional advisers
everywhere would do well to use this story as a case history for their clients who think they know what is best for themselves and turn their backs on staff and others who often have a far better sense of public perception.
Sally G. Kranz, Washington Where we’ll be in 2014
The consensus seems to be that Adrian M. Fenty accomplished more for Washington than any other recent mayor, yet he lost to someone who ran on a platform focused on consensus-building. While D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is certainly a decent man who will do his best for the city, the primary reason that Fenty was able to accomplish much of what he did was that he did what he thought was right and did not wait for a consensus that may never be reached. In essence, what D.C. residents chose was to elect a mayor who will slow the progress of reform in our wonderful city. I wonder if those who voted for Gray will be happy with their choice in four years.
David Jasinski, Washington
Offending for the greater good Regarding Robert McCartney’s Sept. 15 column “Vincent Gray
should find a way to keep D.C.’s schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee”: McCartney tried to straddle the fence, and perhaps maintain some readership, by including a few dull barbs at Rhee. Most notably he posited that “[s]he seems never to have accepted that it’s wise to avoid offending important constituencies needlessly.” It is unclear, however, whether McCartney paused to consider the idea that Rhee may find it necessary to deliver a certain message regardless of whom it may offend if sending that message will aid school reform. The failure to recognize a failing system for what it is has proved to be a major reason the system has not improved. If this realization is cause for umbrage among certain constituencies but brings positive change, then so be it.
Noel Fritsch, Washington
Local Blog Network
6voices.washingtonpost.com/local-opinions
Some of the region’s best bloggers share work on the All Opinions Are Local blog. Below, an excerpt from one of last week’s posts.
Lenett sinks his own campaign In Maryland’s District 19 Democratic primary Tuesday,
incumbent state Sen. Mike Lenett resorted to anti-Muslim race-baiting and the use of Holocaust imagery in the final weeks of the race against challenger Roger Manno. Rather than saving his campaign, these tactics amounted to 11th-hour suicide. Manno is a capable progressive who worked hard for his victory. It is a shame that the takeaway from this race is more about Lenett’s descent into darkness than it is about Manno. I am extremely disturbed by the apparent lack of an outcry from the Democratic establishment (with the exception of Doug Duncan, whom I’m otherwise no fan of) about what Lenett did. As I wrote Tuesday, it is particularly upsetting that Gov. Martin O’Malley apparently was robocalling on Lenett’s behalf after the campaign of hate was in full swing.
Keith Berner, Left-Hand View
Local Opinions, a place for commentary about where we live, is looking for submissions of 300 to 500 words on timely local topics. Submissions must include name, e-mail address, street address and phone number, and they will be edited for brevity and clarity. To submit your article, please go to
washingtonpost.com/localopinions.
NEXT WEEK’S TOPIC Is the District right to require tour guides to get a license from the city?
MARY LORD, TED TRABUE AND LAURA MCGIFFERT SLOVER WASHINGTON D.C. school reform marches on
To District residents who consider Tuesday’s mayoral primary a setback for D.C. schools, rest assured: Edu- cation reform — and stu- dent gains — will move ahead full throttle no mat- ter who’s at the helm. Why? Because our entire “state,” including its executive and legislative and educational leaders, has pledged to pur- sue the ambitious agenda for change detailed in the District’s winning proposal in the federal Race to the Top program. Stronger sci- ence programs, great teach- ers and data systems to track individual student achievement over time and hone instruction: These are just some of the improve- ments that the city’s $75 million contract with the U.S. Education Department should help realize over the next four years. Our city is at the forefront of
have transformed public education in the District. Out-of-boundary enroll- ment, private school vouch- ers and charter schools that now enroll roughly four in 10 public school pupils have made us an emblem of edu- cation reform for a decade. Indeed, charter schools played a major role in shap- ing and winning Race to the Top. In retrospect, the most pivotal governance change wrought by the 2007 D.C. education reform law may not be mayoral control but the creation of a robust state education agency with au- thority and responsibilities distinct from the District’s largest local school system. State departments and
BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee speaks to new teachers in August.
several other game-changing na- tional reform initiatives. As part of a multistate consortium, the District is developing innovative new assessments around rigorous “Common Core” English and math standards. Not only will D.C. educators help shape those tests, but our schools and taxpayers also stand to reap economies of scale. Meanwhile, the District has be- come a national leader in early childhood education with our ro- bust academic standards and uni- versal pre-K legislation. That 2008 law, guided through the D.C.
Council by presumptive mayor Vincent Gray, propelled a dramat- ic expansion in quality programs that has boosted enrollment in both D.C. Public Schools and char- ter schools while tackling the city’s stubborn achievement gap by helping to ensure that all stu- dents start kindergarten equally well prepared. School reform could not have progressed so far, so fast, without the state-level infrastructure — the Office of the State Superin- tendent of Education and State Board of Education — to support it. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee deserve much credit for whipping
a dysfunctional system into shape, focusing on student performance and teacher effectiveness and driving the city’s reform blueprint. But only states, not districts, were eligible to compete in Race to the Top, and proposals had to have the full participation — and signa- tures — of the state superinten- dent and State Board of Education president. Similarly, governors and chief state school officers have led efforts to create rigorous, na- tionally recognized content stan- dards and richer ways to assess student mastery beyond fill-in- the-bubble tests. Mayoral control of DCPS is just one of many seismic shocks that
state boards of education set academic benchmarks and standards. They estab-
lish graduation requirements and determine how to measure stu- dent performance and hold teach- ers and schools accountable for re- sults. Most important, they pro- vide a forum where educators, researchers, parents, community advocates and business leaders can collaborate on forging bold new policies that will sustain change and prepare all D.C. learn- ers for success in college, careers and life.
Mary Lord represents Ward 2 on the D.C. State Board of Education. Ted Trabue (At Large) is president of the board. Laura McGiffert Slover (Ward 3) is vice president.
5C
MARK SIMON WASHINGTON A chance to learn from Rhee’s mistakes
Post editors and reporters ap- pear to have latched on to every possible explanation for the pub- lic’s rejection of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Racial politics this week. Fenty’s personality. Schools Chan- cellor Michelle Rhee’s failure to communicate. But Fenty’s defeat isn’t about
race or personality. It’s about bad decisions, particularly on school reform. His school reform strat- egies, as shoved through by Rhee, alienated the voters. Rhee certainly rates as smart, charismatic and bold. But she made decisions early in her ten- ure that alienated every constitu- ency she needed, and she rested her “reforms” on strategies that national education researchers have repeatedly warned against. Over the course of her tenure,
Rhee: Over-emphasized standardized student testing and scores as the be-all and end-all of school and teacher quality. (See the Eco-
nomic Policy Institute’s Aug. 27 report “Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers.”) Failed to understand the im- portance of community and rela- tionships, and marginalized dedi- cated and knowledgeable parent and community advocates. Created churn in the work- force, with widespread teacher and principal firings, in the proc- ess instilling a culture of fear. Rushed to install teacher evalu- ation rubrics, under her IMPACT program, that devalue teacher professionalism instead of em- phasizing teacher and principal training and curriculum devel- opment. These missteps reflected con- scious decisions, not oversights. One example: Early on, Rhee re- jected a staff recommendation to bring in the consultants used in Montgomery and Fairfax counties to train administrators and teach- ers in effective teaching practices.
The reason given: Taking the route Montgomery and Fairfax followed would cost too much and take too long.
Schools are communities. Edu-
cation is a complex, labor-inten- sive endeavor. Good teaching must be nurtured systematically. Parents understand these reali- ties, which is one big reason they’re instinctively wary of any test-and-punish approach. Under Rhee, the public senses that a pro- found disrespect of educators and the craft of teaching has permeat- ed the D.C. system. A responsible newspaper would have treated Rhee’s reform strategies as controversial ideas worthy of debate. Instead, The Post seems to have taken the pos- ture that anyone against Rhee’s reforms must be for the DCPS sta- tus quo. That simply is not the case.
Rhee’s critics have included vet- eran reformers who have studied the research and have good rea-
son to warn that she was taking reform down the wrong path. Vincent C. Gray, who after win-
ning Tuesday’s primary is the pre- sumptive mayor-elect, needs to be resolute about improving teacher quality and holding schools and teachers accountable. But he also needs to take a hard look at the controversial strategies that Rhee has pursued. National experts shut out by the Rhee administra- tion can help fine-tune more ef- fective approaches. And if Michelle Rhee is truly in it “for the kids,” she’ll muster up some humility, acknowledge her mistaken decisions and stick around long enough to transition to more experienced leadership.
The writer, a member of Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform, is a DCPS parent, an education policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute and a former president of the Montgomery County teachers union.
ROBERT MCNAMARA WASHINGTON
The streets of Washington are being stalked by criminals. In broad daylight, these dangerous scoundrels roam the city streets, flouting the laws that keep us safe. Their heinous crime? They describe things. The District makes it illegal for
anyone to work as a “sightseeing guide” without first passing a test and obtaining a special gov- ernment license. New regulations promulgated
in July make clear what that means: It is illegal to “describe . . . any place or point of interest in the District to any person” on a tour without a license. Scoff- laws who engage in unauthor- ized description can be thrown in jail for up to three months. To obtain a license, would-be guides have to fill out a series of forms, pay hundreds of dollars in fees and pass a written exam- ination that tests an arbitrary hodgepodge of knowledge about the District. The test itself pur- ports to cover 14 topics, ranging from “Government” to “Architec-
D.C.’s strange crackdown on ‘describing without a license’ Want to lead a tour?
tural” and “Regulations” — a subject most tourists are surely eager to hear about. Visitors to the District can choose from an amazing array of tours, ranging from ghost tours to food tours to television-and- movie tours. Lumping this vari- ety into a single 100-question multiple-choice test can do noth- ing to make any individual visi- tor’s experience better. Instead, the testing requirement does what too many local and state li- censing laws do: make it more difficult to start a business or change jobs into a new field. In the past 50 years, there has been an explosion of laws that re- quire people to get a license be- fore they join the workforce. In the 1950s, only about one out of every 20 Americans needed a li- cense to pursue the occupation of their choice. Today, that num- ber is one out of every three. These licensing requirements are not mere annoyances: They have real consequences. Take To- nia Edwards and Bill Main, who
For $200, you, too, can apply to become a cer- tified “District of Columbia Sightseeing Tour Guide.” Here’s some guidance offered by the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Af- fairs:
When applying for a District of Columbia Sightseeing Tour Guide license, applicants will be required to pass the District of Columbia Sightseeing Tour Guide Professional Licensing Examination. There are different versions of the examination, each consisting of 100 multiple choice questions. Applicants must obtain a min- imum score of 70% to successfully pass. Al- though the examination will address only a por- tion of the knowledge necessary to conduct pro- fessional tours of Washington, D.C., applicants
will be expected to focus on overall general Washington, D.C. knowledge. Exam questions may come from any of the following categories: Architectural Dates Government Historical Events Landmark Buildings Locations Monuments, Memorials Museums and Art Galleries Parks, Gardens and Zoo Aquariums Presidents Sculptures and Statues Universities Pictures Regulations
http://www.asisvcs.com/ publications/pdf/690906.pdf
run Segs in the City, which offers Segway-based tours of D.C.’s monuments and embassies. As they lead groups of Segway- riding tourists through the city,
they describe the sights and sto- ries of our nation’s capital, all while teaching their customers to ride a Segway — in most cases, for the first time. No license is re-
quired for the Segway, but be- cause Edwards and Main haven’t gone through the costly motions required to get the city’s permis- sion, telling stories turns the pair
into criminals. The government has no busi- ness deciding who can or cannot be a storyteller. That is why Ed- wards and Main joined with the Institute for Justice to file a fed- eral lawsuit against the city last week, seeking to vindicate their First Amendment right to com- municate for a living — the same right enjoyed by stand-up co- medians, journalists and actors. Particularly with an economy in recovery, and literally millions of people seeking to move to new jobs, we cannot have government enforcing laws that accomplish nothing but make it harder to work. The explosion of licensing requirements has taken us well beyond the point of even plausi- bly protecting the public, and it is past time for the D.C. govern- ment to realize that residents and visitors are hardy enough to survive a little unauthorized de- scription.
Robert McNamara is a staff attorney with the Institute for Justice.
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