The Results of Corporate School Reform in DC

Five years ago, Washington DC abolished its elected school board and the Mayor appointed Michelle Rhee as the new Chancellor. Although she had never run a school district, or even been a school principal, Rhee was empowered to up-end the system in the name of school reform. Over the next three years Rhee fired hundreds of teachers and principals, closed numerous schools and so alienated the community that many credit her for the Mayor being voted out of office after just one term. Rhee was - and still is - a darling of the neo-reformers: those who champion privatizing public education, those who ignore the impact of poverty on student achievement, and those who blame teachers and their unions for all the world's ills. Rhee successor - and mentee - Kaya Henderson, has proudly declared that she would be carrying on Rhee's agenda.

So here we are five years later, and Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss has just posted a shocking letter about the school district's abyssmal failure to provide library books to newly renovated high schools. The excerpt below documents the facts - including the massive diversion of funding intended for library books to other purposes.

The neo-reformers always talk about accountability. Where is the accountability for this travesty?

"The city has every right to take pride in the $62 million modernization of Anacostia High School. It represents an important commitment to one of our most disadvantage communities. When your office issued the press release about the ribbon-cutting, it noted the school received a new library/media center. Unfortunately what the school received was not a library but merely a room. The school opened without any library books. The old collection — both literally and figuratively — was lost during the modernization.

What’s even worse is that this is not an isolated incident. Last year when the new H.D. Woodson High School opened, most of its books were lost during the renovation, including a 3,000 volume collection donated by a DCPS central office staff member. It now has a 450-volume collection. For a school its size, that figure should be 10,000. And Eastern High School had part of its collection lost during construction.

It is not simply the repeated loss of valuable school assets that is so troubling, it also the fact that the chancellor has paid so little attention to school libraries that they could be allowed to open in this state. A quarter of a billion dollars and the chance for significant gains in student achievement have been put at risk with the absence of these core academic materials.

The results of a Freedom of Information Act request show that in FY11 and FY12, the money appropriated to DCPS for library and media services was overwhelmingly used for other things. It paid for other things like building repairs, maintenance to HVAC systems. More than $400,000 was used for testing. DCPS used $80,000 of these funds to pay for a San Francisco-based consultant to develop a strategic plan for its Office of Family and Community Engagement."