Michelle Rhee and NYC schools

Former DC school superintendent Michelle Rhee book, memoir, Radical:Fighting to Put Students First" will hit the bookstores on Tues. She has been described as "a radical humbled by a dose of realism". She was fired from the DC post for moving too rapidly on school closings and replacing principals ...and also for poor political instincts. In the book, and on her website Put Students First, she gives low grades to NYC schools, to the likely chagrin of Bloomberg. Her low rating should not be an excuse to move to remove mayoral control of the schools. Her major complaint of the NYC schools is : "In the first-ever research study of New York City’s teacher rating data StudentsFirstNY reveals a glaring injustice: the students who most depend on highly effective teachers are instead the students most likely to be taught by teachers rated “Unsatisfactory.” The analysis reveals that schools with the highest rates of poverty and the lowest rates of student achievement, as well as those with high concentrations of students of color, are the most likely to have teachers with unsatisfactory ratings. Conversely, wealthier, higher-achieving schools have fewer “U-rated” teachers. The findings were consistent among elementary, middle and high schools. Specifically, the report found: POVERTY: Students in High Poverty schools were more than three times as likely to be taught by a U-rated teacher as students in Low Poverty schools. RACE: Students in schools with high percentages of black and Hispanic students were almost four times as likely to be taught by a U-rated teacher as students in schools with far fewer students of color. ELEMENTARY/MIDDLE SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT: Students in Low Proficiency elementary schools were more than three times as likely and students in Low Proficiency middle schools were more than four times as likely to be taught by a U-rated teacher as students in High Proficiency schools. COLLEGE READINESS AT THE HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL: Students in high schools with Low College Readiness rates were more than twice as likely to be taught by a U-rated teacher as students in schools with High College Readiness rates..."