Rah Rah Rhee

Yikes. A nice example, here, of a machine bureaucracy.

At McDonalds, the quintessential machine bureaucracy, employees receive a detailed checklist entailing how to serve customers. There is a smile. Check. There is eye contact. Check. the customer has to give the order only once. Check. The order is assembled in the proper sequence. Check. Drinks are poured in the proper sequence. Check. Proper amount of ice. Check.

In a machine bureaucracy, management holds all the power, makes all the decisions. The employees - burger flippers, cashiers, and now, at least in DC, teachers - do little more that run off the script. They are easy to replace.

At 27 failing DC schools, at least part of the solution in elementary school classrooms would be scripted lessons. A teacher receives a script and reads it, and that is teaching. It's a "teacher-proof" curriculum, and I think the real goal behind "innovations" such as these is to break the back of the tenured teachers and the union. Once they quit, the schools can hire "better" teachers. Or at least ones who don't remember life before scripted teaching.

Makes me wish you could just fire bad teachers instead of insulting the profession in this way. On some level, policy makers think we are little more than automatons - machines to recite and have students repeat.

Every plan like this has multiple goals. I don't see how it helps to further denigrate teachers and our profession. That being said, there are plenty of crappy, lazy, not very smart teachers out there. We must find a way to rid the system of them without insulting the artistry of the good teachers who are also out there.

Unlike burger flippers, most teachers received certification and a certain level of education to do their jobs. It's not supposed to be a high school or college job to get you through - it's supposed to be the destination.

Ms. Rhee, I'm disappointed. Fire bad teachers and bad principals. Find a way to do it so that we don't become shadows of what once was a great profession.

"Rhee Weighs Ideas to Fix 27 Schools." (Haynes, V.D. The Washington Post. 2/18/08)