Michelle Rhee and the WASHINGTON DC Public Schools Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Due to these unsatisfactory standards of the city, schools and mass public protested over the unsatisfactory standards of education in the district the control and authority of the education facilities of the city were handed over to the public and local authorities on grass root level. Even this decision did not help as the conditions of schools and the education provided in the city remained same and eventually the control and setup of the education facilities of the city were handed over to the board of education that was formed to revive the schooling system of the city.

The board was set up by the authorities on the ad-hoc basis to revive the deteriorating education system of the city and introduce some reforms to put the system back on track, but it failed to achieve its goals and objectives in the time period that it was assigned to do so. In the meantime, Adrian Fenty ran for the mayor of the city in the elections. In his campaign he focused on the unsatisfactory results of the schools of the city and vowed to revive it.

He was a black by ethnicity and the population of the city was also dominatingly black African American. He won the elections and it was his top priority to revive the schooling system of the city. He appointed Michelle Rhee as the chancellor of the schools of the Washington D.C. as she was a quite resilient personality.

Her appointment was received by harsh criticism among the stakeholders as she had no previous field experience in school management other than attending a Harvard training course and teaching some roughly 70 students and this was the point of criticism of her appointment by the newly elected mayor.

Even she herself had some reservations about the job she was being offered as she realized that she wouldhave to overcome some great barriers and obstacles for achieving this task as the system of education of the city was completely politicalized and there were some other outside factors that influenced the schooling facilities of the city. She agreed after she was given complete control and authority by the mayor of the city and that she was only answerable to him.

The chancellor, Michelle Rhee, studied the issues and held comprehensive discussions and investigations to find out the causes of the sudden downfall of the public schools of the city. She realized that the quantity of schools and facilities far exceeded the requirement level of the city and that funds were being wasted.

She shut the schools where the attendance was unsatisfactory and the students were adjusted into other schools, although it did invite some critics but she had the support of the mayor of the city. There was no accountability program or process that was being initiated in the schools and she was of the firm belief that the growth of the students were directly proportional to the efforts and skills of the teacher.

She introduced appraisal and accountability system of the teachers as the standards of the teaching in the education facilities of the city were un-satisfactory. She studied the performances of the teachers of the schools of the city and found a proportion of the staff un-satisfactory and subsequently these teachers were fired by her, but this decision took her head on with the Washington teacher`s union as they were against the move to fire teachers. She also faced some legal and ethical issues as she was publicly criticized for firing the teachers and staff of the schools that also included principles and other staff members of various schools.

She later introduced a comprehensive accountability and audit systems for appraising the teachers of the schools with the assistance of a private entity and this new system was termed as impact. This system was a multi-dimensional approach for evaluating the staff. The performance of the teachers is valued through a value added score obtained by the students of the class they thought...............................

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