The Washington Post magazine had an excellent piece over the weekend by Samantha Cleaver, a DC Public Schools special education teacher who was part of the District's teaching fellows program.  Although I was an alternatively certified special ed teacher in a less dysfunctional system than DCPS, this story still took me back to my first weeks in the classroom.  The lack of proper preparation, the lack of materials and especially the lack of response, let alone support, from the central office all stand out.  

If I was to be snarky, I'd simply note that the Aspen Commission's recommendations on teacher quality will take care of all of this. And they’ll be a snap to implement in a school district that can’t properly heat its buildings.  But my post on weighted student funding was a pessimistic enough critique of the lack of perspective of the education reform community for one month. Instead I want to write about hope.  

I’m agnostic on the issue of mayoral control of schools. The idea of restoring democratic accountability by focusing authority on a visible elected leader makes sense – our disconnection to local government is a real problem in America.  But mayoral control can – especially in a really big city – highlight the worst elements of centralization.  I think we’ve gotten that in NYC (hello bulletin board police, goodbye Chancellor's district.).

But I'm not agnostic about Adrian Fenty taking contol of DCPS, because I think that Samantha Cleaver deserved better from the system. And I have hope that Fenty can deliver. He recently spoke at a Washington Teachers Union meeting of building representatives, and I understand they gave him an earful about the situations they face every day in their schools. And he listened. When it was all done, they gave him an ovation, because they understood he was there to help. This doesn't mean he's going to do everything I or the local union want. But he started by listening. That gives me hope. Samantha Cleaver isn't going back to DCPS, but when her replacement arrives, I'm hoping that some things will be better for him or her because of Mayor Fenty.

Final Thought: Margie at Quick and the Ed wrote a smart post about the real world teacher quality issues raised by this article.  Funny she didn’t mention the part in the article where – stymied by her kids' discipline problems – Ms. Cleaver took a day off to regroup. When I read that, I thought to myself, "wow, she just admitted to freezing an asset in the Washington Post."