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26 Dec 07

"Schoolhouse Rock" - WSJ OpinionJournal

- profile/ overview of Michelle Rhee, the D.C. schools chancellor who's rocking the traditional bureaucratic boat of public schooling:
"She says she keeps hearing from worried city council members that some teachers and administrators are frightened of her. They are feeling pressure and that's a problem. Her answer? Get used to it. 'I'm going to hold people accountable and I'm going to hold their feet to the fire. If they're feeling pressure--good! I feel pressure every day because I have the education of 49,000 kids in my hands.'"
- I say go for it, and damn all the complaining from some sectors. Any time a bureaucracy serves primarily itself instead of its clients/ constituents, it needs a wake up kick in its nether regions, as well as a major dismantling. You can't decentralize centrally (Marshall McLuhan, paraphrased).

opinionjournal.com/...feature.html - Preview

education michelle_rhee reform school washington_dc wsj_opinion

  • Her name first came to Mayor Fenty's attention through Joel Klein, the chancellor of the New York City School system. She was known as an out-of-the-box thinker, a relentless advocate of reform. And that made her just what the young mayor was looking for.


    The alliance she and the mayor formed that day is now one of the strongest cards in the chancellor's hand. Their agreement was that as long as she acted in the best interests of the kids, he would back her up no matter how loud the screaming of the unions and community groups. "And since then, he has been unwavering," Ms. Rhee says with a note of awe in her voice. "He has never ever said to me, well, we need to think of the political ramifications."

    • - that's leadership; wish we had some of that at the municipal level in Victoria. - on 2007-12-26
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  • To be effective, Ms. Rhee believes, reforms must begin with the people closest to the children. When she first took the job, she made time to meet individually with all 159 principals in the school system. "People thought I was crazy, and it was very time consuming," she says, "but it was the best use of time . . . it was very telling."


    Telling of what? Ms. Rhee quickly came to the conclusion that principals who were succeeding in their schools were her best resource. They were the ones who could tell her what she needed to do. She called in a group of top-tier principals and asked them for their wish lists: "I called them together and told them, 'You're the unsung heroes. This place creates such a bureaucracy that you can't get stuff done efficiently. Be creative, tell me what you want to do.'"


    At first, the principals looked at her blankly. "They were like, what? And then when they got it, they were so excited." One principal asked for permission to run her school as a STEM school--focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And she said that she wanted to keep her kids all the way through 8th grade. She explained that if parents had a school they believed in, they'd be less likely to take them out of the public system.

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11 Oct 07

bulletins.cfm

  • 2. Strengthening local government in British Columbia

    In mid-May, Bill 14 was introduced in the British Columbia Legislature, completing a reform process for local government in the province. Municipalities gain the status of being called local governments and Bill 14 includes provisions to clarify various issues relating to regional governments, land use planning and various other matters.

    From an Ontario stand-point, what is remarkable about the British Columbian approach is that the provincial government seems ready and willing to treat local governments as independent entity entirely capable of exercising autonomous powers. Further information on this matter may be obtained from the Union of British Columbia Municipalities website: http://www.civicnet.gov.bc.ca/ or from the provincial government’s website http://www.marh.gov.bc.ca/LGPOLICY/MAR/bill14hi.html.
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