Short answer question

HKS693 Case Number 1957.0

This case was written by Laura Winig, Case Writer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. It was sponsored by Steven J. Kelman, Albert J. Weatherhead III and Richard W. Weatherhead Professor of Public Management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. HKS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.

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Michelle Rhee and the Washington D.C. Public Schools

For eighty-five years, until the 1950s, the Washington D.C. public schools (DCPS) were considered a

model of academic achievement; students consistently met or exceeded national norms on standardized

tests.1 But in the 1950s and 1960s, accomplished teachers began to leave the city for better opportunities in

the suburbs, carried out by the tide of black middle-class families seeking refuge from the rising crime rate

in D.C. Following the white flight that had come before it, this black flight created a permanent class of

impoverished families who struggled to educate their children amid widespread social unrest and high

unemployment.2

Student performance plummeted and D.C.’s schools were soon counted among the nation’s worst

performing. Residents often attributed the schools’ crumbling infrastructure, low student test scores and

high dropout rate to governmental neglect. As a federal district, Washington D.C. was under direct control

of the federal government; residents could not elect city officials and had little self-governance, even over

the schools. In 1968, mounting public pressure to improve the quality of education in the public schools

forced Congress to grant city residents the right to elect a Board of Education, effectively making board

members the city’s only elected officials.3 As the sole venue for residents to voice concerns and influence

local government, the Board of Education became a contentious political platform, and made little progress

improving the schools.

Washington residents appealed to Congress to cede more control to the municipality. Bowing to

pressure, in 1973 Congress enacted the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that devolved certain powers

over the District to an elected local government consisting of a newly created mayoral position and a 13-

member Council of the District of Columbia (the functional equivalent of a state legislature), which

governed the DCPS. Nevertheless, all legislation passed by the Council, including the city’s budget,

remained subject to approval by Congress, which maintained supreme authority over the city.

For the next twenty years, little changed. In 1995, in response to escalating budget deficits and

continued abysmal academic performance by the city’s public-school students, Congress passed the D.C.

School Reform Act and created the D.C. Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority

(Control Board) to take fiscal control of the city. Within a year, the Control Board fired the DCPS

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superintendent and transferred the authority of the elected Board of Education to an appointed board of

trustees. Declaring a “state of emergency” requiring “drastic and immediate action,” the Control Board

chair said, "We are convinced that the time for change has come—that every day we delay action is another

day that children's futures are delayed."4

The board of trustees took up its assigned tasks: to increase the quality of educational services, to

ensure academic improvement and to develop a long-term reform plan for the city’s schools.5 The board

chair, a Harvard University economist and President Emeritus of the Brookings Institution, vowed to turn

around the school system: "And once we get it fixed, we will return it to the proper authorities," he said.6

Though the elected Board of Education was retained to serve in an advisory capacity, its members were

outraged over the board's sudden loss of power. Said one: "This is disenfranchisement. We are the link to

the community."7

When the trustees’ term expired in 2001, power reverted back to the elected Board of Education, but

the school system was still in crisis, suffering from entrenched system failures including high teacher

turnover, a non-functioning payroll system that sometimes left staff unpaid, warehouses stocked with

undistributed textbooks and record low test scores: 74% of the city’s high school students tested in the

lowest scoring category for math, 55% for reading.8

School enrollment declined precipitously. In 2003, the D.C. school system had 65,000 students; by

2006, enrollment had dropped to 58,000, largely due to the rising popularity of charter schoolsa and

families moving to the suburbs. By 2007, Washington ranked last among 11 urban school systems in math

and second to last in reading.9 Indeed, only 43% of students graduated high school.10 This was despite a $1

billion school budget yielding the third highest level of per pupil spending in the country.11

Parents, politicians, labor unions and activists all agreed that reform was necessary; by almost any

measure—test scores, attendance, safety—Washington public schools were failing. But stakeholders

disagreed sharply on how to achieve their shared goal of providing a good education to the city’s children.

Reformers wanted to close failing schools, parents wanted to choose where their children attended school,

and the teachers’ union wanted more compensation for teachers.

Mayor Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee

D.C. City Council member Adrian Fenty made reforming the DCPS a centerpiece of his 2006

Washington mayoral campaign. After celebrating a landslide victory with 89% of the vote, Fenty, a native

Washingtonian and, at 35, the youngest mayor in the city’s history, made good on his promise. “The

election made me the CEO of the government of the District of Columbia. I posed two questions: What’s the

a Two charter schools opened in 1995 and by 2000, 31 were in operation, attended by 6,912 students. Test results from the 2004–2005 school year revealed that 54% of D.C. charter school students were proficient in math, compared with 44% of students in traditional schools. Charter students also scored higher than their counterparts in reading.

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biggest thing holding us back? What is the best way for me to propel the city forward as fast as possible?

The easy answer to those two questions was schools and education,” he recalled.b

Fenty set his sights on recruiting reform activist Michelle Rhee to lead the DCPS. Rhee, the daughter of

Korean immigrants, attended private schools in Toledo, Ohio where she excelled academically.12 After high

school, she moved to upstate New York to attend Cornell University, an Ivy League school, where she

majored in government. Though she had no teaching aspirations, in her senior year Rhee learned about

Teach for America, a program that placed freshly minted college graduates in poor urban and rural schools

for short-term teaching assignments. Intrigued, she joined the program and spent three years teaching in

Baltimore elementary schools.13

Rhee co-taught 70 students and claimed to have dramatically increased their reading levels over the

course of two years. The experience led her to believe that teacher quality was the key to improving

schools. “It shaped my entire career, because in a very low-income, very low-performing school, probably

one of the worst, I saw a group of kids move from the bottom on standardized tests to the top,” said Rhee.

“I saw that when you worked hard, when you structured the kids’ schedules, that they could absolutely rise

to the incredibly high expectations that we set of them.” Added Rhee: “The lesson I took from that was that

teachers are everything," she said.14

After the Election

After the mayoral election, Fenty sought advice from education experts, including New York City

school chancellor Joel Klein, about the best way to turn around the schools. “We visited other mayors who

had made education their top priority, got a lot of tips from them, and brought them back to Washington,”

said Fenty. Though Rhee had no experience as a school administrator, Klein urged Fenty to consider her.

After Baltimore, she had earned a master’s of public policy degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of

Government in 1997 and then went on to found the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that recruited and

trained teachers to work in low-performing urban districts. Her work had impressed officials at the White

House—so much so that she had been invited to sit with first lady Laura Bush during the president's 2004

State of the Union address.15 “I was impressed on every level with Michelle: her intellect, sense of urgency

and management acumen," said Fenty.16

Fenty contacted Rhee to ask her to consider serving as DCPS superintendent, but Rhee demurred,

citing the union and Board of Education’s power to stand in the way of the reforms she felt needed to be

made. Fenty persisted: "This system needs radical change. It really needs a shake-up," he said. "We did not

want to pick someone to tinker around the edges. . . . “17 Fenty also wanted to move quickly. He explained:

b Personal interviews with Adrian Fenty, Michelle Rhee and George Parker were conducted for this case study in May and July 2011.

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My biggest concern was that we would not move fast enough, that we would not

make decisions aggressively enough, and that we wouldn’t show results to the

citizens quickly enough. My thinking was, in order to fix the school system, we

need to give Michelle Rhee as much power and authority as possible, so that she

can fix it as quickly as possible. My role was to give her as much freedom from

politics, politicians, and special interests as possible. My hope was that she would

spend almost no time thinking about politics, just about fixing the school system.

Upon taking office in January 2007, Fenty announced his plan to restructure the DCPS by putting the

mayor’s office, rather than the Board of Education, in charge, emulating a move made by New York City

Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 that resulted in higher graduation rates and improved test scores. In April 2007,

the D.C. city council approved the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act that gave

the mayor direct oversight over and responsibility for the school system and authority to select a chancellor

responsible for school administration.

Two months later, Fenty fired the sitting D.C. school superintendent (the seventh to hold the office in

ten years); persuaded that Fenty was committed to aggressive change, Rhee had agreed to accept Fenty’s

offer to serve as DCPS chancellor. In June 2007, Fenty announced that Rhee would be appointed

chancellor—a new position that would report directly to the mayor. Rhee won the support of the council,

which was required to confirm the appointment, and signed a 5-year, $1.25 million contract.18

Rhee as Chancellor

Rhee was determined to heed the mayor’s directive: “He said, ‘Our kids can’t wait for incremental

change. So we’re going to go 100 miles an hour,’” she recalled. She sized up the two major challenges that

faced her when she took over the schools. “One was a complete and utter lack of accountability. There was

no accountability at the central office, no sense that what they did every day had to be tied to student

achievement to the classroom. The second was that decision making was largely being driven by politics like

who’s going to be mad at you if you make this decision versus that decision,” said Rhee. She expected

reforming the schools would be an uphill battle. “I never had any illusions about how tough it would be to

turn around a failing system like D.C.’s,” she said.19

At the start of her tenure, Rhee spent most of her energy attending to the DCPS’s emergency

operational needs. “Everything in the system was broken, but first we had to take care of people’s basic

needs. Let’s make sure that people are being paid, they’re on health benefits, we know how many kids are

in the system, we’re making sure that the textbooks are getting delivered,” said Rhee.

In June 2007 she attended a meeting to discuss preparations for the beginning of the school year.

Rhee explained:

The purpose of the meeting was to determine if we were ready to open the

schools in August. I was extraordinarily concerned because each department was

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putting on a dog-and-pony show but I had no idea, based on this meeting,

whether we were actually going to be able to open schools. And so I said, “We’re

not going to run any of the meetings like this again. I’m going to tell you how

we’re going to run the meetings, moving forward. We are going to come up with

metrics, and then I want to base decisions on those very specific measures.

We’re going to mark you green, yellow and red. Are you on track? Green. Are you

slightly off track? Yellow. Are you way off track? Red.” We focused on the people

who were red and yellow. And that was the beginning of the creation of the

culture of accountability.

Next, Rhee turned her attention to teacher and principal quality. “The research is very clear that in

terms of in-school factors, teacher quality is the number one determinant of student achievement and

student success. I’d be dumb not to take that into consideration, and focus very, very heavily on the human

capital aspects,” said Rhee. She met with every principal in the D.C. school system. “Many of them said to

me, “I’ve never met the superintendent, much less sat down and talked with them. And I said, ‘We’re going

to set goals together, document them, and then I’m going to keep track of them,’” said Rhee.

Throughout her first six months, Rhee heeded Fenty’s directive to keep her focus on the needs of the

children:

He said, “I want to make sure that we are making every decision with the best

interests of kids in mind.” It was our north star. It made things both easy and

hard. Hard because we were making some really tough, unpopular decisions, and

we felt the ramifications of those decisions. Easy, in that we didn’t ever worry if a

decision would lose us political capital, or a contingency of people that we might

need for the next fight. We were very clear we were going to do whatever we

thought would be most beneficial to kids.

School Closings and Teacher Firings

In November 2007, less than six months into Rhee’s tenure, Fenty and Rhee announced that 23 under-

enrolled schools, an average of three within each of the city’s eight wards and representing 15% of the

city’s schools, would be closed. The move phased out many special needs schools (students were

mainstreamed instead) and reduced excess unused space, reducing the square footage of schools under

maintenance from 15 million to 12.8 million. Rhee cited a variety of factors for her selections, taking special

note of the average 5-year enrollment decline for each of the closed schools (ranging from 20% to 64%) and

the low student test scores—fewer than 61% of students tested proficient in math and reading in any of the

schools on the list.20

Rhee explained the school closings: “At its height, the Washington D.C. schools had 140,000 kids. But

we’d never right-sized the district as enrollments fell so in 2007 we were operating 145 schools for 48,000

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kids. For that number, you should probably be operating about 70-75 schools. As a result, we were

spending almost more money per child than any other urban jurisdiction in the country because we were

paying to light, heat, and air-condition half-empty buildings,” said Rhee.

Rhee said that although everyone—parents, union officials, teachers, the council—acknowledged that

schools had to be closed, many were unhappy with her choices. “A council member said to me, ‘We know

that you have to close schools. You can close any school that you want to, as long as it’s not in my ward.’ It

was very apparent to me very early on that a lot of the decision making to date had been made based on

politics,” said Rhee.

Council members and parents also expressed concern about the number of schools being closed at the

same time. “There had been a plan that called for closing three schools a year for six years, and I thought,

well, if you know you’ve got to close 20 schools, then just close 20 schools. Just pull the bandage off instead

of suffering death by a thousand cuts,” said Rhee.

Rhee recalled a meeting she had attended in 2005 that shaped her philosophy about the need to

implement rapid change. She explained:

A longstanding school chancellor, a very well known figure in education reform,

was speaking to a group of superintendents. He said, “The mistake that most

superintendents make is believing that you have to wait to make the hard

decisions, that you have to amass political capital and good will, and then after

that you make the tough decisions. What people don’t understand is your power

is greatest on day one in office, and it precipitously decreases from there.” And I

thought, I’m fooling myself if I think I’m going to make everybody love me, and

then I’m going to make the hard decisions.

Nevertheless, as Rhee began to close the schools she was shouted down at public meetings where

parents turned out in droves to protest. Most were skeptical that Rhee’s actions were in the best interests

of their children and wanted their schools left open. "She gives you this stare as if she's looking right

through you. 'I'm listening but I'm not hearing you'," said one Parent Teacher Association leader. "Rhee and

her people are not from D.C. They don't understand us. They are here for the money. She'll be here two

years, tops," he said.21 One parent explained that Rhee’s style was as much to blame for parents’ fever pitch

as the changes she was enacting and wished Rhee would be more forthright in sharing her plans: "It's

unfortunate because people use their imaginations, and imaginations tend to run to the negative," she

said.22

Firings

In March 2008, Rhee fired 98 of the 900 employees of the DCPS central office, primarily administrators

and information technology workers. The Council had granted her the authority to dismiss up to 360

employees without having to show them cause, but amid a loud public outcry by the fired workers, council

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chairman Vincent Gray asked Rhee for a list of those dismissed. Rhee declined to release the list, citing the

workers’ privacy, and referred the request to the D.C. Attorney General’s office. Gray expressed his anger.

“"In my opinion, we haven't asked for anything that can't be shared," said Gray. "It seems to me that given

the council accorded [Rhee] the authority in the first place . . . there ought to be a desire to keep the

communication lines open."23

In May and June 2008 Rhee dismissed 46 principals and assistant principals, citing poor performance.

In a letter to Rhee, the Council of School Officers—the AFL-CIO-affiliated union that represented school

principals—said the firing decisions were made in a “factual vacuum” calling the firings random and

arbitrary: “When . . .decisions are made without reference to an individual’s performance evaluation, the

entire evaluation process is rendered a mock and a sham.”24

A few weeks later in July 2008, after the end of the school year, Rhee fired 250 teachers and 500

teacher’s aides who failed to meet a June 30 deadline to gain required certifications. An additional 75 newly

hired teachers who were still in their probationary period (and thus had not yet earned tenure) were fired

for poor performance. Over the course of the school year another 96 teachers joined the ranks of the

unemployed.

Rhee replaced them, hiring 934 new teachers in the spring and summer of 2009—634 more than the

annual average number new teacher hires.25 In the meantime, in February 2009, an independent arbitrator

reversed her 2008 firing of 75 teachers, ruling that although Rhee had the right to fire teachers during their

two-year probationary period, she could only do so if they had received negative feedback from school

principals. The “glaring and fatal flaw” in Rhee’s move was that the teachers were not offered reasons for

their terminations, as required by their contract.26 In October 2009 Rhee again laid off 266 teachers, citing a

$43.9 million budget shortfall. The union claimed that Rhee manufactured the budget crisis to justify firing

older, tenured teachers and filed suit challenging the terminations.27 In response, Rhee told a magazine

reporter: "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78

days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?" Gray, “stunned” by Rhee’s

comments, demanded to know why, if the abuse allegations were true, was it not brought before the

council? He also wanted to know why Rhee blamed a budget shortfall for the terminations.28

George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU), demanded that Rhee issue the

teachers an apology. "It is an unfortunate and dangerous statement to paint all these teachers as child

abusers [and it] is simply not true. She owes the teachers an apology. It is reckless and damages the

reputations of a lot of teachers—it’s just not true," said Parker.29

The controversial firings led to a rally with protestors—teachers, administrators, parents and union

representatives—carrying signs reading, "Sweep Her Out," calling for Rhee’s resignation.30 "We are tired of

being quiet, of just accepting whatever Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee impose," said a high school

counselor. "The time has come to speak up." The AFL-CIO called the layoffs "a cold, hard case of union

busting" and pledged support.31

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Negotiating with the Washington Teachers’ Union

In December 2007, Rhee opened negotiations with Parker to create a new teachers’ contract to

replace the one that expired several months earlier. Parker, who served as a union negotiator since 1988

and was elected president in February 2005, noted that even before Rhee’s arrival, the union was prepared

for reforms. After a survey of D.C.’s teachers revealed strong support for the Mayor’s plan to take control of

the schools, the union had backed it. But the union leadership was concerned about the way Rhee’s

appointment was handled. “As part of the legislation [that gave the Mayor the right to appoint a chancellor]

the Mayor was required to consult with the union before selecting a chancellor. But he decided on Michelle

without consulting with us, which made for some contentious meetings. That requirement was part of the

reason why many union members voted to support the mayor’s plan in the first place,” said Parker.

The union was told of the mayor’s decision the night before Rhee’s appointment was announced and

debated whether to challenge his choice. “It was June and school opened in August. Our executive board

had to make a decision: do we challenge it and open school, possibly without a superintendent, or is she

acceptable?” said Parker. After meeting with Rhee, union officials decided to testify in support of her

confirmation. “But we were scolded by the council chair for not forcing the Mayor to adhere to the

legislation. He said, ’You should be about the business of protecting your members.’ But I think part of it

was that the council was upset that the Mayor did not consult them either,” he said.

Parker noted that parents, too, seemed more concerned about the Mayor’s tactics than his choice of

Rhee. “The more vocal parents were focused on the loss of democracy when the Mayor got rid of the

elected Board of Education. Parent activists saw that as a dilution of their voice in the education of their

children. But once it passed the council there was not a lot of opposition to Michelle Rhee at the

confirmation hearings. Parents were at a point that they wanted change. They knew we had quite a few

failing schools,” said Parker.

Union leadership was also concerned about Rhee’s lack of prior experience. “Her main credential was

that the Mayor wanted her,” said Parker. Nevertheless, he felt that he would be able to work with Rhee and

cited an example of Rhee’s responsiveness:

Even before we began contract negotiations, we discussed a provision in the

existing contract that called for the schools to pay for the supplies teachers

needed to get their classrooms ready for the first day of school. The system that

was set up did not work. When I explained this to Michelle and told her we

needed to provide teachers with some kind of credit card to buy supplies, she

agreed. So I knew right away that I could work with her. I also pointed out that

not one teacher had a computer to record data and keep records. She said,

“We’re going to take care of that.” And she did. She gave me a date by which it

would happen, and it was done.

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Contract Negotiations

Both Rhee and Parker entered negotiations hopeful that a contract could be worked out reasonably.

Each felt the other’s agenda was clear. Rhee knew that Parker wanted higher pay for teachers. Rhee, too,

wanted to increase teachers’ pay. “Usually in contract negotiations, pay increases are the problem,” said

Parker. “But Michelle Rhee believed in paying teachers. That was the easiest contract that I’ve ever

negotiated when it comes to convincing somebody that teachers ought to be paid.” Parker knew that

Rhee’s quid pro quo was very clear. “She said ‘Look, we pay the teachers and they do the job. If they don’t

do the job, we fire them.’ That was her philosophy from day one,” said Parker.

Rhee and Parker negotiated a plan that called for schools to pay teachers a bonus if school wide

student test scores improved. For schools that raised their math and reading scores by 20%, every teacher

could earn a bonus of $8,000, called a team award. “That’s unheard of. In most school districts, you might

get $500, $800. Michelle said, ‘If we’re going to offer an incentive, then let’s make it a real incentive . . .”

said Parker.

Unable to tap public funds to support a bonus plan, Rhee turned to private foundations. “We didn’t

have money within the city coffers, so I went and raised a lot of external money. And I wish I could say that I

was hugely strategic and had thought this all out from the beginning, but it just sort of happened,” said

Rhee. The funders, who included the Broad, Walton, Robertson and Arnold foundations, would only commit

if the union agreed to sign a contract that significantly changed existing teacher seniority and tenure norms.

WTU leadership balked. “The union said, ‘We will give you half the concessions for half the money,’” said

Rhee, who explained that private donors did not consider that a wise compromise. “They were not going to

put in private money unless it would move the ball forward in a national context. They wanted to see a

revolutionary contract,” said Rhee.

In December 2008, one year into the negotiations, Parker and Rhee hit an impasse. Despite the

popularity of the bonus plan, Parker faced opposition within the union from those who were concerned

about the sources of the funds. “I took a lot of heat because one of the donors was the Waltons [owners of

Wal-Mart], and of course, the Walton group is anti-union. How can you take money for performance

bonuses when part of it coming from anti-union people?” said Parker, who said he received calls from union

leaders around the country who, money aside, thought that accepting performance pay set a dangerous

precedent. Parker was unconvinced. “In any other business, your performance matters. I remember telling

one guy, ‘When you go to the next Rams game, tell them don’t pay the quarterback any more than they pay

the kicker and see how many great quarterbacks you get,’” said Parker.

Rhee’s proposal to eliminate teacher tenure and seniority benefits was another sticking point. Under

her proposal, the school system would establish two pay tiers, red and green. Teachers in the red tier would

maintain their tenure benefits and continue to receive traditional raises. Those who voluntarily joined the

green tier would receive substantial bonuses and raises in exchange for relinquishing tenure. Green tier

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teachers would also receive annual reviews and would face firing unless they passed an evaluation and

demonstrated gains in student test scores.32

“I told her I could not support it but I suggested we talk about it with our members,” said Parker.

“Strategically, that was a mistake on my part because negotiations are meant to be private. We agreed to

hold some sessions with teachers and see how they felt about it. Major mistake, because members thought

we had reached agreement already and they were upset. The issue was so emotional that it didn’t matter

that it had not yet been agreed, that it was only something that was on the table. The mere fact that it was

even being discussed made some people crazy,” said Parker.

Parker was frustrated that he had nobody to appeal to as his negotiations with Rhee derailed. He

explained:

In other contract negotiations, whenever there was a situation where you just

can’t move forward with the superintendent, you had the option of going to

board members and getting them to help move things along. But in this case, you

can only go to the mayor, and he was unyielding in his support of Michelle Rhee.

He gave her carte blanche. That is one of the reasons why the negotiations took

such a long time, because I just had to work it out with Michelle.

Though Parker and Rhee were able to reach agreement on many contract terms, including teacher

salary increases and benefits, professional development improvements, the creation of intern and mentor

programs, and establishing an instructional coach for each school, after a year of negotiations they could

not settle on tenure and seniority terms. In early December, 2008, Parker asked Randi Weingarten,

president of the American Federation of Teachers, WTU’s parent union, to join the negotiations.

Four days later, Rhee appeared on the cover of Time magazine, standing in an empty classroom,

holding a push broom. Increasingly, Rhee found support from the press, eager to publicize what was

becoming a very heated battle. The message was very clear to Parker: “This one shot gave the picture of,

‘Look, just sweep them all out. Get rid of them all.’ It was an insult to the hard work that our teachers

perform every day.”33 The contract negotiations were now officially national news.

In April 2009 a mediator was brought in, but little progress was made as the two sides debated the

merits of Rhee’s pay-for-performance plan. By July 2009 it was becoming clear that a new contract would

not be in place for the start of the 2009/2010 school year. That same month, a new factor was introduced

into the negotiations when President Obama announced his “Race to the Top” competition—a grant

program that encouraged states to implement performance-based incentive programs and phase out

tenure and seniority. Some states, like Colorado and New York, moved quickly to do so. "The ideas have

gained currency at the national level," a mediator between the union and the DCPS later remarked. "What

was seen as bold [in 2007] is now reform, not revolution."34 Indeed, in 2009 the Arizona state legislature

removed seniority guarantees and prohibited school districts from using tenure or seniority as a factor in

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determining teacher layoffs. Similar agreements were ratified in New Haven, Baltimore, Seattle, Toledo and

Tucson.

Evaluating Teacher Performance

Before 2007, DCPS teachers received annual evaluations based on classroom observations by school

principals. The vast majority of teachers received positive ratings. As a result, very few teachers were fired

due to poor evaluations. “Only 8% of the eighth graders in the city’s schools were performing at grade level

in mathematics. And at the same time, 95% of teachers were being rated as doing a good job. So how can

you have a system where all the adults were running around thinking, ‘I’m doing good work,’” said Rhee,

who decided she would develop a measurement system that would evaluate teachers, in part, on the gains

made by their students. “We wanted to tie how we’re evaluating ourselves as the adults in the system to

the outcomes that we are producing for kids,” she explained.

Rhee was surprised to discover that the teacher evaluation system was not subject to collective

bargaining with the union. (Though the instrument and process of teacher evaluation was not subject to

collective bargaining, the use of the data was.) Congress gave the school system sole authority for the

development of a teacher evaluation system in the mid-1990s after the WTU refused to renegotiate the

then-existing evaluation system with the District.35

Beginning in early 2009, Rhee and her team met with scores of teachers to learn what was working—

and not working—with the existing teacher evaluation system. “According to everybody, it was not a good

evaluation system at all,” said Rhee. “They felt we needed a more fair, rigorous and transparent evaluation

system moving forward.” Rhee noted that the existing system did not identify students who might be falling

short on reading and math proficiency levels but who nonetheless had shown improvement over the course

of the school year. She believed she could use standardized testing data more accurately to judge student

growth and teacher effectiveness.36

Rhee said she and her team took steps to make the process inclusive by holding focus groups and

meeting with teachers directly to collect feedback, but she noted the difference between soliciting

feedback and agreeing to act on it. “There was no way that we were ever going to be able to create a model

that addressed everybody’s concerns. We knew we could not make everyone happy. But people were

saying, “We told you to do something and you didn’t do it. Therefore you didn’t listen.” And I said, “I

listened. I take in all that information, and at the end of the day make the decision that I think is the right

one,” said Rhee. “Though we did a tremendous amount to reach out to teachers to get their insights, at the

end of the day, we knew that we could implement whatever tool we wanted,” she said.

Designing IMPACT

School systems employed a variety of methods to evaluate their teachers, ranging from reviewing

portfolios of student work to peer or parental assessments.37 Several major school systems, including those

in Houston, Chicago and Milwaukee, had started limited use of a new "value-added" approach, primarily to

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award bonuses or design performance improvement plans.38 Value-added systems aimed to isolate each

teacher’s unique contribution to their student’s educational achievement based on student test scores that

could not otherwise be attributed to family, school, peer or community influence.

Critics of value-added systems noted they presented serious potential pitfalls. One was that the

smaller the sample size, the more statistically unreliable the result. Measuring test score growth across a

school, or even a grade within a school, was more valid than looking at an individual teacher’s class, which

may have 15 or 20 students.39 One critic pointed out that value-added systems were most useful for

differentiating between exceptional and poor teachers, but had difficulty with "fine-grain distinctions"

about those in the middle.40

Rhee was eager to introduce value-added measures to DCPS but had difficulty enlisting academics to

help her design an evaluation system. “We talked to lots of researchers and I asked how to draw the line

between an ineffective teacher and a minimally effective teacher and then between an effective and highly

effective teacher. They kept telling me it could not be done in a perfect way,” said Rhee. Ultimately Rhee,

her chief “human capital” assistant (the 2005 national Teacher of the Year) Jason Kamras, Harvard Graduate

School of Education professor Thomas J. Kane, and the research firm Mathematica Policy Research,

developed an value-added tool at a cost of roughly $4 million. (See Exhibit 1 for a description of how

individual value-added (IVA) scores were calculated and Exhibit 2.)

The value-added tool was designed to use scores from the standardized tests that DCPS was already

administering in certain grades and subjects—the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS).c

Approximately 20% of DCPS teachers taught in grades or classes that conducted standardized testing so

only those teachers received a value-added score: a measure of the impact teachers had on their students’

learning over the course of the school year, as measured by the DC-CASd test score data.

The value-added tool, however, was only one component of teachers’ evaluations. The overall

evaluation system, dubbed IMPACT, was comprised of several parts. The value-added score comprised 50%

of these teachers’ IMPACT scores. The second measure, called the Teaching and Learning Framework, was

designed to evaluate a teacher’s instructional expertise and made up 35% of their IMPACT score. For this

score, teachers were observed in their classrooms five times before a final rating was generated, three

times by a building administrator (typically a principal or assistant principal) and twice by an outside

"master evaluator" who was an independent subject-matter expert.41 After the initial observation, teachers

c The D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System assessed students on reading and math in grades 3-8 and 10, science in grades 5 and 8, biology in high school, and composition in grades 4, 7, and 10. d The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by George Bush in 2002, required states to develop assessment tools to test skills of students in specific grades. To comply with the law, DCPS developed the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS). Federal officials used the results of the annual tests to determine whether D.C. schools had achieved adequate yearly progress toward proficiency benchmarks. If not, provisions in the law required DCPS to make changes in academic programs or close underperforming schools.

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received a “growth plan” outlining their strengths and weaknesses and suggesting plans for improvement, if

needed.

An additional 10% of the teachers’ score was a measure of the teacher’s involvement with the school

community beyond the classroom called Commitment to the School Community. The remaining 5% was

called School Value-Added Student Achievement Data, a measure of the impact a teacher’s school had on

student learning over the course of the year; this measure, like the individual value-added score, was based

on DC-CAS data.

The IMPACT model was comprised of multiple measures so that a teacher with a low value-added

score but otherwise high marks would not be deemed ineffective. “I don’t think that anyone should be

evaluated based on one measure alone,” said Rhee. “If a teacher knocks everything else out of the park on

observations and contributions to school community, then they can’t be rated as being an ineffective

teacher,” said Rhee.

Since about 80% of DCPS teachers taught in grades or subject areas where standardized testing was

not conducted, the value-added measure was replaced by a measure called Teacher-Assessed Student

Achievement Data, which used assessments other than the DC-CAS and only accounted for 10% of teachers’

scores. Scores for the additional components were also weighted differently: Teaching and Learning

Framework: 75%; Commitment to the School Community: 10%; and School Value-Added Student

Achievement Data: 5%.

One of the most controversial aspects of IMPACT was Rhee’s demand in the ongoing contract

negotiations to be able to fire, rather than coach, low performing teachers at the end of a single evaluation

cycle (one year). Although school districts had experimented with value-added for many years it was

generally employed as a diagnostic tool to assess weaknesses or determine bonuses. Rhee's use of the

method to make firing decisions was expected to prompt other school systems to look at her method as a

possible model.42 “That caused a lot of anxiety amongst a lot of people,” said Rhee, who said critics and the

union wanted her to give teachers more time to pursue professional development to help improve their

performance. But for Rhee, whose two daughters attended the D.C. public schools, one year was long

enough. “Whenever I was developing policy, I always did so knowing it would impact my own kids. If I

decide to let an ineffective teacher stay in a classroom for a second year, then I have to do that knowing

that there’s a possibility that person might be teaching my daughter. And that’s just not a decision that I

could make for my kids. And if I’m not willing to make that decision for my child, then I’m not going to make

it for any other mother’s kid either,” said Rhee.

In July 2009, just days before Rhee introduced IMPACT to the DCPS system for the beginning of the

2009/2010 school year, the U.S. Department of Education announced the Race to the Top Initiative, a $4.35

billion program designed to spark reforms in K-12 education. Under the initiative, states competed against

one another to receive extra education funding. Applications would be judged based on criteria such as

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“improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance” and “supporting the transition to

enhanced standards and high-quality assessments.” Rhee and Fenty applied for the funding.

The Union Weighs In

The WTU opposed IMPACT as an unreliable tool for judging teachers’ effectiveness. Union leadership

was concerned that statistical modeling would be unreliable due to the small sample sizes and that the

data-driven system did not take into account the difficulty of teaching low-income students, whose

academic performance could be negatively influenced by poverty, family and a host of other social issues.

WTU was also concerned that the value-added component measured teachers’ relative performance:

teachers within a given school were scaled in relation to each other, rather than compared against a

uniform measure of accepted teaching practices. WTU noted that the master educators who would be

conducting the classroom performance evaluations would be chosen by the school district with no union

input. “Nobody thinks of the people in IMPACT as peers; they think about them as somebody that Michelle

picked,” said Weingarten.43

Despite WTU’s serious reservations, the union was powerless to stop Rhee from rolling out IMPACT.

“When Michelle wanted to implement [the new system], legally we could not prevent her from doing so. I

met with her, and I made recommendations. It was such a complicated evaluation system that I felt it

needed to be piloted first. But she didn’t agree. She said, they had to move forward now,” said Parker.

Though she noted WTU’s objection, Rhee pointed out that others thought she was not moving fast

enough. She explained:

I went to a conference of Wall Street CEOs and I was asked by one, “What is the

most revolutionary thing that you are doing right now in the school system?” I

said, “We’re creating this tool and 50% of the evaluation is going to be based on

student achievement growth.” And he said, “Fifty percent? Isn’t that a teacher’s

job to ensure that students are progressing academically? Why isn’t it 80% or

90% of their evaluation?” And I looked at him and I said, “Look, bucko, right now

it’s 0%. We’re taking this from zero to 50%.”

IMPACT was implemented at the beginning of the 2009/2010 school year, the start of Rhee’s third

term as chancellor. She said she had spent her first two years laying the groundwork for the accountability

system. “It wasn’t like we came in on day one and did it. There was a process that we went through to try to

get people oriented more towards a culture of accountability,” said Rhee. Parker disagreed: “I felt it was

implemented too hastily, without preparing principals, teachers or the master educators,” he said. “It's very

punitive. It takes the art of teaching and turns it into bean counting.”44

However some teachers supported IMPACT as an improvement over the existing evaluation system,

and Rhee noted the system was designed to provide teachers with five formal feedback cycles over the

course of the school year, giving teachers ample opportunity to improve their performance. In addition,

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Rhee hired 150 instructional coaches and mentor teachers to provide intensive, on-the-job support, and

invested in a $1 million “best practices” video library and additional curricular resources.45 “We knew that

not everybody would love it—but we thought it was a good first step,” said Rhee.

Reaching a Contract

On April 7, 2010, one year after Weingarten and the mediator were brought in, Rhee and Parker

announced they had reached a tentative agreement on a new contract. Both sides had made concessions in

order to reach agreement. Rhee backed off her demand that teachers give up tenure so they could be

terminated at will; instead, she agreed that DCPS would continue to show “just cause” before dismissing a

tenured teacher. However, the process, which could take as long as two years, was streamlined and the

definition of “just cause” amended to allow Rhee to fire teachers who received IMPACT scores of

“ineffective” immediately.

A crucial feature of the new contract was a large, general salary increase for teachers—21.6% over the

five-year life of the contract Additionally, however, under the new contract, at the end of the school year,

teacher performance was converted to a 100 to 400 point scale and each teacher received one of four

ratings:

• Highly effective: teachers who earned this rating were eligible for bonus compensation up to

$25,000 and repeat highly effective scorers were also eligible for base salary increases up to

$20,000.46

• Effective: Teachers rated effective advanced normally on their pay scales. 47

• Minimally effective: Those receiving the minimally effective rating were given an additional

year to take advantage of professional development opportunities provided by DCPS but

could be fired if they failed to improve after two years.48

• Ineffective: A rating of ineffective signified unacceptable performance and those who

received the rating were fired.49

The raises and bonuses in the contract were funded by four private foundations that agreed to contribute

$64.5 million.

Though Rhee had pressed to abolish the use of seniority solely to determine teacher terminations

during layoffs (the existing policy was “last in, first out” which meant the most recent hires were the first to

be dismissed), she and Parker negotiated to reduce seniority’s weighting in such decisions to 10%, rather

than eliminate it altogether. In addition, the contract contained a “mutual consent” rule; if budget cuts or

declining enrollment resulted in the elimination of positions, teachers could apply for new jobs at other D.C.

schools, but no weight was given to their seniority. Any teacher unable to find a new position was

terminated, but given three settlement choices: receive a one-time $25,000 contract buy-out, take early

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retirement (for those who had given twenty years of service) or serve in an administrative position for one

year before leaving the school system.50

One last hurdle remained: getting the union to ratify the contract. The union distributed a series of

flyers to its members, urging them to vote to ratify the contract. Rhee recalled that during the negotiations,

Parker had warned her that the rank and file would never accept the contracte, but he was proven wrong

when WTU membersf ratified the contract by a vote of 1,412 to 425. “I think that spoke volumes about the

fact that the teachers weren’t afraid of accountability. As long as they knew it was going to happen in a fair

and transparent way, they didn’t have an issue with it. It was really the teachers’ union leadership that

were worried about setting a precedent for the rest of the country,” said Rhee. Fenty agreed. “Teachers

loved the reforms. I believe that the people who run the teachers’ unions don’t. Because I believe that

teachers sign up to teach, and they’re the last people who would want to stick around if they weren’t

getting results,” he said.

Parker admitted he was surprised the contract passed by such a significant margin. “I think our

younger teachers got it over, because it passed by a great margin. Of course the monetary piece was an

incentive. There were a lot of carrots to go along with the stick,” said Parker. Indeed, teachers took to the

blogosphere after the contract was ratified and many who said they voted in favor of ratification cited the

financial benefits of the contract.

Rhee was pleased with the outcome: “What we ultimately ended up with is a contract where

essentially nobody has tenure and seniority is not a factor in staffing decisions. The entire system is

oriented towards performance and effectiveness. So now, if a teacher is rated as ineffective, it doesn’t

matter if they have taught two months or twenty-two years, if they’re rated as ineffective, then they are

terminated,” she said.

Although many of the changes had recently come about in other places likely because of the “Race to

the Top,” Joel Klein nonetheless described the agreement as a “game changer.”51 The press described it as

“a radical” performance-based compensation contract that would “revolutionize the way teachers get

paid.”52

First IMPACT Scores Released

On July 23, 2010, just after signing the new teachers’ contract, DCPS released information regarding

the scores from the IMPACT evaluations. Rhee was ready to announce that she planned to fire the 165

teachers who had received IMPACT ratings of “ineffective” as well as 76 teachers who had not met

e Parker’s recollection differed. He recalled telling Rhee that although he did not expect such a large margin of victory, he felt the final agreement would pass. “Otherwise I would not have come to a final agreement and put it to a vote of the membership. It would have been “failure” to spend that amount of time negotiating a long-awaited contract that I didn’t believe members would pass. I felt we had to do a very effective job of promoting the agreement because our opposition was very vocal,” said Parker.

f Of WTU’s 3,400 members, 1,837 voted in the election.

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qualifications based on their certification, but the timing gave her pause, since the mayoral primary election

would be held in September. She explained:

We were supposed to let these folks go. So I went to the mayor and I said, “I’m

very sensitive to the fact that your election is right around the corner, so give me

some direction.” And he said, “If we take this action, does that mean that more

kids are going to have better teachers in the fall?” I said yes. He said, “Well, then

let’s do it.” He remained true to what we had committed at the beginning, all the

way through the three and a half years we worked together. But the minute we

announced it, it was on the national news—CNN, MSNBC, everybody was

covering it—and I got calls from supporters who said, “Are you insane? You can’t

fire hundreds of people weeks before his election. This is political suicide.” And it

may well have been, but it was just in keeping with what we had always decided

to do.

On July 23, 2010, Rhee announced the 241 dismissals, which represented approximately 5% of the

total teachers in the system. In addition, 737 other instructors (approximately 17% of all teachers) were

told they had been rated “minimally effective” and had one year to improve their performance or face

dismissal. "My hope is that many of them improve, but at the same time, we need to make sure the bar is

high," said Rhee. "I've got two children in the system, and I don't want a 'minimally effective teacher' and I

don't think anyone else does, either."53 Rhee’s office noted that in 2006, the year prior to her being named

chancellor, not one teacher had been fired for ineffectiveness.

The WTU immediately criticized the move and stated it would challenge the terminations. Weingarten

issued a statement: “Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s signature education philosophy appears to be that you can

hire and fire your way to better schools . . . . Questions have been raised not only about the validity of

IMPACT, but about the chancellor’s penchant for firing teachers rather than providing supports to develop

their skills.”54 Weingarten described the firings as a “destructive cycle of hire, fire, repeat.” “Evaluations

should include a component of student learning, of course, but there also has to be teacher development

and support,” Weingarten said. “It can’t just be a ‘gotcha’ system, like the one in D.C.”55 Indeed, though

others, such as the state of Tennessee, had used value-added systems primarily to evaluate and improve

teacher performance,g teachers expressed concern that they would lose their jobs or be subjected to public

humiliation if Rhee released their scores to the public. In Los Angeles, the city’s largest newspaper, the Los

g Tennessee has begun using value-added scoring for teachers, based on students’ standardized test scores, in 1992. Scores were used to help teachers improve their performance; teachers could not be fired solely based on their value- added scores. Source: Jay Matthews, “Tennessee System for Gauging Results Angers Some Educators but Gains Acceptance Elsewhere; Testing Students, Scoring Teachers,” The Washington Post, March 14, 2000, Lexis Nexus Academic, http://www.lexisnexus.com, accessed November 10, 2011.

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Angeles Times, published value-added scores for that city’s teachers. (See Exhibit 3 for teachers’ responses

to the methodology used to generate their scores.)

Parker surveyed the WTU teachers about their experience with IMPACT. “There were a lot of teachers

who felt that they needed more time to prepare. Teachers were having to get used to teaching the new

standards at the same time they were trying to get used to the elements of a new evaluation process, and

that’s why it was so controversial. It was like shock therapy,” said Parker, who believed the program was

designed to weed out teachers rather than help them improve. "It's punishment-heavy and support-light,"

he said, adding that it should have first been tried on a small pilot basis. "They've gone too far, too fast."

The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the council.56

The Election

In early 2010, Fenty had begun to gear up for his re-election bid, vowing to “work around the clock to

get re-elected.”57 Although the mayor seemed confident as he began a neighborhood door knocking

campaign—a strategy that had worked for him in the last election—public confidence in his leadership, if

not his results, was beginning to fade. A January 2010 poll found that a majority of residents felt that while

Fenty was doing a good job attracting new business to D.C., improving city services and reducing crime

(district residents gave higher ratings for their neighborhoods and the quality of key city services than they

had at any point in the previous twenty years), only 42% (63% white; 28% black) felt Fenty was doing a good

or excellent job improving the D.C. public schools.58

Fenty had long been criticized for his style, perceived as businesslike and standoffish.59 In a poll of

likely voters, more than 40% doubted Fenty’s “honesty, empathy and openness.”60 When Fenty’s opponent,

council chairman Vincent Gray, announced his candidacy in March 2010, he pitched himself as an “inclusive,

transparent” leader.61 He campaigned on an economic development platform centered on workforce

development and creating jobs under the slogan, “One City. Leadership We Need.”

Gray built a strong base of labor support and was endorsed by the AFL-CIO, police, firefighters and

government workers’ unions. Though teachers’ unions did not directly support Gray’s campaign, the AFT

spent around $1 million to defeat Fenty as part of an independent campaign. The funds were largely used

for communication with WTU members and outreach to AFL-CIO members in Washington, which included

mailings and live telephone calls.62 Gray spent a total of $1.15 million on his primary campaign.63

By late August 2010, Gray had pulled ahead of Fenty; a Washington Post poll showed Gray leading by

17 points. Fenty’s staff warned him that he needed to strike a more conciliatory tone. “In a poll, 65% said

that me and my administration were responsible for the city being better off. In the same poll, only 45%

said they would vote for me. I think that the reason for the difference was that, right or wrong, people had

been convinced that even though the city was headed in the right direction, it wasn’t worth some of the

decisions we were making to get it there,” said Fenty.

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Too late in his campaign, Fenty issued a half-hearted apology: "I haven't done a good job of

communicating and including people."64 Even an endorsement by the Washington Post, and his August

2010 announcement that D.C. had won $75 million in federal funding as part of the “Race to the Top”

initiative, could not save the campaign. Nor could Rhee, whose popularity was also in decline: by early

2010, 28% of African Americans said they supported her; in 2008, 50% of African Americans had supported

Rhee.65

In the closing days of the campaign, she joined Fenty at re-election rallies, but it was unclear whether

her efforts helped or hindered his campaign. A Washington Post poll found that among registered

Democrats, 41% said Rhee was a reason to vote for Fenty, and 40% said she was a reason to vote against

him. Of white voters, 68% said Rhee was a reason to support Fenty and 54% of black voters said she was a

reason to vote against him.66

Rhee had remained optimistic right up until the vote. “I may have been the only person in the city

who, all the way up until the morning after the election, believed that he was going to win. I thought crime

levels are the lowest in forty years, and the schools are doing better than they have in decades. People

aren’t going to give this up because they don’t like his personality or they don’t like the way that we went

about the school improvement process. I was absolutely wrong,” she said.

After the Election

In September 2010, Gray won the democratic primary. Fenty lost badly to Gray with voters on the

eastern side of Washington, the poorest section of the city. He explained:

We lost pretty handily in the places where the schools are broken the most. A lot

of it is probably our fault, but a lot of it goes to a certain lack of trust in

politicians. The school system has always been broken. I wouldn’t be surprised if,

at least in some people’s minds, there’s a feeling that the school system will

never improve. Mayors come and go, superintendents come and go, they all say

they’re going to fix it, and nobody ever does. I believe to fix a school system as

broken as ours takes at least five to ten years—if you had no obstacles, no

obstructions. But that is too long to wait to give somebody a great education.

Anything slower is immoral if not criminal. And that’s how I ran the school

system. I just felt that any of this talk of kind of compromising for

compromising’s sake, or doing less than what was recommended by people who

knew how to fix the system, not only was it bad for the kids, I think it’s worse. I

think it’s what we had been doing for the last thirty years in D.C. I’d much rather

lose an election than do what we’ve been doing for the last thirty years.

Thomas Sowell, an African-American economist and social theorist, analyzed Fenty’s loss:

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Mayor Fenty received more than 70 percent of the white vote in Washington. His

opponent received more than 80 percent of the black vote. Both men are black.

But the head of the school system that he appointed is Asian and the chief of

police is white. More than that, most of the teachers who were fired were black.

There were also bitter complaints that black contractors did not get as many of

the contracts for doing business with the city as they expected. In short, the

mayor appointed the best people he could find, instead of running a racial

patronage system, as a black mayor of a city with a black majority is apparently

expected to do. He also didn’t spend as much time schmoozing with the folks as

was expected.67

Some Fenty critics believed that D.C. residents resisted the DCPS changes—and ultimately refused to

re-elect Fenty—because the city employed a high proportion of local residentsh and they were worried that

the concessions Rhee won from the teachers’ union might impact civil service protections for other city

workers. “Even if it’s not providing word class education . . .the schools have always provided jobs,” said

Fenty.

After Fenty lost his re-election bid, Rhee blamed herself. “When I first met with Fenty about becoming

chancellor of the D.C. public school system, I had warned him that he wouldn’t want to hire me. If we did

the job right for the city’s children, I told him, it would upset the status quo—I was sure I would be a

political problem. . . I convinced myself the public would see the progress and want it to continue. But now I

have no doubt this cost him the election.”68 She continued:

I know people say I wasn’t good enough at building consensus, but I don’t think

consensus can be the goal. But I could have done a better job of communicating.

I should have said to the effective teachers, “You don’t have anything to worry

about. My job is to make your life better, offer you more support, and pay you

more.” I totally fell down on doing that. As a result, my comments about

ineffective teachers were often perceived as an attack on all teachers. I also

underestimated how much teachers would be relying on the blogs, random

rumors, and innuendo. Over the last 18 to 24 months, I held teacher-listening

sessions a couple of times a week. But fear was already locked in.69

After Fenty lost, Rhee stepped down to give Mayor-elect Gray the opportunity to appoint his own

chancellor, but she was steadfast in her belief that she had improved the schools during her three and one-

half years as chancellor. Rhee believed her efforts played a part in reversing the forty-one year enrollment

decline in the city schools. “The enrollment increase spoke volumes about the fact that people were

h However, differences in fact were not dramatic. In Washington D.C., 4% of residents worked for the city government; this compared to 3% for New York, Boston, Nashville and Chicago, and 2% Seattle. (Data compiled by the case writer from public sources.)

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regaining confidence in the public schools,” said Rhee. “[In two years] we went from being at the absolute

bottom on the NAEP examination, which is a national gold-standard test, to leading the nation in gains in

both reading and math, both fourth and eighth grade level, and we were the only jurisdiction in which every

single subgroup of children had improved their academic standing. It meant that we were on a wildly

different trajectory, and if we had been able to continue, we would have been able to accomplish our goal

of turning this school district into the highest performing urban school district in the country,” said Rhee.

Rhee admitted that she made some mistakes during her tenure. She reviewed polling data taken just

after the election. “People were asked, “So what did you think about the schools before Fenty became

mayor?” And people overwhelming said the schools were awful. “What do you think about the schools

now?” Record numbers of people said the schools were better, heading in the right direction; we have

more confidence and faith in the schools. Then they were asked, “Do you believe that the changes that

were made—firing teachers and closing schools—were necessary in order to get the results?” People said

no. Clearly, we were not connecting the dots for people,’” said Rhee.

Still, Rhee was proud of what she had accomplished and worried about the broader implications of

Fenty’s loss. “I’m concerned about the narrative that I hear now about, ‘let’s not have confrontation like

they had in D.C. Let’s all have harmony.’ I think when harmony becomes the goal, then you don’t get as

good an outcome. We came up with a product that was unlike any other union contract we had ever seen

before and it really does put students first. I think it was worth that struggle and that dialogue to get there,”

said Rhee.

Epilogue

Parker was voted out of office in November 2010, 556 votes to 480, with 25% of the union’s

membership voting. He lost to general vice president Nathan Saunders, who had been his harshest critic

during the contract negotiations.70 Saunders had criticized Parker for being too accommodating to Rhee and

pledged to pursue legal, legislative and lobbying efforts to undo the IMPACT system.

IMPACT continued to be used to measure teacher performance in the D.C. public schools despite

Rhee’s departure, though Kamras, who remained to head up the IMPACT assessments, conducted 100 focus

groups to collect feedback from 1,000 DCPS teachers which was incorporated into the tool.

After leaving D.C., Rhee founded a grassroots non-profit organization, Students First, to drive

education reform nationally. Rhee wanted to sign up one million members and raise $1 billion to invest in

the cause. “I travel around the country and give speeches. And after every speech that I give, I always have

teachers come up to me, and say, ‘We are with you, Michelle. We can’t tell anybody we’re with you, but

we’re with you.’ I believe that there are a huge number of effective teachers out there who know that the

system is broken, who know that we’ve got to change, who don’t want to be in a profession where it’s

impossible to fire low performers. They know that that’s not what’s going to get kids a great education,”

said Rhee. “Have I made some wrong decisions? Yeah. But the bottom line is, the reason I can sleep at

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night, really soundly every night, is because I know that even if I didn’t make the right call, I made it because

I believed at that moment that it was the best thing for kids,” said Rhee. 71

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Exhibit 1

DCPS Method for Calculating Individual Value-Added Scores

Mathematica employed a five-step process to calculate individual value-added scores:

Step one: Annually, teachers were asked to confirm their student rosters, to assure that DCPS was

properly accounting for the students they taught, which could vary from the schools’ roles. For example,

teachers could note if students had transferred in or out of the class. The goal was to measure students’

achievement in proportion to the amount of time their teachers spent instructing them.

Step two: At the end of the school year, Mathematica calculated the average score that a teacher’s

students were likely to have achieved by analyzing the performance of all students in DCPS. For example, if

a student received a score of 11 on the previous year’s DC-CAS, that student was likely to perform about as

well as other students in the same grade who also received an 11 in the previous year. To calculate the

likely score, Mathematica took into account students’ free and reduced-price lunch status, receipt of special

education services, classification as having limited proficiency in English, gender and absenteeism during

the school year.i

Step three: Mathematica then calculated the average actual DC-CAS score for each teacher’s students.

To do so, Mathematica averaged the actual scores of all of the students in a teacher’s class at the end of the

year, with each student weighted according to the amount of instructional time spent in the teacher’s class.

For example, a student who spent half the year with a teacher would have her or his test score weighted at

half that of a full-time student.

Step four: Mathematica subtracted the average likely score from the average actual score. The

difference between how students actually performed and how they were likely to perform was the

teacher’s “value-added.” For example, if students’ likely score was 35 and actual score was 40, then the IVA

score was +5: having this particular teacher, as opposed to the average DCPS teacher, translated into five

more DC-CAS scale score points for the students in this class.

Step five: The raw IVA score, in this example, +5, was then converted into an IMPACT score on the 1 to

4 scale used for all of the other IMPACT components. If the teacher was responsible for both reading and

math instruction, the two IVA scores were averaged together.

Source: “IMPACT: The District of Columbia Public Schools Effectiveness Assessment System for School-Based Personnel, 2011–2012,”

District of Columbia Public Schools, 2011, http://1.usa.gov/v4u76c, accessed November 8, 2011.

i The Mathematica model did not control for other variables such as the influences of students’ other teachers, current teachers of other subjects, tutors or instructional specialists, out-of-school learning experiences at home or with peers such as museum or library visits, parental homework support, participation in summer enrichment or after school enrichment programs, class size, family resources, and student health, to name a few.

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Exhibit 2

Teacher responses to Los Angeles Times Publication of their Individual Value-Added Scores on August 29, 2010

I proctored many teachers during state testing time and many teachers I worked with helped their

students come up with the correct answers. I remember that a particular teacher told a student, "It's not A

or C and you crossed out D so it must be.." I know this goes on in many schools and this "grading" system is

glorifying MANY teachers that cheat! . . . So now many teachers are questioning each others' true

effectiveness. How can a teacher like myself that voluntarily works with students during lunch, after school,

and on Saturdays, be placed in the same category with teachers that arrive late, take a longer lunch break,

and leave as soon as the bell rings? Is this value added system "most effective" for teacher improvement?72

We're not being measured by taking a test. We're being measured by someone else's taking a test,

and we're not being measured by the results of that test. We're being measured by a formula that uses the

results of someone else's test, along with variables unknown to the public, to try to predict our

effectiveness like trying to predict the rise and fall of a stock on Wall Street. It doesn't work on Wall Street,

and it doesn't work in the classroom.73

There is no consideration of attendance, tardiness, health of the student, parental knowledge and

cooperation, learning disabilities, intelligence, class restructuring to maintain size, family mobility, available

materials, class environment and disruptions, combination grades, language acquisition, date of enrollment,

jury duty and health absences of the teacher, administrative assignment of students, and many more

factors. If I were challenged I would contest this in the courts that should be tied up for years. Teachers are

responsible, without authority to control many situations in the classroom.74

If we focus on . . .score test variance as a measure of value-added teaching, all we do is reinforce

teachers who "teach the test" at the sacrifice of developing programs that may more effectively achieve the

objectives of the curriculum.75

If you really are trying to rate teachers, then you need to come up with an objective method to rate

them, fairly. Factors affecting such a scoring system include who gets to decide on the criteria, how are the

many criteria to be "weighed" against each other, how to "score" factors that can't be objectively

quantified?76

The value-added method totally ignores the number of students in a given teacher's classroom. Of

course, a teacher with 35 students will have a much more difficult time increasing student test scores than

a teacher with only 20 students. The value-added method also does not recognize that many teachers

"team teach" with one or more other teachers in the same grade level. Teacher A might teach language arts

to all of the students in a grade level, while Teacher B might teach math. Using the value-added method,

Teacher A's students' standardized math test scores would not reflect his or her teaching effectiveness, but

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instead, Teacher B's. Also, if there is even one highly disruptive student in a given classroom, it can affect

every student's ability to learn.77

I am a much better teacher today than I was twenty years ago. I am fortunate I had a chance to grow

and develop as an educator before The [Los Angeles] Times published a website with a rating of my

performance.78

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Endnotes

1 Thomas Sowell, "Black Excellence: The Case of Dunbar High School," The Public Interest, Spring 1974, p. 8 referenced in Thomas Sowell, “The Education of Minority Children,” http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html#FN03, accessed October 18, 2011. 2 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 3 “History of Voting in D.C.,” Board of Elections and Ethics website, http://www.dcboee.org/voter_info/gen_info/voting_history.asp, accessed October 5, 2011. 4 David A. Vise, “D.C. Control Board Takes Charge of Public Schools,” The Washington Post, November 16, 1996, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/dc/control/schools.html, accessed October 5, 2011. 5 David A. Vise, “D.C. Control Board Takes Charge of Public Schools,” The Washington Post, November 16, 1996, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/dc/control/schools.html, accessed October 5, 2011. 6 David A. Vise, “D.C. Control Board Takes Charge of Public Schools,” The Washington Post, November 16, 1996, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/dc/control/schools.html, accessed October 5, 2011. 7 David A. Vise, “D.C. Control Board Takes Charge of Public Schools,” The Washington Post, November 16, 1996, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/dc/control/schools.html, accessed October 5, 2011. 8 Justin Blum and David Nakamura, “Vance Resigns as Chief of DC Schools,” The Washington Post, November 15, 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41227-2003Nov14.html, accessed October 4, 2011. 9 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 10 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 11 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 12 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 13 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 14 David Nakamura, “Fenty to Oust Janey Today,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061102383.html, accessed September 20, 2011. 15 David Nakamura, “Fenty to Oust Janey Today,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061102383.html, accessed September 20, 2011. 16 David Nakamura, “Fenty to Oust Janey Today,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061102383.html, accessed September 20, 2011. 17 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 18 David Nakamura, “Fenty to Oust Janey Today,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061102383.html, accessed September 20, 2011. 19 Michelle Rhee, “What I’ve Learned,” Newsweek, December 13, 2010. 20 Mayor Adrian Fenty, Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso, “Renew, Revitalize, Reorganize: School Plan Presented to Councilmembers,” DCPS Watch, November 28, 2007, http://www.dcpswatch.com/mayor/071128c.htm, accessed October 13, 2011. 21 Evan Thomas, and Pat Wingert, “An Unlikely Gambler: By Firing Bad Teachers and Paying Good Ones Six-Figure Salaries, Michelle Rhee Just Might Save D.C.'s Schools,” Newsweek, September 1, 2008, ABI/Inform, November 17, 2011.

22 Jeff Chu, “The Iron Chancellor,” Fast Company, September 2008, ABI/Inform, November 17, 2011.

23 Nikita Stewart and V. Dion Haynes, “Rhee Hesitates on Requests for List of Fired Workers,” The Washington Post, March 11, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031002702.html, accessed October 31, 2011.

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24 Dina Levitz, “District’s School Union Slams Rhee’s Firing of Principals,” Educational Rheeform blog, May 23, 2008, http://rheeform.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/districts-school-union-slams-rhee’s-firing-of-principals/, accessed October 31, 2011.

25 “Thousands March Against Rhee's Firings of Hundreds After Hiring of Hundreds of Her Clones,” Schools Matter blog, October 11, 2009, http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/10/thousands-march-against-rhees-firings.html, accessed October 31, 2011.

26 Michael Hirsch, “DC’s Rhee Hammered Over Firings, Padded Resume,” United Federation of Teachers website, February 17, 2011, http://www.uft.org/news-briefs/dc-s-rhee-hammered-over-firings-padded-resume, accessed October 31, 2011.

27 Tamar Lewin, “School Chief Dismisses 241 Teachers in Washington,” The New York Times, July 23, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/education/24teachers.html, accessed October 4, 2011. 28 Mark Segraves, “Rhee: Teachers Fired for Having Sex With Students,” WTOP radio, January 23, 2010, http://www.wtop.com/?nid=&sid=1871149, accessed October 31, 2011.

29 Mark Segraves, “Rhee: Teachers Fired for Having Sex With Students,” WTOP radio, January 23, 2010, http://www.wtop.com/?nid=&sid=1871149, accessed October 31, 2011.

30 “Thousands March Against Rhee's Firings of Hundreds After Hiring of Hundreds of Her Clones,” Schools Matter blog, October 11, 2009, http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/10/thousands-march-against-rhees-firings.html, accessed October 31, 2011.

31 “Thousands March Against Rhee's Firings of Hundreds After Hiring of Hundreds of Her Clones,” Schools Matter blog, October 11, 2009, http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/10/thousands-march-against-rhees-firings.html, accessed October 31, 2011.

32 V. Dion Haynes, “Rhee Seeks Tenure-Pay Swap for Teachers,” The Washington Post, July 3, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/02/AR2008070203498.html, accessed October 31, 2011. 33 “Media Attention Hinders Rhee's Efforts to Reach Out to D.C. Teachers,” PBS Newshour transcript, May 5, 2009, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june09/dcschools_05-05.html, accessed October 31, 2011.

34 “So You Say It’s Not a Revolution,” Eduflack, June 3, 2010, http://blog.eduflack.com/2010/06/03/so-you-say-its-not-a- revolution.aspx, accessed November 27, 2011.

35 Bill Turque, “Rhee Works on Overhaul of Teacher Evaluations,” The Washington Post, April 7, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603600.html, accessed October 4, 2011. 36 Bill Turque, “Rhee Works on Overhaul of Teacher Evaluations,” The Washington Post, April 7, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603600.html, accessed October 4, 2011. 37 Bill Turque, “Rhee Works on Overhaul of Teacher Evaluations,” The Washington Post, April 7, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603600.html,accessed October 4, 2011. 38 Bill Turque, “Rhee Works on Overhaul of Teacher Evaluations,” The Washington Post, April 7, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603600.html,accessed October 4, 2011. 39 Bill Turque, “Rhee Works on Overhaul of Teacher Evaluations,” The Washington Post, April 7, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603600.html, accessed October 4, 2011. 40 Bill Turque, “Rhee Works on Overhaul of Teacher Evaluations,” The Washington Post, April 7, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603600.html, accessed October 4, 2011. 41 Stephen Sawchuk, “D.C. Unveils Complex Evaluation System,” Education Week, October 5, 2009, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2009/10/dc_unveils_complex_evaluation.html, accessed August 16, 2012.

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42 Bill Turque, “Rhee Dismisses 241 D.C. Teachers; Union Vows to Contest Firings,” The Washington Post, July 24, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072303093.html, accessed October 31, 2011. 43 Stephen Sawchuk, “New Teacher-Evaluation Systems Face Obstacles,” Education Week, December 11, 2009, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/12/11/15evaluate.h29.html?tkn=SORFrEdTvQdtIH8BXgn4rSiW1ET+PpAJ7/b M, accessed October 31, 2011. 44 Bill Turque, “D.C. Launches Rigorous Teacher Evaluation System,” The Washington Post, October 1, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/30/AR2009093004729.html?wprss=rss_education, accessed October 31, 2011. 45 Impact Guidebooks, District of Columbia Public Schools, http://dcps.dc.gov/portal/site/DCPS/menuitem.06de50edb2b17a932c69621014f62010/?vgnextoid=b00b64505ddc321 0VgnVCM1000007e6f0201RCRD, accessed October 31, 2011. 46 Impact Guidebooks, District of Columbia Public Schools, http://dcps.dc.gov/portal/site/DCPS/menuitem.06de50edb2b17a932c69621014f62010/?vgnextoid=b00b64505ddc321 0VgnVCM1000007e6f0201RCRD, accessed October 31, 2011. 47 Impact Guidebooks, District of Columbia Public Schools, http://dcps.dc.gov/portal/site/DCPS/menuitem.06de50edb2b17a932c69621014f62010/?vgnextoid=b00b64505ddc321 0VgnVCM1000007e6f0201RCRD, accessed October 31, 2011. 48 Impact Guidebooks, District of Columbia Public Schools, http://dcps.dc.gov/portal/site/DCPS/menuitem.06de50edb2b17a932c69621014f62010/?vgnextoid=b00b64505ddc321 0VgnVCM1000007e6f0201RCRD, accessed October 31, 2011. 49 Impact Guidebooks, District of Columbia Public Schools, http://dcps.dc.gov/portal/site/DCPS/menuitem.06de50edb2b17a932c69621014f62010/?vgnextoid=b00b64505ddc321 0VgnVCM1000007e6f0201RCRD, accessed October 31, 2011. 50 Sam Dillon, “A Tentative Contract Deal for Washington Teachers,” The New York Times, April 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/education/08schools.html, accessed February 14, 2012.

51 “D.C. Teachers Get Raises, Accept Merit Pay in Pact,” Washington Times, June 2, 2010, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/dc-teachers-get-raises-accept-merit-pay-in-pact/, accessed October 31, 2011. 52 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 53 Stephanie Banchero, “Teachers Lose Jobs Over Test Scores,” Wall Street Journal Online, July 24, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704249004575385500484438266.html, accessed October 31, 2011. 54 “AFT President Randi Weingarten Comments on Mass Firing of DCPS Teachers,” American Federation of Teachers press release, July 23, 2010, https://www.aft.org/newspubs/press/2010/072310.cfm, accessed October 31, 2011. 55 Tamar Lewin, “School Chief Dismisses 241 Teachers in Washington,” The New York Times, July 23, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/education/24teachers.html, accessed October 4, 2011. 56 Bill Turque, “Rhee Dismisses 241 D.C. Teachers; Union Vows to Contest Firings,” The Washington Post, July 24, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072303093.html, accessed October 31, 2011. 57 Ann Marimow, “Fenty Responds to Hardball’s Matthews,” The Washington Post, February 12, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2010/02/fenty_responds_to_hardballs_ma.html, accessed October 31, 2011. 58 “DC Poll,” The Washington Post, February 1, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/politics/polls/postpoll_013110.html?sid=ST2010013100257, accessed October 18, 2011. 59 Nikita Stewart and Paul Schwartzman, “How Adrian Fenty Lost His Reelection Bid for D.C. Mayor,” The Washington Post, September 16, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/video/2010/09/15/VI2010091500787.html, accessed September 20, 2011. 60 Nikita Stewart and Jon Cohen, “D.C. Mayor Fenty's Approval Ratings Plummet, Poll Finds,” The Washington Post, January 31, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/01/30/AR2010013002452.html?sid=ST2010013100257, accessed October 18, 2011.

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61 Nikita Stewart and Paul Schwartzman, “How Adrian Fenty Lost His Reelection Bid for D.C. Mayor,” The Washington Post, September 16, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/video/2010/09/15/VI2010091500787.html, accessed September 20, 2011. 62 Kevin Robillard, “Vince Gray (D-Washington Teachers' Union)? That's What Josh Lopez Says,” TBD.com, January 24, 2011, http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-facts-machine/2011/01/vince-gray-d-washington-teachers-union-that-s-what- josh-lopez-says-7623.html, accessed October 18, 2011. 63 Kevin Robillard, “Vince Gray (D-Washington Teachers' Union)? That's What Josh Lopez Says,” TBD.com, January 24, 2011, http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-facts-machine/2011/01/vince-gray-d-washington-teachers-union-that-s-what- josh-lopez-says-7623.html, accessed October 18, 2011. 64 Nikita Stewart and Paul Schwartzman, “How Adrian Fenty Lost His Reelection Bid for D.C. Mayor,” The Washington Post, September 16, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/video/2010/09/15/VI2010091500787.html, accessed September 20, 2011. 65Jonetta Rose Barras, “Recruiting Diversity,” Washington City Paper, August 27, 2010, http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/39647/michelle-rhees-campaign-to-diversify-dc-public-schools-means- wooing/full, accessed November 27, 2011.

66 Nikita Stewart and Tim Craig, “DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee Will Hit Campaign Trail with Mayor Adrian Fenty,” Washington Post, September 2, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090305950.html, accessed October 18, 2011. 67 Thomas Sowell, “The Politics of Resentment,” National Review Online, September 21, 2010, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/247181/politics-resentment-thomas-sowell, accessed October 30, 2011.

68 Michelle Rhee, “What I’ve Learned,” Newsweek, December 13, 2010. 69 Michelle Rhee, “What I’ve Learned,” Newsweek, December 13, 2010. 70 Bill Turque, “Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker Loses Run-Off Election,” The Washington Post, November 30, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006044.html, accessed October 31, 2011. 71 Clay Risen, “The Lightning Rod,” The Atlantic, November 2008. 72 Iamanonymous, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, May 12, 2011, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.

73 AntiCorporateGreed, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, February 8, 2011, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.

74 rozurista1, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, January 22, 2011, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.

75 Riskiebusiness, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, October 4, 2010, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10, accessed November 10, 2011.

76 BobBrooks, blog entry reaction to article, “Grading Teachers: Examining Value-Added,” Los Angeles Times online, September 8, 2010, http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-grading-teachers/10?page=3, accessed November 10, 2011.

77 Richard Glenn Shimizu, “Teachers Respond,” September 1, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/teachers- investigation/la-me-teachers-respond,0,3982085.story?page=2, accessed November 10, 2011.

78 Shalonda Elaine Proctor, “Teachers Respond,” September 1, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/teachers- investigation/la-me-teachers-respond,0,3982085.story?page=2, accessed November 10, 2011.

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