Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging superintendent of schools in Washington DC, joined forces with Joel Klein, the equally-disposed superintendent in New York, to co-author an article entitled:  “How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders”  in Sunday’s Washington Post.

The “manifesto” essentially blames teachers and their unions while relieving everyone else of responsibility for failing urban schools. We expect this from Michelle Rhee — after all her arrogance just cost her boss, Mayor Fenty, his job.  In Rhee’s world, teachers are always at fault. There’s never a mention of the need for additional resources, there’s no cry about the overabundance of testing, or concern of the narrowing of the curriculum. No, teachers are at fault.

We didn’t expect our own superintendent, Dr. Carol Johnson, who has always pledged collaboration, to sign this manifesto.  But Dr. Johnson, along with superintendents from 15 other cities, signed onto the Rhee-Klein manifesto. We expect better. Here’s an excerpt…

“The glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher — and our discomfort as a society with criticizing anyone who chooses this noble   and difficult profession — has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.”

We see that it’s the ‘glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher’ that is responsible for the system’s ills.  Frankly, we’re tired of seeing this distortion in print. Let us be very clear: The BTU and its members do not support the retention of an incompetent teacher. Having an incompetent teacher in a classroom is neither good for our students nor our schools. Evaluate that teacher, help that teacher, work constructively with that teacher, and if all that fails, then we can talk about the removal of that teacher. But in the meantime, we call upon the school department to take responsibility for its own failure to properly evaluate, train, and improve our teaching force. We are tired of being blamed for the department’s shortcomings.

The superintendent should not have bought into this nonsense. The piece makes teachers all look bad, and in the process paves the way for more charter schools and increased privitazation. In fact, the manifesto is quite up front on that score as well. Here’s another excerpt:

“We also must make charter schools a truly viable option. If all of our neighborhood schools were great, we wouldn’t be facing this crisis. But our children need great schools now — whether district-run public schools or public charter schools serving all students — and we shouldn’t limit the numbers of one form at the expense of the other. Excellence must be our only criteria for evaluating our schools.”