D.C. Public Schools' Dysfunction: Exhibit 1

Poor D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Ms. Rhee inheirited a corrupt and failed public school system. Ms. Rhee, with admirable assistance from D.C Mayor Fenty, have tried to untangle the mess years of purposeful neglect and outright theft, alongside societal degradation, have created.

Ms. Rhee visited a classroom, and did not like the job the teacher was doing. Fred Hiatt of WaPo tells the story this way:

A principal recently was defending a teacher whom D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee had observed in the classroom and found wanting.[*]

"Would you put your grandchild in that class?" Rhee asked the principal.

"If that's the standard, we don't have any effective teachers in my school," the principal replied.

Recalling that comment a few days later, Rhee is still steaming. "I said, 'That is the standard,' " Rhee says, and you think: Whew, glad I'm not that principal.

This is emblematic of the entrenched mindset of failure in the D.C. Public Schools. 'Puter would have fired this principal on the spot, either for lying about the teacher's competence, or being stupid enough to tell the Chancellor she doens't really care about her charges.

On a further note, Ms. Rhee is headed for a showdown with the teachers' union in her current contract negotiations. This is the same teachers' union that routinely diverted dues to $150,000 Neiman Marcus shopping sprees and expensive Caribbean vacations, along with other obvious education-related expenditures. Ms. Rhee has offered generous raises for all, and extraordinary raises for some who accept merit pay based on student score improvement. No teacher could be forced to participate in the program. The union, at the insistence of it national, refuses to even put the issue to a vote.

Maybe P.E. Obama can do some good for the children his children left behind in the D.C. Public Schools. He could insist that the union at least put the contract to a vote. It's for the the children, after all. And the D.C Public Schools could certainly use some hope and change.

* 'Puter likes Mr. Hiatt's biblical get, if it was intentional. 'Puter believes that this phraseology is a direct reference to Daniel 5:27: "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting."