Robert Bobb is not working out for DPS

[English]

This is not surprising. We're seeing the same results from others who do not have any teaching or administrative experience and purport to be "reformers", such as Michelle Rhee in DC and the current SecEd Arne Duncan's tenure in Chicago. The general public supports people like these because they're tough talkers and public education is abysmal in urban areas, but when you look at actual numbers [[test scores and the budget), their walk does NOT reflect the tough game they talk.

The fact is that outside of specific schools that can screen their population through test scores, behavioral metrics, or location in a relatively stable neighborhood, NONE of these reformers have done much better than those of us who quietly finished traditional teacher certification and began to put in the long years of learning how to teach, then put in more long years through training and internships to become administrators, counselors, researchers, policy wonks in education, and superintendents. When you look at some of these resumes of the "reformers" that turn the general public on so much, they are THIN on the ground.

The first thing that I learned as a whiz kid novice teacher was that I was NOT teaching a subject until I first learned how to reach kids. Reaching urban kids and convincing them that what you have is worth learning was tricky enough at an urban magnet school. It's even more difficult at a neighborhood school where you must be a social worker and surrogate parent before you even get to the teaching.

I have some ideas for reform, but they don't involve barebones financing of schools and Pavlovian direct instruction. We know what works, and we have the research on what works. The problem is that there is no political will for real reform, just flagellating urban teachers, urban administrators, and *especially* urban kids.