Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee tells a tale about a tour of the central administration of D.C. Public Schools that is revealing evidence of a major problem that confronts her, Mayor Adrian Fenty and other reformers.

"What do you do?" she asked several administrators, who in response offered their job titles.

"I know your title," she continued. "I mean what do you do?"

Staffers seemed baffled. Absent a prepared script, they were unsure of the answer she sought. Eventually they replied "Whatever [my supervisor] tells me to do."

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Reporters hearing the replay of that exchange between the chancellor and her newly acquired "professional" administrative staff were confused: Does the chancellor mean there are people who don't have jobs, people who are getting paid to do nothing?

(Does the Pope speak Latin?!)

Then, there are people who really do have jobs, but seem to do more harm than good.

Nathan A. Saunders, general vice president of the Washington Teachers Union, offers a story about Assistant Superintendent Francisco Millet, who is responsible for schools in Region III. Teachers at Seaton Elementary School accused him of helping to create a hostile work environment, after the results of a schoolwide teacher survey were used as the basis to request personnel changes.

Saunders wrote in January to then-Superintendent Clifford Janey asking that Millet be placed on "administrative leave" pending an investigation of his performance and attempts to punish union members. An internal review was conducted. But aggrieved teachers were never interviewed.

These are windows into the DCPS culture, where people without relevant portfolios are retained simply because they do what they're told - although what they're told often has no direct connection to the education of children. And folks, like Millet, are protected by political connections. Relevance, accountability and merit are foreign terms.

Rhee has instituted a hiring freeze. Hopefully that action is an early offensive against a malignant culture that celebrates complacency, mediocrity and incompetence.

The new chancellor admits that she has fired only one individual; a couple of central administration staff have retired. She and the mayor need not wait for others to realize the jig is up. Firing clueless or poor-performing employees is a liberating experience - especially for parents and their children.

Truth told, getting textbooks on time, bringing cool air in the summer and heat in the winter, painting walls and fixing toilets are relatively easy tasks. Disrupting a culture of ineptitude and low expectations is far more difficult, particularly in a town where too many elected officials and citizen-advocates believe the government the employer of first and last resort.

If Rhee and the mayor fail to radically and permanently destroy that culture, their efforts will be comparable to placing new, expensive furniture in a house crumbling from the weight of termite infestation.

Jonetta Rose Barras is the political analyst for WAMU-88.5 and the D.C. Politics Hour with Kojo and jonetta. She can be reached at rosebook1@aol.com.