Rhee’s moment in TIME
It’s hard not to root for Michelle Rhee, the butt-kicking, straight-talking, no-nonsense Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. (Consider this piece of straight talk, from a related article on the incoming Administration, regarding her reluctance to vote for Obama: “It was a very hard decision. I’m somewhat terrified of what the Democrats are going to do on education.”) 
So I can’t help but say hooray for her making the cover of TIME this week. (The story, by Amanda Ripley, is very good too.) According to our intern Charlotte’s quick research, the last time TIME put an education official on its cover was September 1991; it’s nice to see the issue getting some national attention. Call this the last great success of the Ed in 08 campaign.
Still, let’s admit that Rhee’s tenure in DC is just in the very early stages, and as such she can’t claim much by way of results yet. Furthermore, her most farsighted reforms are being stymied by the teachers union, and they don’t appear to be letting up anytime soon. Consider this quote from the article from Randi Weingarten: “Michelle Rhee believes in scorched earth. I am not saying that D.C.’s school system doesn’t need a lot of help. But I have been part of a lot of reforms, and the one thing I have never seen work is a hierarchical, top-down model.”
Um, Randi, I guess working to fire bad teachers would be considered “hierarchical” and “top-down,” but scorched earth? And how would you characterize her bid to pay great teachers a lot more money? To me that sounds very empowering, even bottom-up.
The coming years in Washington are going to be very entertaining, and not just because the Obama administration is going to have to pull some magic out of a hat to reauthorize No Child Left Behind and otherwise find consensus on k-12 education policy. No, the best theater is going to be Rhee vs. Randi; I imagine the AFT press office is working double time to make sure that Weingarten gets a TIME cover of her own.
TIME magazine cover from TIME website
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December 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
The first crack in Rhee’s armor was compromising her standards to vote for Obama. Almost all Democrats are in the teacher union hip-pockets.
I speak as a recovering teacher union member.
I am retired, but kicked the union habit several years prior to leaving.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Same title, same over the top questions about a “leader” who rides in saying he/she can fix the schools but will most likely fail because (s)he doesn’t have a firm grasp on the culture of the students they are supposed to be serving. Teaching black and latino kids in school is a lot different from knowing what the cultural norms are outside of the classroom.
And because it is so homogeneous racially and socioeconomically, the education world is universally clueless about how to fix these problems. Rhee is not an exception, but good luck to her anyway…
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:47 am
I suspect reaction to the article will be quite polarized.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Why do you hate teachers so much? Did something bad happen to you in Elementary School via your 1st grade teacher? What if I wanted to “kick the butt” of all the dentists in the world? Huh? What if I had “tough standards” for dentists, and I fired the worst 10% of Dentist in the word, or at least Washington, DC. How would that prevent tooth decay?
By the way, what kind of right-wing blog is this that the LA TImes directed me to?
And yeah, I am waiting for your answer to the tooth decay question.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:14 am
OK, Tooth Decayer, here’s your answer.
The vast majority of teachers are public employees, but the vast majority of dentists are entrepenuers or associates in dental partnerships (although the Democrats want to change that with universal health care). I fired my last dentist, and you have a perfect right and privilege to fire yours. Meanwhile, the relationship between other dentists and their patients is none of your business. It’s called marketplace economics and freedom of choice, which Democrats have been against in education for as long as I can remember.
Another aspect of preventing your teeth from decaying is your participating in your own dental care. Assuming that you didn’t fire your dentist and he/she is among the 90% that you have arbitrarily declared in your example to be competent, do you use what he/she teaches?
Finally, somewhere in your education either poor teachers didn’t present the material or you didn’t pay attention and retain it. As a result, your postings on the web now showcase incorrect grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Somewhere the education system failed.
People who live in glass houses….
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