Not your average cover girl
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee seems to be dominating the media these days, and she’s making headlines again this week, gracing the cover of TIME Magazine.
While there’s nothing glamorous about firing nearly 300 teachers and principals, Rhee has made more changes within DCPS in one year than most could even dream about over several decades. She’s not your typical cover girl, as TIME points out. She’s been called a “nightmare” but Chancellor Rhee seems okay with that. “Have I rubbed people the wrong way? Definitely. If I changed my style, I might make people a little more comfortable… but I think there’s real danger in acting in a way that makes adults feel better.”
A piece in today’s Washington Post shows that this new style can work, but with folks like AFT boss Randi Weingarten highly critical of this new trend, it is unlikely to catch on without bold leadership from our elected officials.
Comments
Join the conversation
There’s probably not a district in the country that couldn’t use a little Rhee nightmare to wake people up. Hanushek’s findings are chilling: “If two average 8-year-olds are assigned to different teachers, one who is strong and one who is weak, the children’s lives can diverge in just a few years.” And then there’s the flip side of that – sub-par suburban schools skating on the efforts of parents who are outsourcing to tutors what the schools, and their weak teachers, are not delivering. When she’s cleaned up D.C., I’d love to see her grab the reigns of the DOE and ratchet up No Child Left Behind.