She didn’t come up in the usual way. She’s not necessarily a very nice person.
She’s the chancellor of the District of Columbia schools.
She wants power, the power to fire principals, teachers, and anyone who stands — in her judgment — between public school students and success.
Michelle Rhee charged in as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools wielding BlackBerrys and data—and a giant axe. She has made a city with possibly the country’s worst public schools ground zero for education reform, and attracted a cadre of young zealots some critics call “Rhee-bots.” Now the changes that she insists schoolchildren need are colliding head-on with the political wants of adults.
It’s a fascinating story: The Lightning Rod, The Atlantic, 11/08
Here’s Michelle Rhee on administrators:
You know, I think some of the most important things are that you have to have a really clear vision, and you have to have the ability to manage adults. What I’ve found in this system, with a lot of the administrators we have, is that they’re very loath to have the difficult conversations. So they know that a teacher is ineffective but they don’t want to go through the whole rigmarole of giving them a negative evaluation, so they’ll evaluate them as “meeting expectations,” when in fact, they don’t actually consider the teacher effective. And I’m like, “You know what? You’ve got to have those tough conversations. I realize that person might come into your office ranting and raving, I realize that parents might get upset. You’ve got to make the hard call, that’s what being a leader is about.” And so I think that for a lot of our principals that’s a lesson they have to learn.
Interview: Crusader of the Classrooms, The Atlantic, 10/3/08
In the news: A School Chief Takes On Tenure, Stirring a Fight, NYT, 11/13/08
Update: AFT President Signals Openness to Reforms, Ed Week, 11/17/08
Is this what real school reform looks like?