9486 in the collection  

The Lightning Rod

by Clay Risen

MICHELLE RHEE IS ALWAYS on message and always
on call. If she’s not speaking, she’s thumbing
away on her BlackBerry, or working a cell
phone, or flipping open a laptop. When I met
with her recently, she sat at her desk clasping
a BlackBerry and a cell phone in her right
hand; in front of her was a sleek Sony Vaio
laptop, which she monitored incessantly during
our conversation, while off to her right was
yet another computer, a desktop PC. Apparently
there is a second BlackBerry somewhere. And
it’s not for show. “Every e-mail a parent sends
me, I answer,” she said, a boast that even her
critics grudgingly concede.

BlackBerry-wielding type-A personalities out to
shake up the system are a common sight in
Washington. Until recently, their habitat
consisted almost exclusively of the halls of
Congress and the K Street corridor—the think
tanks, lobby shops, and congressional staffs
most of us talk about when we talk about the
capital. Rarely would you find them in the
“other” Washington, the one most Americans
would prefer to forget: the perennially
dysfunctional city of 580,000 people, many of
them poor and black; the city of the Marion
Barry machine, of sky-high murder rates and
voter disenfranchisement and the 1968 King
riots. And, of course, the city of abysmal
schools. . . .

Since her arrival, in the summer of 2007, Rhee,
just 38 years old, has become the most
controversial figure in American public
education and the standard-bearer for a new
type of schools leader nationwide. She and her
cohort often seek to bypass the traditional
forces of education schools and unions, instead
embracing nontraditional reform mechanisms like
charter schools, vouchers, and the No Child
Left Behind Act. . . .

Rhee, responsible not to a school board but
only to the mayor, went on a spree almost as
soon as she arrived. . . .

Rhee had Stanford and Harvard business-school
students on her intern staff this summer, and
she has received blank checks from reform-
minded philanthropists at the Gates and Broad
foundations to fund experimental programs.
Businesses have flooded her with offers to help
—providing supplies, mentoring, or just giving
cash. . . .

But. . . .

For the rest of the article,
go to the url below, for which you probably
need to be a subscriber. But give it a try
anyway.


Clay Risen is the managing editor of
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and the author
of the forthcoming book A Nation on Fire:
America in the Wake of the King
Assassination.


— Clay Risen
The Atlantic
2008-11-01
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/michelle-rhee

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