9486 in the collection  

The Lightning Rod

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.

Rhee insists that teachers can do it all: While
paying lip service to the realities of urban
poverty, she dismisses the impact that poverty
and violence might have on achievement. Here's
what she told the author of this article: "As a
teacher in this system, you have to be willing
to take personal responsibility for ensuring
your children are successful despite obstacles.
You can't say, 'My students didn't get any
breakfast today,' or 'No one put them to bed
last night,' or 'Their electricity got cut off
in the house, so they couldn't do their
homework.'"

The article points out that this issue is much
larger than Rhee's own personality but raises
questions about the politics of managing big
city schools.

by Clay Risen

MICHELLE RHEE IS ALWAYS on message and always
on call. If she’s not speaking, she’s thumbing
homework.’” 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.
lackBerry-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.

But thanks to Rhee and her boss, the young and
charismatic Mayor Adrian Fenty, the city
government is awash with the sort of
überprofessionals once found exclusively in
congressional committee rooms and white-shoe
law firms. Fenty is a big part of the rush.
Like a number of young mayors—-Newark’s Cory
Booker and, until he moved to the governor’s
office, Baltimore’s Martin O’Malley—-Fenty is a
data-focused decision maker, less interested in
politics as usual than a politics of results.
Soon after taking office, in January of last
year, Fenty focused his energy on wresting
control of the city schools from the all-
powerful school board, as New York’s Michael
Bloomberg did in 2002, a move that has gained
the interest of many fellow mayors around the
country. By last July, the city council had
approved the mayor’s appointment of Rhee as
Washington’s first schools chancellor.
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. "They tend to be younger, and
many didn’t come through the traditional
route," says Margaret Sullivan, a former
education analyst at the Georgetown Public
Policy Institute. And that often means going
head-to-head with the people who did. . . .

The Atlantic gets
ticked off when their articles are posted, so
for the rest of this one go to the url
below.

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

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