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https://www.linkedin.com/in/marhee/

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Founded StudentsFirst, a non-profit organization that works on education reform

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Founded StudentsFirst, a non-profit organization that works on education reform

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Also founded and ran The New Teacher Project

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Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools from 2007 to 2010

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Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools from 2007 to 2010

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This week Michelle Rhee, the face of an education reform movement sweeping across the nation, was called to answer for a possible cheating scandal that happened under her watch as the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. schools. After initially dismissing the study, Rhee acknowledged this week that cheating may indeed have taken place in her district, calling her earlier criticisms "stupid."

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The spending crisis

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Public education -- are we under, over or just misspending? Michelle Rhee at TEDxWallStreet

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Michelle began her career as a Teach for America corps member in Baltimore. In 1997, Michelle founded and led The New Teacher Project, which recruits and trains teachers to work in urban schools. From 2007 to 2010, Michelle served as chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools. Under her stewardship, D.C.

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Michelle Rhee takes herself out of the running for Trumps education secretary 

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Michelle Rhee takes herself out of the running for Trumps education secretary 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/11/22/michelle-rhee-takes-herself-out-of-the-running-for-trumps-education-secretary/?utm_term=.b89629dd79c4

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The urban education reform movement just got a much-needed reality check as D.C. Democratic primary voters fired Mayor Adrian Fenty, and effectively along with him one of the movement's biggest superstars, District schools chief Michelle Rhee. Chancellor Rhee was as a key, polarizing figure in Fenty's reelection campaign, which ended when he was defeated in the Tuesday primary by his challenger, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray.

Rhee brazenly politicized her job as Schools Chancellor in a way that may be unprecedented for education bureaucrats. Back in the spring, the charitable arm of Wal-Mart and other corporate foundations threatened to yank millions they had donated to break the teacher's union if Rhee was not retained. Then Rhee not so subtly hinted to a reporter that she would not work for Gray. Finally, the weekend before the election, Rhee hit the campaign trail along with Fenty to round up votes in the wealthiest ward in Washington.

D.C. voters responded with a resounding rejection of her, her boss and their education policies. (Gray, who has no Republican challenger in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, has not said if he would retain Rhee.)

There is pushback against the movement to treat public institutions and the precious people in them like factories. And when the impacted public is treated as an obstacle and not a partner to urban reform, it gives the whole effort colonial and paternalistic smell.

Since Fenty appointed Rhee as schools chancellor in 2007, reformers have been closely watching the once-obscure Teach For America alumna's quick rise from educational entrepreneur to Time magazine covergirl and the adored subject of squabbling by Barack Obama and John McCain during the 2008 presidential debates.

This Spring, Rhee negotiated among the most revolutionary teacher's contracts in the country, which essentially broke the union, loosening tenure protections in exchange for the potential for teachers to make more money and earn performance bonuses. D.C. is being hailed as a model in urban education reform, and there are plans to replicate this model; The Obama Administration is putting more than a billion dollars behind a "performance-based" rewards system similar to the one being tested in D.C.

It is common for D.C. teachers to be fired in the middle of the school year to reflect shifting enrollment as families toggle across the D.C., suburban Maryland and Virginia borders "shopping" for the best educational deal. Public, private or charter schools are marketed like gym memberships. D.C. parents scout new educational opportunities with more angst than a pre-Miami LeBron James.

As a former DCPS PTA mom, I am among the many DC voters who had grown weary of the endless churning in the system. The D.C. public school my child won an out-of boundary "lottery" to attend in the early 2000s had passionate teachers and dedicated families, but inept administration and a dangerously neglected building forced us to leave after three years. We enrolled in a private school just as Rhee came into office in 2007 when the school board was abolished and the mayor was given control of the schools. But we've been shopping for a reason to come back into the system ever since.

Days after tethering her fate to that of Adrian Fenty, Rhee gave a speech to the Aspen Ideas Festival donors that raised a lot of eyebrows among people I spoke to when I arrived there for the festival. In the video of the July 3 speech, Rhee notes that DC Mayor Adrian Fenty unflinchingly supported everything she did without exception. Then she explained her strategy for raising the money to approve the teacher's contract.

"These people are lined up to support this contract, but only if it is the most revolutionary contract in the country," she told the crowd. "If I only did what they did in Chicago or in New York, these people are not gonna pay for that...

"So if you look where the philanthropic dollars are going in this contract, you are looking at the pay-for-performance system."

Later, she explained how she planned to spend that money by applying business principles to the classroom, citing a study by an economist named Eric Hanushek. She said if the U.S. fired 6-10 percent of the worst teachers in the country and replaced them "not even with the best, but with average teachers," U.S. schools would move from 21, 25 and 26th in math to the top 5.

"Now let me just say, to all of you business people..." Rhee continued.

"Wait wait wait," the moderator, Harvard University's David Gergen, interrupted. "...Do you believe this?"

Rhee replied: "Yes, I actually do. If someone told you as a business, that if you removed the bottom 6 percent of your performers, that you would move from 25th in the market to top-5, you would do it in a heartbeat. You would not even think twice about it. But we have an incredibly hard time in this in this country. We like teachers. It is an incredibly noble position in this country. But we have to look at the reality...

"That seems like an incredibly easy thing for us to begin to tackle," she said.

Rhee's makeover of the D.C. teaching force is also racially fraught. Many of the young teachers Rhee is hiring, drawn from the ranks of Teach for America in many cases, bring a new energy and life into the schools. But TFA teachers and alumni tend to be mostly white, recruited from around the country, and rarely stay longer than three years. They get a now-trendy notch on their resume and move on. A recent study by a researcher at the University of Texas-Austin and California State University shows a mixed impact on vulnerable kids, many of whom have abandonment issues.

On the other hand, more of the veteran DC teachers are black. Many of them are dedicated educators who have held things together under unimaginable circumstances, earning them cultural capital in the communities they've served for generations. But other of the DC teaching vets, made cynical about the crushing challenges facing some DC communities, treat their jobs like babysitters punching a clock.

So at worst you have clock-punchers versus cultural tourists. Rhee is exchanging one mixed-bag for another mixed-bag, giving benefit of the doubt to inexperienced white teachers. This may be one reason why parental support for Rhee and Fenty falls along racial lines. Among white Democrats, 68 percent said Rhee is a reason to support Fenty. Fifty-four percent of black Democrats cite her as a reason to vote against the mayor, according to a Washington Post poll. In an earlier August poll by Clarus Research, Rhee got her most unfavorable ratings from black women, only 15 percent of whom viewed her favorably.

In a city whose large black middle class was built on a legacy of generations of black women public school educators reaching back to Anna J. Cooper at the turn of the 20th century, the perceived disrespect toward veteran teachers is not going over well. For many D.C. voters, if the choice is between the black veteran teachers with roots in the community and the Teach for America cultural tourists, they are going with the vets.

As the Obama administration moves forward with plans to replicate this corporate education model, it should take note. If you can't be bothered to include the indigenous public in your plans, you are essentially swooping into town to "fix" the "Other" like the Peace Corps, to which Teach for America has frequently compared itself.

The real battle for urban education reform has never been about what happens in the classroom. Since the days when desegregation and the rise of the suburb led to a white, then black middle class abandonment of urban schools, it has mostly been about perception. So Rhee's MBA slogans that went over so well with the Aspen crowd are also good PR for parents of all races. As gentrification brings in more middle class families and bumps up the D.C. tax base, many parents see Rhee as a dramatic and compelling narrative to justify their reverse migration back into urban public schools.

She's good for the D.C. Public School "brand." So far, D.C. voters just aren't buying it.

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Why Michelle Rhee's Education 'Brand' Failed in D.C.

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The urban education reform movement just got a much-needed reality check as D.C. Democratic primary voters fired Mayor Adrian Fenty, and effectively along with him one of the movement's biggest superstars, District schools chief Michelle Rhee. Chancellor Rhee was as a key, polarizing figure in Fenty's reelection campaign, which ended when he was defeated in the Tuesday primary by his challenger, D.C.

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“We are always going to put the best interests of kids above the rights, privileges and priorities of adults.”

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Diane Ravitch discusses Michelle Rhee in her online blog

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A reader whoe nom de plume is Democracy posted this comment:

"TIME magazine infamously posted Michelle Rhee on its cover, with a broom, with the title, "How To Fix America's Schools."

The subtitle of that cover story stated that Rhee was engaged in a "battle against bad teachers" that could "transform public education."

The cover story was written by the oh-so-talented (wink) Amanda Ripley, who is as much a charlatan as Wendy Kopp (and Michelle Rhee) and Arne Duncan.

To the best of my knowledge, TIMEi has not published any retraction of that terrible cover story, nor has it published any cover story about the huge cheating scandal in the D.C. schools under Rhee's "leadership."

Such is the (sorry) state of mainstream media reports on public education."

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Reader: Who Wrote the Infamous TIME Cover Story About Michelle Rhee?

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A reader whoe nom de plume is Democracy posted this comment: "TIME magazine infamously posted Michelle Rhee on its cover, with a broom, with the title, "How To Fix America's Schools." The subtitle of that cover story stated that Rhee was engaged in a "battle against bad teachers" that could "transform public education."

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Brown, E. (2016, November 22). Michelle Rhee takes herself out of the running for Trump’s education secretary. Retrieved from: https://www
.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/11/22/michelle-rhee-takes-herself-out-of-the-running-for-trumps-education-secretary/?utm_term=.b89629dd79c4

Berliner, D. C., & Glass, G. V. (2014). 50 myths and lies that threaten America’s public schools: The real crisis in education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press

Schneider, M. K. (2014). A chronicle of echoes: Who’s who in the implosion of American public education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing

Michelle rhee, Retrieved from: https://www.makers.com/michelle-rhee

Public education -- are we over, under or just misspending TEDTALK NOT DONE

Innovation uncensored Retrieved from: https://www.fastcompany.com/video/innovation-uncensored-michelle-rhee/C3Kp2Tpl

Why michelle thee's education 'brand' failed Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/09/why-michelle-rhees-education-brand-failed-in-dc/63014/

Diane Ravitch Who wrote the infamous TIME cover story Retrieved from: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/08/01/reader-who-wrote-the-infamous-time-cover-story-about-michelle-rhee/

Michelle Rhee Retrieved from: https://www.colorlines.com/tags/michelle-rhee

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Michelle Rhee discusses teacher and school evaluation

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Michelle Rhee discusses teacher and school evaluation

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VIDEO | Innovation Uncensored: Michelle Rhee | Fast Company

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An award-winning team of journalists, designers, and videographers who tell brand stories through Fast Company's distinctive lens.

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The daughter of South Korean Ã©migrÃ©s, and herself educated for a year in her parentsâ€™ homeland, Michelle Rhee graduated from Cornell before landing in the principledâ€"and prestigiousâ€"Teach For America program. By her late 30s, she had become the point person for one of the boldest and most co...