WOW! Michelle Rhee to be new Chancellor of DC schools

STOP THE PRESSES!!!  This is HUGE!!!

 

The new Democratic mayor of Washington DC, Adrian Fenty, this morning fired an old-guard superintendent -- DC's 7th in 10 years -- and tapped for the job 37-year-old Michelle Rhee, a Teach for America alum and the founder and CEO of The New Teacher Project.

 

This is revolutionary!!!  Michelle is one of us: she gets the sick joke of an educational system that has been foisted upon millions of our nation's children (mostly low-income children of color) and is a true reformer, totally driven and uncompromising in demanding much-needed change.

 

What's happening here is far bigger than turning around the Washington DC school system, which, despite having the third-highest per-pupil spending in the nation, is among the very worst in the country as this recent three-part series in the Washington Post makes clear: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/interactives/dcschools/.  Even more importantly, I believe Michelle's appointment represents the beginning of a changing of the guard within the existing system, driven by the next generation of reformers, many of them Teach for America alums. 

 

KIPP and its ilk were the first wave of reform, a guerilla movement that developed largely outside the system, showing what inner-city children could achieve with great teachers, high expectations, etc. and destroying the vicious lie that "these" kids and "these" parents don't care about education, can't learn, etc. 

 

At one time I was naive enough to believe that these successful models alone would be enough to trigger reform of the system that, across the country, is so utterly failing to educate so many millions of children.  But of course it wasn't, in large part because the system is working beautifully for virtually all of the adults in and involved with it -- and these adults, unlike the children and their parents who are victimized by the system, are exceedingly powerful: well-funded, well-organized and highly motivated.

 

So, a second wave of reform was needed to tackle the system head-on and do the hard work of fixing badly broken, dysfunctional, monopolistic, entrenched bureaucracies.  While still small, this wave is picking up momentum every year with the election of bold, innovative mayors like Bloomberg, Booker and, apparently, Fenty, and the appointment of bold, innovative superintendents like Klein, Vallas and Duncan.  I think Michelle's appointment and the launch of Democrats for Education Reform, both within the past week, are very important additional steps forward in the second wave of reform.

 

The changing politics here are critically important: in the old days, big-city Democratic mayors (you know who I'm talking about) treated the school system, which was often the largest employer in the city, as a source of campaign contributions and votes and an area ripe for patronage.  Now, mayors -- most excitingly, young African-American Democrats like Booker and Fenty -- see genuine school reform as not only a moral imperative, but a winning political issue.  Too bad Deval Patrick, the new governor of Massachusetts, doesn't yet seem to get this -- and here's hoping Obama does!

 

Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post editorial, below:

Mr. Fenty, who sought and secured responsibility for the schools, knows well that Ms. Rhee is likely to be the most important appointment of his mayorship. He listened to people who have worked with her and was impressed by her skill and vision in building the New Teacher Project, by her eloquent advocacy of the equitable assignment of good teachers, and by her courage in taking on groups with vested power. She played a critical role, for example, in the elimination of involuntary teacher transfers in New York City. She is smart and personable and exudes confidence. Her reputation should help her attract to the city the able team she will desperately need.

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Head of Nonprofit to Replace Janey as D.C. Schools Chief

By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 12, 2007; 1:06 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/12/AR2007061200609_pf.html

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has fired D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey and wants to replace him with the founder of a New York-based teacher-training organization, a dramatic step that signals the mayor's desire to bring "radical change" to the failing 55,000-student system.