Excerpt from voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet
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Valerie Strauss
Monday, October 18, 2010She came in like a whirlwind, kicking up dust wherever she went. Now, Michelle Rhee, the all-powerful chancellor of D.C. public schools, is leaving after three years, securing her place in the history of D.C. public education as, well, mostly a whirlwind.
Why?
Because the kind of business-driven, standardized-test-centric reforms that she championed, with the full support of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, are guaranteed not to help improve troubled schools. They can't work because they don't address the most basic issues confronting students and teachers.
Rhee is a leader in a school reform movement that embraces public charter schools - even though they can't ever be a systemic answer - and standardized tests, even though