From the publisher: Hurricane Rhee blows through town
Posted by Alan Gottlieb Dec 14th, 2010.
Michelle Rhee speaks her mind bluntly and forcefully, not pausing to worry about whether she might be offending anyone in her audience. That’s part of what endears her to people who agree with her positions on school reform. Conversely, it’s what makes her a villain among people opposed to the present-day wave of reform, for which Rhee is the poster child.
Rhee came to Denver Monday at the invitation of the Donnell-Kay Foundation (a funder of Education News Colorado), drumming up support for her new advocacy group, Students First. She launched the group a week ago on the Oprah Winfrey Show, promising to raise $1 billion (yes, that’s billion with a B) and enlist one million people in the organization’s inaugural year.
Thanks in part to Oprah’s legion of followers (“She looked in the camera and said ‘this is great! Everyone should join!’ And they crashed our website,” Rhee said), Students First in its first 48 hours