Debating Michelle Rhee
My guest is Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a nonprofit public policy research organization, writes about education, equal opportunity and civil rights. This appeared on the foundation's blog. By Richard D. Kahlenberg I reviewed in Slate Magazine a new biography of former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee called The Bee Eater, written by former USA Today editorial writer Richard Whitmire. In my review, I noted that Rhee is wildly popular among members of the elite media, even though there is very little evidence to back up Rhee’s claim that low quality teachers, and their union protectors, are bigger impediments to equal educational opportunity than poverty and segregation. I was critical of Whitmire’s highly favorable treatment of Rhee’s tenure. In the old days, authors took their lumps when their books were reviewed, but now they routinely respond, which is a healthy development. Whitmire, who is a
'Brain-based' education: Run from it
This was written by Larry Cuban, a former high school social studies teacher (14 years, including seven at Cardozo and Roosevelt high schools in the District), district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA) and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for 20 years. His latest book is "As Good As It Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin." This appeared on his blog. By Larry Cuban The history of searching for a cancer cure began with “radical surgery” for breast cancer–hailed as a “cure” in the early 1920s.* The restless search then moved to radiation for different cancers including Hodgkins disease in the 1950s, feeding the hope that the lethal disease had found a “cure.” Then in the 1960s researchers bent their microscopes to chemotherapy searching for toxins to “cure” a child-killing leukemia. Medical researchers and physicians heralded each therapy–cutting, burning, and poisoning–as, finally,