Missing the point on Rhee
Enough oxygen has been sucked out of the air about whether former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee really raised student test scores through the roof when she taught briefly at a Baltimore school. I still find more telling her admission that she taped her students' mouths shut when she didn’t know what else to do to keep them quiet. (This really happened and it would be a career killer for anybody but Rhee.) The real issue is what she and her supporters say she accomplished but didn’t in D.C. public schools when she was chancellor for about 3 1/2 years before quitting in October when her biggest supporter, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, was ousted from office. A myth has grown up around Rhee and her D.C. tenure that essentially has her swooping in like an avenging angel ridding the place of bad teachers and setting the troubled school system on
