Richard Whitmire: The Campaign to Discredit Michelle Rhee

Richard Whitmire: The Campaign to Discredit Michelle Rhee

The Campaign to Discredit Michelle Rhee

Granted, school reform is not a sporting event, but generals and politicians routinely twin sports and public policy. In that spirit, I offer this suggestion: With last week's greatly downgraded assessment of "cheating" in Washington, D.C. schools, we need a referee to call a strike count on the campaign to smear former chancellor Michelle Rhee.

There appear to be two driving motives behind the movement to discredit Rhee. First, she draws media attention that makes her the most visible of the national reformers who, in recent months, have pushed through dramatic schools reforms.

Almost overnight, it seems, states such as Indiana, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Idaho and others have ushered in major education reforms at a rate thought impossible only a year ago. We've seen reformed focused on "real" teacher evaluations, test scores used as part of those evaluations, ending seniority-based layoff policies, and disrupting "forced placement" of teachers where unwanted teachers are shoehorned into