Michelle Rhee Joins Parent Blame Game in DREAM Act Support
Getty Images/Alex WongThe DREAM Act can now count controversial education reformer and former Washington, D.C. school superintendent Michelle Rhee among its broad and varied coalition of supporters.
Over the weekend Rhee wrote on the blog of her new education reform advocacy group, Students First, that she supported the rights of undocumented youth to pursue their educational dreams in the U.S. via the bill. The DREAM Act is a narrow bill that would allow a select portion of undocumented youth who clear a host of hurdles and commit at least two years to college or the military to eventually become eligible for citizenship.
Rhee writes an unequivocal endorsement of the bill and, in the process, falls in the familiar trap of putting undocumented immigrant youth up on a pedestal as she stomps on their parents. Such political framing is not unique to Rhee, and many of the bill’s fiercest advocates frame the issue similarly.
This May, when Senate Democrats reintroduced the DREAM Act, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of the longest supporters of the bill, said: “The DREAM Act will give children brought to this nation by their