Monday, February 4, 2013

Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s memoir: What you can learn from reading it

Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhees memoir: What you can learn from reading it:


Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s memoir: What you can learn from reading it

Michelle Rhee’s memoir, “Radical,” is coming out Tuesday and you may be wondering what, if anything, you could learn from reading the book. Plenty of things — like, for example, how the first time she fired someone was as a college sophomore while she managed a deli named Grumpy’s, how she got “huge, crazy red welts” on her body from stress when she was a young teacher, and how she watched Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp dance “without much success at rhythm” at a TFA event.
Interestingly, in this review, titled “What’s Missing From Michelle Rhee’s Memoir,”  Bill Turque, my Washington Post colleague who covered her tenure as D.C. Public Schools chancellor, says:
But aside from some cringe-inducing prose (“His head shined. His eyes burned,” is how she described her first meeting with then-mayor and political patron Adrian Fenty)