Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst Has a Strange Definition of 'Reformer'
POSTED BY BETSY PHILLIPS ON MON, APR 29, 2013 AT 5:00 AM
Unlike most people on the left, I find Michelle Rhee more baffling than irritating. Rhee's whole schtick is that she, as an educational reformer, can see simple solutions for fixing our schools that, thus far, everyone has either been too stupid to see themselves or too afraid of the teachers' unions to implement. Which is fine.
But when this is the public stand you take — i.e., "I know better than all the rest of you dumbasses" — your actions should show that you really do know better than all the rest of us dumbasses. Which means that if you're going to label a politician an education "reformer of the year" on your organization's website, you should probably do some serious vetting to find out what his record really is.
That doesn't seem to have happened with Rhee's Students First PAC. The education-reform lobbying organization now finds itself clapping erasers over a page on its website labeling state Rep. John Ragan "Reformer of the Year."
Wait a minute, you're thinking. Ragan, Ragan ... why does that name ring a bell? Let Scott Wooledge from the Huffington Post refresh your memory:
StudentsFirst, a very prominent and controversial educational political action