Michelle Rhee passes the lead to Campbell Brown
Exclusive: As Rhee's efforts flounder, new links emerge between a group she founded and a new face, Campbell Brown
TOPICS: MICHELLE RHEE, ANN COULTER, CAMPBELL BROWN, EDUCATION, EDUCATION REFORM, EDITOR'S PICKS,RUPERT MURDOCH, INNOVATION NEWS
(Credit: Jacquelyn Martin)For years, Michelle Rhee, the former District of Columbia schools chancellor, has been upheld in the media as someone with the formula and fight required to “fix” public schools.
Others – okay, yours truly – have likened her more to an “education Ann Coulter,” providing lots of attention-getting optics for a movement made up of rich and powerful people who press their belief that what ails public education most is “bad teachers.”
Supported by shadowy money and shaky science, these wealthy folks have created a “blame teachers first” campaign that seeks to address education problems rooted in inequality and low investment by attacking teachers’ job protections and professional status. Their efforts are, of course, “for the children.”
The campaign’s latest victory was the court case Vergara v California, which threw out key job protections for teachers in that state. Now, Vergara-type lawsuits are expected to roll out across the country.
But recent developments in the career trajectory of Rhee may have prompted the Blame Teachers First crowd to pick a new front person to lead their campaign: former CNN anchor Campbell Brown.
Rhee’s Sullied Reputation
However you feel about Rhee and her campaign to label “ineffective” teachers as the cause of just about everything wrong with public education, her luster certainly seems to be waning.
Her book “Radical: Fighting to Put Students First,” recounting her personal accomplishments as an education policy leader, has been a complete bomb. Her “grassroots movement” seems to consist of, as education historian Diane Ravitch has put it, “’members’” who “seem to be people (like me) who innocently signed an online petition supporting teachers.”
