Former DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee will reportedly leave the top spot of the education reform advocacy group StudentsFirst, throwing into question the future of the 4-year-old organization she founded to transform American schools.
Her departure from the CEO role poses a challenge for StudentsFirst as Rhee was the focal point, a lightning rod for both controversy and fundraising. The organization has already pulled out of Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Maine, and Minnesota. It remains active in Georgia where it's led by
Bradford Swann. I have asked Georgia StudentsFirst for an update on its viability and will share when I get it.
As an ex StudentsFirst staffer told Huffington Post: "In practice, this has always been about Michelle. I'm not claiming that she's egomaniacal, but the power of this movement has been that this is a Democratic teacher of color, and so the ability of the traditionalists to write all this off as billionaire white male Republicans was very, very hard to do when Michelle had the profile that she did."
Writing in his popular education blog a year ago, Stanford professor emeritus Larry Cuban cautioned the future of StudentsFirst depended on the staying power of Rhee: “Compared with the efforts of the deep-pocketed Koch brothers in influencing state legislatures through the American Legislative Exchange Commission (
ALEC), or the well-funded Democrats for Education Reform
(DFER), Rhee’s organization is minor league in political acumen, expertise, and experience in political advocacy. Nor does StudentsFirst have any bench strength; it is all Michelle. If she leaves the organization out of fatigue or pique, no more StudentsFirst. Moreover, such political work to be effective is back-channel and under the media radar. Such work is not Michelle Rhee, considering her few years in Washington, D.C. and since.”
