Michelle Rhee's Next Frontier: Q&A With the Former D.C. School Head
Why you should care
Michelle Rhee’s fingerprints are all over today’s debates on the best way to educate our kids.
W hen Michelle Rhee ends her tenure as CEO of education policy advocacy group StudentsFirst, as she announced Aug. 13, it will be the first time in nearly two decades that this education reform leader no longer has a day-to-day role in America’s education world. But the outspoken, sometimes combative, lightning rod isn’t getting ready to fade away.
Rhee told OZY she doesn’t have a timeline yet for stepping down — the search has begun for her successor. But she plans to remain involved not only with StudentsFirst, which advocates for state-level education policies like more rigorous teacher evaluations and the implementation of the controversial Common Core curriculum, but also with individual politicians across the country who support those policies. And she’s going to be heavily engaged in the future career plans of her husband, former NBA player and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who’s being touted as a potential statewide candidate.
Rhee rose to national prominence as Washington, D.C.’s hard-charging public schools chancellor, earning a spot on the cover of Time magazine in 2008, but also the intense enmity of teachers unions and others, who decried what they described as a heartless and misguided approach to firing teachers and closing schools. Has the move to the Left Coast mellowed Rhee? She was certainly philosophical about her past mistakes, her public persona and the need to dial down the venom in America’s education policy battles. But she still gives no ground on her core beliefs or what she says was a misinformation campaigns by her critics.
Here are excerpts from that conversation.
OZY:
Why did you decide it was a good time to step down?
RHEE:
If you look at where we are as a country versus where we were five years ago, I think things have changed dramatically. We’ve got most of the states in the country now implementing rigorous teacher evaluation systems with the use of student achievement growth as a major factor in the evaluation of teachers. When we did that in D.C. in 2009, we were the first school district to do that. So I feel good about where things are from the education reform landscape.
But really what was driving this decision for me and my family was kind of where we were. Kevin and I are, relatively, still newlyweds, but since we got married we’ve been talking about our desire to align our professional lives a lot more. And so we felt like this was a good time to do that.
I think the polarization and the divisiveness is just not productive.
OZY:
People talk about you guys as this sort of political power couple. Would you ever consider running for office yourself?
RHEE:
Ohhh no. We only have one politician in this family.
OZY:
I’ve been struck by the level of polarization in the education debate. Is there some way to close the gaps?
RHEE:
I certainly hope so. I think the polarization and the divisiveness is just not productive.
It is totally acceptable for two people to have different viewpoints about a policy like equitable funding for charter schools. I think that what you see happening now, though, is it’s turned into these really odd personal attacks. If you are a proponent of charter schools then you are just this evil person who wants to privatize public education. They’re questioning people’s personal motives and their values and virtues.
We tell kids on social media, don’t bully, don’t do this or do that. And yet if you see how we, as educators, are engaging in this debate, it’s not at all the example we would want to set for our kids.
Did I do everything right in D.C.? Absolutely not.
OZY:
People have also accused you of being divisive in the way you’ve approached teachers and teachers unions, particularly during your tenure in Washington. What do you think of this now?
RHEE:
Did I do everything right in D.C.? Absolutely not. I could have done a whole lot of things a whole lot better, for sure.
But I do think a lot of the ways people framed me and that time is sort of a caricature.
People took small parts of what we did and sort of blew it up because it was exciting, and it had a lot of conflict and controversy. And now the things that we did that don’t fit into that narrative are being completely ignored.
OZY:
Common Core is getting more and more attention as it’s being implemented. What other issues are out there?
RHEE:
[Common Core] is definitely going to be a hot topic.
Maybe not in the immediate term, but in the next five years or so, you’re
Michelle Rhee, Education's Lightning Rod, Shifts Focus | C-Notes | OZY:Read more: Michelle Rhee, Education's Lightning Rod, Shifts Focus | C-Notes | OZY
