Superman Is Not Coming

October 14, 2010 in Misc.

How will we break it to the students of D.C.; Superman is not coming.  Or, at least, not anytime soon.  

The resignation of Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of Public Schools in Washington D.C., yesterday, was a chilling reminder of the hold that politics has on our U.S. education crisis.  It never occurred to me that the number one reformer for education could be out of a job in the blink of an election. 

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is out.  Vincent Gray is incoming.  Chancellor Michelle Rhee is out and Kaya Henderson is in as interim chancellor.

During her tenure, Rhee faced the insurmountable might of the teachers union in her efforts to close dozens of failed schools and fire more than 1,000 educators, including the principal of her own daughter’s school.  She faced civil law suits in the process of all this and was heard on the September 20^th airing of the Oprah show during her guest spot with Davis Guggenheim, the film-maker who featured Rhee in the documentary “Waiting for Superman”- to say that you have to meet a criminal standard to fire teachers. 

It is the political machine she had to fight to make sweeping and unpopular reforms in the D.C schools, and it’s the political machine that is taking her out. The irony here is overwhelming to comprehend and might keep us from making sense of all this.   

Where does that leave the state of U.S. public school reform and what’s a driven reformer like Michelle Rhee to do?  If she is taking calls, I say ‘Put yourself in the place of most potential’.  If this is the way the game has to be played, connect with other powerful reformers that have your same level of tenacity, commitment and proven success of fighting the political machine in the name of doing what’s right, not what’s popular.  

N.J. Governor Chris Christy, do you have Michelle Rhee’s phone number?

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