THE RHEEVOLUTION
In January of 2007, Adrian Fenty assumed his position as mayor of the District of Columbia. He entered the office on the heels of a landslide election victory, having won every precinct in the general election. But when, four years later, he failed to win even his party’s nomination, the headlines the next morning were not about Fenty.
The focus instead fell on Michelle Rhee. At the request of Fenty, the little-known and inexperienced education advocate had accepted the challenge of reforming D.C. Public Schools (DCPS). Her efforts to improve one of the nation’s lowest-performing school systems brought much-needed change within the city’s schools and launched education policy back into the spotlight of American political discourse, but invited a backlash that ultimately cost Fenty the mayorship.
During her time as chancellor of DCPS, Rhee enacted significant reforms. Arguing that all children are capable of academic success regardless of challenges they face at home, she demanded more accountability from teachers, principals, and bureaucrats. Using test scores and in-class evaluations to assess teacher performance, Rhee removed unsatisfactory teachers and administrators. She closed failing schools and sought to replace the district’s tenure-dominated “last hired, first fired” layoff system with one based on merit, even offering monetary rewards to those whose students showed the most significant gains. Additionally, Rhee worked to highlight and eliminate bureaucratic red tape. The headstrong chancellor, always determined to make a point, brought the district’s bureaucratic failures to the public eye when she invited local media to tour warehouses full of years-old and desperately needed textbooks and school supplies that had never been distributed. She advocated for charter school expansion and parent trigger laws, which enable parents to petition for changes like new curricula, staff overhauls, or even closing a school entirely.
Although Rhee’s changes brought significant gains to the troubled school system, they also created an outcry among the entrenched groups she was targeting. Teachers’ unions and bureaucrats alike spoke out against her actions, claiming that her methods of accountability made teachers fear for their jobs and failed to recognize the dedication and hard work administrators put into their jobs.
But Rhee’s priorities did not lay in the hurt feelings of the district’s employees. During her time as chancellor, graduation and enrollment rates both rose and DCPS achieved notable improvements in state test scores. Although many of Rhee’s critics created a media firestorm over high rates of wrong-to-right erasures, a federal investigation did not find evidence of widespread cheating within the district. Moreover, DCPS also made significant gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a test that is administered by federal experts and was never compromised during Rhee’s employment in D.C.
Following Rhee’s success in D.C., 38 states implemented similar methods of test-based teacher evaluations. Her methods have garnered support from both sides of the political aisle.
Although Rhee’s policies provided a great service to the district and its students, she was met with less success in the political arena. Teachers’ unions and bureaucrats joined to launch a fierce campaign against Fenty, ultimately costing him the primary. His loss, and Rhee’s subsequent resignation, demonstrates the political challenges that inhibit substantive and effective educational reform.
Rhee went on to establish StudentsFirst, a non-profit organization that lobbies for new education policy and works to mobilize students, parents, and educators in the pursuit of meaningful education reform. It advocates a performance-based system of employment and remuneration, as well as increased variety in school choice. The organization works to continue Rhee’s legacy of ending bureaucratic inefficiency and ensuring that children are not condemned to failing schools because of low lottery numbers or unlucky districting. Michelle Rhee’s career trajectory highlights not only the need for such changes, but also the strength of the powerful and established groups that stand in the way of truly helping students.