New puff piece on Michelle Rhee - Amazoners applaud - Tomasky doesn't - BOOK TV

[Bozita]

The book is:
The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District
Richard Whitmire (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews) |


The author will appear on BOOK-TV (C-SPAN2) this weekend:
http://www.booktv.org/Schedule.aspx


Commenters at Amazon can't wait for the movie:
http://www.amazon.com/Bee-Eater-Michelle-Nations-District/dp/0470905298


And Michael Tomasky writes in his blog at The Guardian UK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/feb/22/usa-michelle-rhee-not-superwoman

Not Superwoman

You Brits will likely not have heard of Michelle Rhee, who is a figure of much contention in the US. She's the former schools chancellor of the capital city, Washington DC, much limned and lauded in the US media for this and that and the other, but mostly for the tough line she's taken with teachers' unions.

She is the subject of a fawning new biography, The Bee Eater, said name deriving from the fact that she once swatted dead a bee that was buzzing around in her classroom (back when she was a mere teacher) and promptly picked it up and ate it, an act that has augmented her no-nonsense, dragon-slaying aura.

Well, writes Richard Kahlenberg in Slate reviewing the book, that's a load of hooey. Her reputation is overblown:

"Michelle Rhee undoubtedly made some important improvements to D.C. public schools. Under her regime, kids got textbooks on time. Rhee made more efficient use of space by closing underutilized schools. But she didn't revolutionize education in DC. Some schools improved, but even Whitmire concedes that one of her signature "success" stories (improvement at Dunbar High School) subsequently unraveled. Overall, D.C. scores improved on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but at no faster rate than under Rhee's two immediate predecessors."

Why all the hype? Lots of reasons, but for one thing, the press doesn't like the teachers' unions. Rhee fired lots of teachers. The knee-jerk assumption of most of the press: you go girl, they must be lazy, corrupt or stupid. Kahlenberg:

"2009, Rhee said she had to fire 266 teachers for budget reasons and told an interviewer, "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed seventy-eight days of school." In fact, she later conceded, only 10 teachers had been fired for corporal punishment and two for sexual misconduct since 2007. Just recently, an arbitrator reinstated 75 educators fired by Rhee in 2008 after determining that Rhee had not explained why they were being terminated nor given them a chance to respond to charges."

For another thing, Rhee talked up a line that journalists usually find irresistible - that things like poverty and pre-school children not being read to at home were mere trifles that could be overcome by heroic teachers. But Kahlenberg wonders:

"If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven't charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire? Why did the nation's most comprehensive study of charter schools, conducted by Stanford University researchers and sponsored by pro-charter foundations, conclude that charters outperformed regular public schools only 17 percent of the time, and actually did significantly worse 37 percent of the time? Why don't Southern states, which have weak teachers' unions, or none at all, outperform other parts of the country?"

Good questions. Finally, he gets to, in just one sentence, what I think is the main reason Rhee got such great press in recent years:

"The fact that Rhee is a hard-working Ivy League graduate makes the elite press respect her as one of their own."

That's it, in a nutshell. She's one of them. Or us, whatever, although I didn't get within a light year of the Ivy League when I was young, as you know. But this is the story. I've met Rhee, once. She presents well. She dresses well. She seems, and I suppose is, refined. You could imagine meeting her at a cocktail party and discussing the latest issue of The New Yorker with her, or Jonathan Franzen, or whether it'll be The Social Network or The King's Speech.

Union officials? Please. They were plaid shirts, polyester ties, thick glasses. They went to SUNY New Paltz, or small and obscure Catholic schools. There was a time when these descriptors applied to journalists, too, and I guess they still do regionally, but not in the elite press. Hence, the identification has been almost entirely with Rhee.

So now, she's lately thrown in whole hog with the right wing, advising tea party governors like Rick Scott of Florida, and undoubtedly cheering lustily for the jackboot to land on the throats of the teachers of Wisconsin. It's ironic, since it was post-blue-collar liberal journalists who by and large enabled her and made her a star.

[goddess40]

1. great article now do one on Arne Duncan

How many times did Oprah have Rhee on to fawn over her.

[adnelson60087]

2. Rhee has her tentacles planted in IL now

and it's just a matter of time before the rot takes root. We are all in so much trouble, I don't know how we pull out of this one, especially with the corporate media firmly in-hand.