Michelle Rhee got a free whitewash on the Today Show...
On March 26, NBC's Today show did a pretty moving report about Susan Sluyter, a veteran Massachusetts teacher who decided to leave the field because of the dramatic changes she's seen as a result of an overemphasis on standardized testing.
But it was the segment after the report that was so puzzling: an interview with corporate education lobbyist Michelle Rhee, who was at the center of a massive standardized-test cheating scandal when she was chancellor of the Washington, DC, school district.
In the piece about Sluyter, correspondent Ron Mott called her resignation letter a "sobering assessment" of the state of public education. Her words certainly resonated with many; as anchor Matt Lauer pointed out, when the Today show posed an online question: "Are standardized tests the best way to have kids learn?," 5,692 voted no, while just 41 voted yes.
Interesting, then, that the Today show would choose to feature Rhee, whose reputation was built largely around the idea that test-taking would be one of the most effective ways to expose bad teachers. Rhee's history on this question is legendary; a famous Time cover (12/8/08) showed Rhee, broom in hand, ready to clean up the messy business of public schools.
But Rhee's record wasn't really up for examination. Lauer's first question:
http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/03/28/does-today-show-know-michelle-rhees-record/
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