| Michelle A. Rhee | |
|---|---|
Rhee in February 2008 |
|
| Born | December 25, 1969 Ann Arbor, Michigan[1] |
| Residence | Sacramento, CA |
| Ethnicity | Korean |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | Public policy[2] |
| Alma mater | Cornell University (B.A.) Harvard University (M.P.P.) |
| Home town | Toledo, Ohio |
| Title | Former Chancellor, District of Columbia Public Schools |
| Term | June 2007 - October 2010 |
| Predecessor | Superintendent Clifford Janey |
| Successor | Kaya Henderson (acting) |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse |
Kevin Johnson (2011)[3] Kevin Huffman (div. 2007) |
| Children | Two daughters |
Michelle A. Rhee (Korean: 이양희;[2] I Yang-hui; born December 25, 1969) is a public figure involved in the American education system. She was chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools from 2007 to 2010. In late 2010, she founded StudentsFirst, a non-profit, tax-exempt political advocacy organization which works on education reform issues such as ending teacher tenure.
She began her career by teaching for three years in an inner city school, then founded and ran The New Teacher Project, which in ten years recruited and trained more than 23,000 new teachers to work in urban schools.[1]
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Rhee was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the second of three children of South Korean immigrants Shang Rhee, a physician, and Inza Rhee, a clothing store owner.[4][5] She was raised in the Toledo, Ohio area and educated in the public schools, through the sixth grade.[5] Her parents then sent her to South Korea to attend school for one year.[5] Upon her return, they enrolled her in a private school because they felt the public school was lacking.[5]
Growing up, Rhee's father encouraged her to do community service.[4] During her teenage years, she worked with children and spent a summer working on a Native American reservation.[4]
She graduated from the private Maumee Valley Country Day School in 1988, and went on to Cornell University where she received a B.A. in government in 1992. She later earned a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Inspired by a PBS special that she saw when she was a senior in college, Rhee signed up with Teach For America, went through their brief training period in how to teach, then worked for three years as a teacher in Baltimore, Maryland.[4][6] She was assigned to one of the lowest-performing schools, in a neighborhood that reminded her parents of a war zone.[5] She had difficulty controlling her classroom the first year.[5] She has said the stress gave her hives,[5] and that she once put small pieces of masking tape on the children's mouths so they would be quiet on the way to the lunchroom.[7][8] Rhee told Washingtonian magazine that she was demoralized by her first year of teaching, but said to herself, "I’m not going to let eight-year-old kids run me out of town", and took more courses in education and received her teachers' certification.[4] Rhee first year test scores showed a precipitous drop in her class: Average math percentile dropped from 64% to 17%. Average reading percentile dropped from 37% to 21%.[9]
She told The New York Times that the students she taught her second and third years had national standardized test scores that were initially at the 13th percentile—but at the end of two years, the class was at grade level, with some students performing at the 90th percentile.[6] Earlier she had said on her resume that 90 percent of her students had attained scores at the 90th percentile.[10] In 2010, a retired math teacher unearthed test score data on Rhee's Baltimore school which indicated that her students' scores went up during the 2nd and 3rd years, but that the percentile gains were less than half what Rhee claimed:[10] In Math her scores went from 22 percentile to 52 percentile, an average increase of 15 percentile annually.[9] In reading, her scores went from 14 percentile to 48 percentile, an average increase of 17 percentile annually.[9] Rhee claimed that the discrepancies between the official test scores and the ones she claimed on her resume were because her principal at the time had informed her of the gains but those results may not have been the official state tests that were preserved.[10]
In 1997, Rhee founded and began serving as the CEO of The New Teacher Project, a non-profit which within ten years of its founding, had trained and supplied urban school districts with 23,000 mid-career professionals wanting to become classroom teachers.[6] The Project has mainly served New York, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia,[6] Beginning in 2000, the Project began redesigning the D.C. school's recruitment and hiring processes.[1]
In 2007 the D.C. board of education was stripped of its decision-making powers and turned into an advisory body, and the new office of chancellor was created—so that changes in the public school system could be made without waiting for the approval of an often argumentative board.[4][5] Newly-elected D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty quickly offered Rhee the job of chancellor;[4] she accepted after being promised mayoral backing for whatever changes she wanted to make.[11] Critics noted that Rhee had no experience running a school system,[4] and had not even been a principal. She had been highly recommended to Fenty, however, by the chancellor of the New York public schools.[12]
Rhee inherited a troubled system; there had been six school chiefs in the previous 10 years,[4] students historically had below-average scores on standardized tests, and according to Rhee, only 8% of eighth graders were at grade level in mathematics.[13] The D.C. schools were performing poorly despite having the advantage of the third highest spending per student in the US.[14]
Upon taking office, Rhee immediately began to make a series of radical changes that relied on top-down accountability and results from standardized tests.[15] She said there was no time to waste because children were being robbed of their futures.[15] In her first year on the job, Rhee unapologetically closed 23 schools, fired 36 principals and cut approximately 121 office jobs.[15] Stated reasons for the closings were under-enrollment and excess square footage.[16][17] Following Rhee's announcement of some of the changes, D.C. Council members asked for more information about how the decisions had been made.[16]
In February 2008, Rhee also announced a plan to add early-childhood programs, gifted and talented programs, art and music classes, and special education services to District schools.[16]
In 2008, she also tried to renegotiate teacher compensation, offering teachers the choice of salaries of up to $140,000 based on what she termed "student achievement" with no tenure rights or earning much smaller pay raises with tenure rights retained. Teachers and the teachers union rejected the proposal, contesting that some form of tenure was necessary to protect against arbitrary, political, or wrongful termination of employment.[18]
In 2010, Rhee and the unions agreed on a new contract that offered 20% pay raises and bonuses of $20,000 to $30,000 for "strong student achievement," in exchange for weakened teachers' seniority protections and the end of teacher tenure for one year. Under this new agreement, Rhee fired 241 teachers, the vast majority of whom received poor evaluations, and put 737 additional school employees on notice.[19] Of the dismissed teachers, 76 were dismissed in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act because they lacked proper teaching certification.[20] 26 other teachers were dismissed because their students had continually received low scores on the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System.[20] Teachers were observed by administrators and outside professionals for five 30-minute sessions during the year, and the teachers' performance was rated during those sessions.[20] Teachers who received fewer than 175 out of 400 points were deemed ineffective and were dismissed.[20] Teachers who received between 175 and 249 points were deemed minimally effective and given a one-year warning to improve their performance.[20]
Michelle Rhee remains a highly controversial figure in the field of education due to her aggressive style of reform and what some believe to be anti-union sentiments. Another common criticism disputes her claim that she dramatically increased students' average scores from the 13th percentile to the 90th, a claim that could not be verified during her confirmation process for D.C. Schools Chancellor as the relevant Baltimore records could not be located.[21] Rhee's actions have earned her applause from school reformers, as well as the scorn of teacher unions and community activists. Her supporters claim that under Rhee's chancellorship, student achievement in the D.C. Public Schools greatly improved. Since 2007, secondary schools have improved their standardized test pass rates by 14% in reading and 17% in math, while elementary school pass rates have improved 6% in reading and 15% in math. System-wide high school graduation rates also improved by 3%, up to 72% in 2009.[22] By 2010, D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System reading pass rates had increased by 14 percentage points, and math pass rates had increased by 17 percentage points. Enrollment decreased by one percent, a slower decline than prior years.[22] However, significant achievement gaps remained between students in high-performing and low-performing school districts, and between white and African American students. Education expert Diane Ravitch questioned the legitimacy of Rhee's results, alleging that "cheating, teaching to bad tests, institutionalized fraud, dumbing down of tests, and a narrowed curriculum" were the true outcomes of Rhee's tenure in D.C. schools.[23]
Some parents and community leaders said that Rhee's speed left them without input on the changes.[24] The District Council also criticized Rhee for being unresponsive to Council members' requests for information about school operations.[24] From 2008 to 2010, Rhee's approval ratings decreased from 59% to 43%. 28% of African Americans supported Rhee in 2010, down from 50% in 2008.[24]
Rhee fired several administrators and school principals, including Marta Guzman, the principal of the high-performing Oyster-Adams Bilingual Elementary School, which Rhee's own children attended.[5][25] Some parents alleged that the firing process was neither transparent nor fair. According to the Washington Post, "the departure has stunned many Oyster-Adams parents who wondered why, in a city filled with under-performing public schools, Rhee would sack a principal who has presided for the past five years over one of its few success stories. The move also heightened ethnic and class tensions within the school's diverse community. Eduardo Barada, co-chairman of the Oyster-Adams Community Council, the school's PTA, said Guzman was toppled by a cadre of dissatisfied and largely affluent Anglo parents with the ear of a woman who was both a fellow parent and the chancellor."[25] Rhee also fired a principal she had hired seven weeks before in Shepherd Elementary—another high-performing school in the upper Northwest neighborhood.[26]
Detractors also complained about Rhee's closing of several D.C. schools without holding public hearings,[27] not reporting complete budget figures at recent D.C. council hearings,[27] excluding parents from involvement (GAO report),[28] hiring former supporters to conduct an evaluation of her performance in a show of conflict of interest,[29] opposing student protests of her security policies,[30] managing using authoritarian principles, and spending considerable time before the national media (Time, PBS, lecture circuit) instead of visiting schools.[27]
Rhee and supporters responded that personnel decisions are based on the judgment of the chancellor and that closures and restructuring are necessary to effect reforms.[31][32]
Referring to the 266 teachers she laid off, Rhee told a national business magazine: "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?" At the time, she did not provide evidence of her accusations nor comment when asked why these accused teachers were allowed to be in the district prior to the dismissals. Union leadership asked Rhee to apologize to the 266 teachers for making remarks that were without basis in facts.[33] Rhee refused to apologize, but clarified that only one teacher was dismissed due to sexual abuse allegations.[34]
The Washington D.C. 2010 Mayoral Election was interpreted by political experts as a referendum on Rhee's unpopular tenure as school chancellor.[35] Following the defeat of incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty in the 2010 Democratic primary election, Rhee called the election results "devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C."[13] Rhee encouraged education reformers to learn from the election and "be more aggressive and more adamant."[13] Fenty announced on October 13, 2010 that Rhee had resigned, Rhee soon launched a personal website, a Twitter account, and a Facebook page.[36]
Investigations have questioned some of Rhee's accomplishments in increasing test scores in D.C. schools.[37] In 2008 the Office of the State Superintendent of Education discovered that 103 schools, over half of DC schools, were flagged by third parties for suspiciously high wrong-to-right answer changes. These including 8 of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out TEAM awards "to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff."
At Phoebe Hearst Elementary, Winston Education Campus, and Aiton Elementary, 85% or more of classrooms were identified as having high erasure rates in 2008. At four other schools, the percentage of classrooms in that category ranged from 17% to 58%. In return for increased test scores in D.C. schools, Rhee gave performance awards and increased compensation to the teachers and administrators totaling over $1.5 million.
During Rhee's tenure, CTB/McGraw-Hill informed her office of abnormally high rates of answer changes at Noyes Elementary. Answers were consistently changed from wrong to right. The gains in test scores made at Noyes Elementary School earned the school recognition as a Blue Ribbon School. Rhee promoted the school as a model for her education reform movement.[38]
Statisticians, including Professor Emeritus Thomas Haladyna, stated to USA Today that "the odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance." Haladyna suggested that the answer sheets had been tampered with and that an investigation was needed.
No investigations occurred in D.C. in 2008. In 2009 a limited investigation was conducted on behalf of OSSE that examined whether protocols were adhered to at eight schools, but never examined whether administrators or teachers may have tampered with the test results. Mary Lord, a state board member, was critical of the decision not to investigate the 2008 scores. "If you are going to add all this weight" to testing, "hanging the principals' reputations ... and the teachers' pay on it, you have to make sure it is totally accurate," Lord says.
Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who was Rhee's deputy chancellor and replaced Rhee after her resignation in October 2010, stated that "a high erasure rate alone is not evidence of impropriety", and maintained that D.C. "has investigated all allegations of testing impropriety" and "enforced clear consequences" for staff found to be involved.
Rhee defended herself on the Tavis Smiley Show, but has since retracted her comments. She claimed an unnamed "third party" investigated any suspicious scores. Rhee did not explain the high rate of erasures on tests, but called the USA Today article an attack on school reform. She said, "It isn’t surprising that the enemies of school reform once again are trying to argue that the Earth is flat and that there is no way test scores could have improved .... unless someone cheated."[39] Since then she told Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews that her previous remarks were "stupid" and she is glad her successor, Acting Chancellor Kaya Henderson, ordered a new investigation.[40]
In 2008, Rhee's office released a statement that said, "While Chancellor Rhee hasn’t taken a formal position on vouchers, she disagrees with the notion that vouchers are the remedy for repairing the city’s school system."[41] In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on January 11, 2011, Rhee endorsed vouchers when she supported, "giving poor families access to publicly funded scholarships to attend private schools," adding that "All children deserve the chance to get a great education; no family should be forced to send kids to a school they know is failing."[42] In a February 2011 speech before Georgia's legislature, she indicated she had supported the DC voucher program as a supplement to the charter school alternative. She said that if a parent did not win the lotto to get their child into a charter school, then "who I am to deny them a $7,500 voucher to send their child to a great Catholic school."[43]
On December 6, 2010, Ms. Rhee went on the Oprah Winfrey show to announce that she had declined all job offers resulting from her high profile work as D.C. Chancellor and would be focusing on a new advocacy organization she had formed called StudentsFirst.[44] She told Winfrey's audience she wanted to have one million members and raise one billion dollars in order to catalyze education reform in the United States.[44] According to The New York Times abolishing teacher tenure is a main objective of Rhee and the group.[45] Within weeks of its founding, Rhee and Students First had advised the governors of Florida, Nevada and New Jersey on abolishing teacher tenure and other issues related to public education reform.[45] In 2010-2011, Rhee served on the transition team of Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott.[46]
She has also been a visible figure in the national media, appearing on television shows, radio programs, and the documentary film Waiting for Superman. In May 2011, Rhee spoke in favor of school choice alongside the Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker at an event hosted by the American Federation for Children, a pro-school choice education organization founded and funded by Betsy DeVos.[47]
In October 2011, Rhee's group StudentsFirst launched an initiative to defend Michigan Republican Paul Scott against a recall effort.[48] Rhee's organization has dedicated nearly $70,000 to defend state representative Scott. Scott's opponent in the upcoming race, Bobbie Walton, said StudentsFirst's involvement in the local election was "evidence of a national push to discredit teachers unions."
Rhee has served on the advisory boards for the National Council on Teacher Quality,[49] and the National Center for Alternative Certification.[50] She was a special guest of First Lady Laura Bush at President George W. Bush's 2008 State of the Union address.[51]
While Rhee was teaching, she met Kevin Huffman, who was also a member of Teach for America and later became head of public affairs of the organization.[5] The couple married two years after they met and had two daughters before being divorced in 2007.[5][52] The children attended the Oyster-Adams public elementary school, considered one of the best in Washington D.C. while Rhee was chancellor.[5][53]
In March 2010, Rhee became engaged to Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento, California and former NBA player.[54][55] The two married in September 2011 in a small ceremony at Blackberry Farm near Knoxville.[56][57]
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<ref> tag with name "how_picked" defined in <references> is not used in prior text; see the help page.| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Clifford Janey |
Chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools 2007-2010 |
Succeeded by Kaya Henderson Acting |
| Non-profit organization positions | ||
| New title | Chief Executive Officer of The New Teacher Project 1997-2007 |
Succeeded by Arlela Rozman |
| Chief Executive Officer of StudentsFirst 2010-present |
Incumbent | |
| Honorary titles | ||
| Preceded by Mary Yee |
First Lady of Sacramento 2011-present |
Incumbent |