Michelle Rhee
The “Radical” Interview
with Kam Williams
Reading,
Writing and Rhee
Michelle
Rhee was born on Christmas Day, 1969 in Ann
Arbor, Michigan. A
first-generation Korean-American descended from a long line of educators, she
embarked on a career as a teacher in inner-city Baltimore
soon after graduating from Cornell
University with a BA in
government.
However,
her star really started to rise after she earned a Masters Degree in Public
policy at Harvard University’s prestigious Kennedy School.
She was subsequently recruited by NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein to help
handle his stalled contract talks with the teachers’ union.
And on the strength of Michelle’s
negotiations with UFT president Randi Weingarten, Klein recommended his feisty
protégé for the top job in DC. Washington’s
public schools were among the worst performing in the nation, and Rhee found a
very receptive Mayor in Adrian Fenty, who gave his new hire free reign to
overhaul his troubled system in accordance with her controversial reforms.
She would
spend a stormy three years in the public eye as the embattled Schools
Chancellor of the Washington,
DC public schools. Employing a
“kids first” philosophy, Michelle chopped heads in the top-heavy
administration, firing dozens of dead wood principals, laying off hundreds of
extraneous office workers and closing over twenty underperforming schools.
Although
students’ test scores improved dramatically during her brief stint in the
position, her anti-union stance proved unpopular. Mayor Fenty’s reelection bid
was basically a referendum on whether the city wished to continue with Rhee’s
scorched earth philosophy. When he lost, her days were numbered, so she handed
in her resignation rather than wait around to be fired.
Michelle, a mother of two, is
married to former NBA star Kevin Johnson, who is now the Mayor of Sacramento,
California. Here, she talks about currently serving as CEO of StudentsFirst, a
political advocacy organization she founded in 2010 to advance the cause of
educational reform.
Kam
Williams: Hi Michelle, thanks for the interview.
It’s an honor to have the opportunity.
Michelle
Rhee: Thanks so much, Kam. It’s a pleasure for me.
KW:
I really enjoyed reading Radical. It humanized you in a way I hadn’t expected,
since you came to be presented in the press as such a polarizing figure by the
end of your tenure in DC. I found it very informative and moving, especially
where you talk about your family, your childhood and your education.
MR:
I’m glad.
KW:
For instance, I was surprised to learn that you had taken
Black Studies courses as an undergrad at Cornell, since that was my major
there.
MR:
Yes, I took a fair number of courses in the Africana Studies department.
KW:
Tell me a little about your new organization, StudentsFirst.
MR:
I started StudentsFirst when I left DC, essentially because of what had happened
to my boss [Mayor Fenty]. I had very naively taken the job believing that, if
we worked hard for the kids and produced results, people would want it to
continue. But I learned that that was absolutely not the case, that people were
less focused on the results than on the process and the personalities. The
problem was that we didn’t have any political muscle through which we could
support and defend a person like Fenty. So, that’s why I founded StudentsFirst,
to create an environment where we have a powerful political force advocating on
behalf of children. We now have two million members across the country who are
putting pressure on their elected officials to put the right laws and policies
into effect.
KW:
Where did you get the confidence that you could create a
national organization from nothing?
MR:
From a combination of things. Being able to announce the launch on The Oprah
Winfrey Show, and saying that we were going to get a million members and raise
a billion dollars in a year was huge. People thought I was crazy. But I have
long believed that there are many people out there who are incredibly
frustrated with the educational system. I felt that if we could capture that
sentiment, and mobilize them to take action and organize others in their communities,
then this could be a very powerful force.
KW:
The cynic in me wonders whether your organization really has
widespread grassroots support, or if it is basically being backed by some
arch-conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers.
MR:
This is driven by everyday people. Our average donation is $84. I get why the
other side might try to frame it as a right-wing movement, but the bottom line
is I am a life-long Democrat. My husband is a Democratic politician. I was
appointed by a Democrat. The vast majority of the goals on our policy agenda are
similar to what President Obama and his administration are advocating.
KW:
I tried teaching in an inner-city public school after I
first graduated from Cornell, but was quickly disillusioned by things like
social promotion and low expectations. So, I admire how you took a similar
path, but stuck in there, perhaps because you came from a family of
educators.
MR:
One of the reasons I wrote the book was to tell my story and to talk about my
journey with educational reform, so people can understand why I have the views
I have today. I have an absolutely unshakable faith in kids, grounded in the
fact that I worked for three years in one of the worst public schools in Baltimore, with kids most
people would write off because of their backgrounds. But, when I set high
expectations, at the end of the day, these kids went from scoring at the bottom
on standardized tests, to scoring at the top, despite their unfortunate
circumstances. I actually saw what could happen with my own two eyes. That
experience set a light bulb off in my head that any kids could do it, if you
create the right school environment. That’s what drives me every day. Why
wouldn’t we as a country want to do that?
KW:
What do you think of school vouchers, charter schools, lotteries
and heartbreaking documentaries like Waiting for Superman?
MR:
If you lived in a neighborhood with a failing public school, and you had an
opportunity to take advantage of a voucher or other program that would allow
you to send your child to a better school, there isn’t a single parent who
would say “no.” That’s why movies like Waiting for Superman are so helpful.
They show things from the perspective of inner-city families who would do
anything to ensure a decent education for their kids. That shatters stereotypes
in a very powerful way.
KW:
Harriet Pakula-Teweles asks: What was the
biggest lesson you learned from your experience in DC?
MR:
We were taking the right steps to fix a dysfunctional school system. But I
didn’t realize at the time that how you do things is just as important as what
you do.
KW:
Harriet also asks: How can we
empower educational systems on the local level that have such drastic financial
concerns that they’re making very round corners?
MR:
We are in tough economic times right now, and the first thing we have to do is
look at how we’re spending the dollars that we have, and at what kind of return
on investment we’re getting. Because I think it will show that spending more
money without fixing the fundamental flaws in the system won’t produce anything
different in terms of results. In DC, we were spending a whole lot of money on
things that had no positive impact on students’ achievement levels.
KW:
Kate Newell asks: How committed are you to saving art programs in schools?
MR:
Even though we closed 15% of the schools in DC my first year, we were able to
put an art teacher, a music teacher, a P.E. teacher, a librarian, a nurse and a
guidance counselor or social worker at every school in the district, whereas
before, only the wealthy schools had art teachers, because that community could
have an auction and hire art teachers on its own. We pooled the resources for
all the schools and thereby broadened the resources available to all the
students in the district, which I think was critical.
KW:
Are you a stereotypical Asian “Tiger Mom”?
MR:
[Chuckles] Do I hold high expectations of them? Yeah. But we all have to have
more rigorous expectations of our kids in this country.
KW: When you look in the mirror, what
do you see?
MR:
I just see a mom. That’s who I am and what drives my actions and decisions
every day.
KW:
The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest
childhood memory?
MR:
Being in nursery school, and hearing the teachers saying, “She’s slow.” I
remember thinking, “You don’t know anything about me.”
KW:
Thanks again for the time, Michelle, and best of luck with
all your endeavors.
MR:
I appreciate it, Kam. Thanks.
To order a copy of Michelle Rhee’s memoir, “Radical,” visit:
To order a copy of the PBS Frontline episode “The Education
of Michelle Rhee,” visit:
