For anyone who followed Michelle Rhee’s career since her time in Washington D.C., this latest opinion piece called “My Break With the Democrats” is no surprise. Rhee, the former schools chancellor for Washington was a breath of fresh air for a school system that has consistently produced underperforming students. Rhee’s tactics, including her support for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher system promoting school choice in the capital, led to a rebellion from teachers and their unions in the city. The D.C. mayoral race in 2010 became a referendum on Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty’s education policies, namely having Rhee at their helm, and teacher’s unions poured $1 million into the campaign to unseat Fenty in order to remove Rhee.
Unfortunately for D.C.’s students, Vincent Gray’s campaign for mayor was successful, in large part thanks to financial support from teacher’s unions. Immediately following Gray’s election Rhee resigned, knowing her mandate for reform had expired. The ramifications of the election have been disastrous both for the city and for education in the District. A recently released report indicates that only four in 10 D.C. 3rd graders are proficient readers and even fewer are in math. Three years after Rhee’s departure the teacher’s unions have gotten their way, and it’s easy to see who the winners and losers were in their battle for control for control of education policy in the city.
In her piece in the Daily Beast, Rhee explained why she found herself breaking with her Democratic counterparts on education, in particular on school choice issues. The article, adapted from her new book Radical, closed with this commonsense argument that school choice advocates should be utilizing more often:
Think about it this way. Say your elderly mother had to be hospitalized for life-threatening cancer. The best doctor in the region is at Sacred Heart, a Catholic, private hospital. Could you ever imagine saying this? “Well, I don’t think our taxpayer dollars should subsidize this private institution that has religious roots, so we’re going to take her to County General, where she’ll get inferior care. ’Cause that’s just the right thing to do!”
No. You’d want to make sure that your tax dollars got your mom the best care. Period. Our approach should be no different for our children. Their lives are at stake when we’re talking about the quality of education they are receiving. The quality of care standard should certainly be no lower.
In comparison to the outcomes for public school students in D.C where only 70 percent of students graduate, graduates who participated in the D.C. voucher program, which Rhee ultimately lost her job defending, graduate at a rate of 94 percent per year. While it may be difficult for Rhee to find employment as a chancellor in another city because of teacher’s unions’ animosity toward her policies, her outspoken conversion to school choice advocacy adds an important voice to the conversation.
"only four in 10 D.C. 3rd graders are proficient readers and even fewer are in math," proficient meaning nothing more than performing at grade level, so no exceptional standard, just up to par, and 60% aren't.
Well, it's good to know there are still some Dems capable of independent thought. After hearing her interview with Bill Bennett yesterday, it was disappointing to hear her say that she will remain a Dem, because she certainly would make an awesome conservative…
sad thing is teachers are more interested in making a buck than teaching and on top of that you have affirmative action losers getting teaching jobs that have no idea how to teach or care to and they have to teach kids that are nothing more than thugs and bullies that grew up in drug homes or with one parent that had to work and left them on their own. if you are a teacher n an inner city school your life is in danger.
Let us separate School and State. The State's only special competence is the power of coercion, it has no unique ability to operate schools – unless we want schools to operate as prisons and jails. Furthermore, schools have a moral mission that the State is forever tempted to grab hold of and pervert. Read broadly, the free exercise and free association clauses of the First Amendment would prohibit States from setting up establishments of schooling just as they ought to be operating to keep the State from setting up establishments of religion.