Does Michelle Rhee deserve the blame or praise she earns for her attempts at educational reform?

 Frontline, the great PBS documentary series, takes on this question.


The words below are: first, a response to my question that was posted Quora.com, After this are my comments on this issue and on larger questions about who gets attention from media for performance by national educational leaders and the media..

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I haven't followed Michelle Rhee with great scrutiny, so I will do my best to speak about the "education reform" movement in general.

I firmly believe that viewing and treating teachers as the enemy is not an effective way to improve education. The emphasis on eliminating supposed "underperforming" teachers has created an environment where administrators and teachers, who are in theory both working on behalf of the students, are mistrustful of one another.

The idea that you can directly ship business methods to education as a way of improving productivity has little merit in my eyes. People aren't widgets and you can't make students magically understand material.

The means by which we measure who is a good teacher are crude at best and harmful at their worst. State exams change their scoring system every year so comparing student results annually is difficult to impossible to do in any meaningful way. If 76% of my kids passed the 9th grade English regents last year but this year 68% passed does this prove my teaching has gotten worse? Does it mean the exam is much tougher? Does it mean the students who are currently 9th graders have a weaker grasp of English? It could mean any of those things or more likely, some combination of all those variables.

We love this idea that focusing on one variable will make huge changes. It's like that movie "lean on me" - all we need is Morgan Freeman to be a tough but loving principal to kick the bad kids out and fight the special interests and then all the kids will go to college. Reality doesn't work that way.

From what I have read about Michelle Rhee she seems like a grandstander. Appearing in the press a lot doesn't necessarily mean she was doing a ton of work on behalf of the students. I am not convinced that PR served anyone other than Michelle Rhee.

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Thank you so much for your answer. The shifting ground of assessment makes teaching difficult at best. The slogans and words by politicians and reformers get thrown around and in the end not all that much changes it seems in terms of overall performance. In talking with some teachers I find that a lot of time is spent entering data into computers and doing things that take time away from actual teaching. It reminds me a bit of the health care issues. PCPs now must spend a good bit of time entering data that goes to insurance companies instead of time spent with patients. 15 minute blocks to determine our fate. 

But I also see that there is a willful blindness on the part of the educational leaders and the media too. I was struck last week when the national report card for schools was released and the focus was on those who are striving to rise from the bottom rather than any commentary from those who are at the top. The headlines in the NY Times
Analysis of Student Performance in 5 Biggest State and around the US focused on what might be called the ‘no child left behind’ concept. We are spending a great deal of time and money on helping those who need it. But I would argue that some time and effort and money should be spent on finding out why some rise to the top too. 

We all know that class has a great deal to do with it, but there are other issues that come in to play that are not permitted into the national discourse. The report I cited leaves out entirely the performance of Asian students. Why this report could still be called a national report card without this group is something I cannot answer. I have written to people asking this question and have received no reply. I am not surprised. 

Asians are now the largest group of immigrants coming to the US. They are an important part of the American quilt and yet they do not exist for many except as a group that makes people uncomfortable. Why? Because this group undermines much of the data about how performance is tied to class. The over 75% of Asian kids who attend Stuyvesant high school are not by any stretch an exceptionally affluent group. And yet this group comes out on top academically in virtually every way yet designed in terms of academic performance. Is it that they are genetically more intelligent? I think there is virtually no useful data to support this. If not this then what is it? Well, we all have some ideas but very little research is being done to learn from the group that has the highest success rate academically. Why? I would call it an ‘Inconvenient Truth’.  David Brooks took a stab at it today,in his opinion piece,The Learning Virtues, by distinguishing between the ways cultures value education. It generated lots of comment but I doubt it will become an issue among the educational community. I hope I am wrong.

A culture with thousands of years of emphasis on the importance and need for education might have something to do with it. If education were truly a business, there would be flocks of researchers and tons of money going in to find out what Asians are doing right. If this is happening at think tanks and if the national educational organizations are calling for this I certainly have not seen it. In our efforts to help those who are behind we seem to feel it is not important to learn from those who are ahead despite all kinds of barriers. Asians have to do much better to get into top colleges, are often portrayed in simplistic stereotypes, and are not even give space in studies of educational achievement. 

So while Ms. Rhee is certainly interested in promoting herself I also think she has a lot of animus directed her way for her background and her refusal to accept the way that educational issues have to be framed. As with almost all issues, it would seem a gradualist approach would be best here. Are there things that should be allowed to be talked about that currently are not? Are there ways of implementing cultural changes that transcend race and class? 

I have seen academics run away from addressing some educational issues, as they know it would be professional suicide to go against the grain. As long as a culture of fear runs deep across academic quarters and as long as the media cna make a group of high achievers invisible there will never be much of a chance to talk in open and useful ways about some of these issues. Instead, we'll get sound bites and name-calling and more ‘new and improved’ tests instead of getting to some of the core issues in a culture that does not seem to value those who perform well

WWII  US Navy Propaganda Poster