Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the Washington DC public school system, announced her resignation on the morning of Oct. 13. Rhee was appointed by Mayor Adrian Fenty, who lost his seat in the September primary.
Rhee described her resignation as a mutual decision reached with DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray. She said in a press release that they agreed the best way to continue reforms she started would be for her “to step aside so that he may appoint a schools chancellor who shares his vision and can keep the progress going.”
In the interim before the next mayor chooses a successor to Rhee, her seat will be filled by Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
Rhee began her education career after graduating from Cornell and Harvard, as a teacher at Teach for America in 1992. She founded The New Teacher Project (TNTP) in 1997, with the intention to find better ways to hire teachers.
According to her official biography, TNTP improved school hiring practices in “Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, New York, Oakland and Philadelphia. TNTP placed 23,000 new, high-quality teachers in these schools across the country.”
In an opinion piece for the Atlantic, author Natalie Hopkinson analyzed Rhee’s downfall as a rejection of a paternalistic and dehumanizing attempt to treat public education as a business.
“The hundreds of millions of corporate dollars used to break the D.C. teachers’ union have dangerous strings attached,” Hopkinson said, in the opinion piece.
Hopkinson added that some Washington teachers performed with dedication despite considerable hardships, yet they could be ranked as poor teachers. Those people “earned tremendous cultural capital in their communities.”
According to Hopkinson, part of the reason DC voters rejected Mayor Adrian Fenty was because they believed Fenty and Rhee treated the public’s wishes and input with contempt.
For the full press release click here .
Rhee described her resignation as a mutual decision reached with DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray. She said in a press release that they agreed the best way to continue reforms she started would be for her “to step aside so that he may appoint a schools chancellor who shares his vision and can keep the progress going.”
In the interim before the next mayor chooses a successor to Rhee, her seat will be filled by Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
Rhee began her education career after graduating from Cornell and Harvard, as a teacher at Teach for America in 1992. She founded The New Teacher Project (TNTP) in 1997, with the intention to find better ways to hire teachers.
According to her official biography, TNTP improved school hiring practices in “Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, New York, Oakland and Philadelphia. TNTP placed 23,000 new, high-quality teachers in these schools across the country.”
In an opinion piece for the Atlantic, author Natalie Hopkinson analyzed Rhee’s downfall as a rejection of a paternalistic and dehumanizing attempt to treat public education as a business.
“The hundreds of millions of corporate dollars used to break the D.C. teachers’ union have dangerous strings attached,” Hopkinson said, in the opinion piece.
Hopkinson added that some Washington teachers performed with dedication despite considerable hardships, yet they could be ranked as poor teachers. Those people “earned tremendous cultural capital in their communities.”
According to Hopkinson, part of the reason DC voters rejected Mayor Adrian Fenty was because they believed Fenty and Rhee treated the public’s wishes and input with contempt.
For the full press release click here .
