Michelle Rhee, Chancellor Of DC Public Schools, Discusses Future In The Wake Of Fenty Defeat (VIDEO)

As I mentioned last night, the big question hovering over last night's DC mayoral election -- in which current DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray defeated incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty -- is what's to become of Michelle Rhee, the polarizing Chancellor of the DC public school system. Rhee appeared on MSNBC this afternoon to talk about the future with Norah O'Donnell.

Asked if she felt that her reform efforts played a role in Fenty's defeat, Rhee was pretty blunt:

O'DONNELL: Let me ask you personally because a lot of people say that Mayor Fenty who took on the -- along with you took on -- along with you -- some of the teachers and the union in this that you were part of the reason he lost. What do you think about that?

RHEE: Well, I think without a doubt.

O'DONNELL: right.

RHEE: I just want to be real about this.

Prior to the election, Rhee sat down for an interview with DCist's Rachael Brown. Here's the pertinent part of that interview, on the subject of her post-primary future:

DCIST: You have implied that you would leave DCPS should Vincent Gray win the primary, and the Chairman has declined to speculate on whether he would want to continue to work with you. For you, under what circumstances would you stay should Gray become Mayor? What kinds of commitment or agreement about the direction of school reform would the two of you have to reach?

RHEE: I have to be careful on this, because I've been accused of violating the Hatch Act, so I really can't elaborate, you know...All I can do, which is not going to be helpful for you, is reiterate what I've said a million times, which is what I need in a boss, in general, separate from this election. I really can't say more than that.

DCIST: Are there any issues or policy positions that for you would be deal breakers?

RHEE: Say that a different way.

DCIST: What would be a dealbreaker, in any setting?

RHEE: Well, like what I've said before, the only reason we've been able to accomplish everything that we have and we've been able to move as far as we have is because we've had the unequivocal support of the Mayor. And this is not easy stuff, when you're talking about closing down schools, and restructuring schools, and removing ineffective staff members -- that's not easy or fun stuff. It's not something that I enjoy, causing this kind of disruption. But at the same time, they are necessary things that have to happen in order for us to believe that kids are going to get a good education. And so if you look at it from the political side of things, and it's making a lot of people upset -- well, it's making a lot of adults upset -- if that's the kind of thinking that's going to drive our decisions then I'm not going to be the most effective leader to have.

For me, one of the things that the Mayor and I have in common, one of the things that has driven so much of our work together is that fact that when faced with decisions, even if it's going to make a lot of adults unhappy, if it's the right thing for kids and we know it's going to result in better schools for our children, then we're going to make that decision. And when you add in the component of people who have agendas where decisions need to be made on keeping people happy, keeping all the adults happy, well then there's probably a better leader who can fill that role.

Today, Rhee -- who called Fenty "truly the best leader I have ever worked for" -- told O'Donnell that she was not "demoralized" by last night's results, but didn't say either way whether she was planning on staying, only that she was looking forward to meeting with Vincent Gray, (who will easily win election in November, barring some sort of unprecedented, titanic disaster).

It should be noted that O'Donnell is a DC resident with deep roots in the community and the mother of three young children, so the interview is somewhat colored by the fact that she is a potential stakeholder in the future of DC's public schools, and is clearly a Rhee proponent.

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O'DONNELL: Nationally people are looking at the outcome of this mayoral primary and saying this is a setback for national education reform. Do you agree?

RHEE: I don't think it has to be at all. I think that reformers across the country knew when the mayor and I took these aggressive reforms on it was going to be really difficult and that there was going to be a tremendous amount of opposition to the very difficult decisions that we were making and so I think if anything people should see this and understand how hard the work is and that we have to fight all the harder to make sure that we're doing right by our kids.

O'DONNELL: I know how strongly you feel about that, that's why you're willing to tackle what are some of the really hard issues that exist out there. Will you stay?

RHEE: Well, I think that obviously yesterday was a -- it was a significant change in direction. And it's going to require me sitting down with Mayor Fenty, with the chairman and lots of other people the sort of determine what we think is right for the school district and best for our kids.

O'DONNELL: Do you expect that Vincent Gray will ask you to stay?

RHEE: I can't make any speculations about that. But i'm looking forward to sitting down with the chairman.

O'DONNELL: Let me ask you personally because a lot of people say that Mayor Fenty who took on the -- along with you took on -- along with you -- some of the teachers and the union in this that you were part of the reason he lost. What do you think about that?

RHEE: Well, I think without a doubt.

O'DONNELL: right.

RHEE: I just want to be real about this. As I talk to people throughout the city, as I heard -- watched the news and heard what people said, a lot of times people go out and say, well, why don't you support the mayor? People say, well, because he was closing down schools or he was firing teachers and it was on the top of people's minds and it certainly was something I think that cost him some political capital over the last three and a half years.

O'DONNELL: Because there are many people that look now at what's happened in the primary and know you and the efforts that you have made to try to reform the education system and said you know what? The people get what they deserve then, which is a nasty thing I think to say about that. But I mean, what is it then? Was it a failure to communicate what you were doing? Were the changes so quick, so tough that people didn't understand? What was it?

RHEE: You know, I think that the reforms that we tried to put in place and the pace at which we did so were really unprecedented and we didn't know coming in the impact that it was going to have.

O'DONNELL: You were firing teachers.

RHEE: Yes, absolutely.

O'DONNELL: You were closing schools.

RHEE: Absolutely. We were doing it at a clip that nobody had ever done it at before and I think that if anything I hope that education reformers across the country can learn from the experiences that we have had here in DC.

O'DONNELL: This comes, of course, just as the new movie is premiering, Waiting For Superman which is about reforming our education system here in the United States. I want to play a clip from that in which you're featured.

[VIDEO CLIP]

RHEE: You wake up every morning and you know that kids are getting really a crappy education right now.

OFF CAMERA: You think most of the kids here are getting a crappy education right now?

RHEE: I don't think they are. I know they are.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

O'DONNELL: And, you know, it is hard and it's moving to sort of say we know kids are getting a crappy education, and yet, does it demoralize you at all knowing that all you have done, that the person that helped you champion and put you in this place to do that has now been rejected by the people who live here?

RHEE: I -- that's a great question. I mean, and I do -- do feel sort of somewhat bad and guilty. I mean, this man -- Adrian Fenty is truly the best leader I have ever worked for and he is literally only politician that I have ever met who operated in a way that -- where he said, you know, politics aside, we'll always make decisions in the best interests of kids. And, the fact that we didn't do as good of a job as I think we could have in communicating sort of why we were making the decisions we did that sort of led people to be suspicious of the actions, et cetera, I think is unfortunate. but at the same time, what I'm very clear about is that we need more leaders like him who are willing to stake everything to make sure that kids are getting a great education.

O'DONNELL: Right. well, I hope that you're not demoralized and I think that a lot people that are rooting for our kids and understand change and people hoping there's a way you and Vincent Gray can meet over lunch and he can beg you to stay or you can beg him to keep you because our kids don't deserve a crappy education and do you hope that this change, too, could affect change?

RHEE: Absolutely. And I don't feel demoralized at all. I, you know, feel for the mayor, and the position that he is now in. But I don't want anyone to sort of take --

O'DONNELL: Will the film affect change?

RHEE: Absolutely. I think that without a doubt when America goes to watch this movie, they will just be heartbroken and when they see firsthand what's happening to children across the nation in our public schools and hopefully it will spur them on to action.

O'DONNELL: All right. well Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the DC Public School system, great to talk to you as always and hope to see you more of you.

RHEE: Absolutely, thanks.

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Comments

[renfro21576]

03:32 AM on 09/23/2010

I have only recently started following the east coast public school adventures, but I keep running across news items that strike me as bombshells but are ignored in these discussions. Why did Walmart blatantly try to throw the DC election to Fenty? Why did Democrats for Education Reform in New York turn out to be a front group for Wall Street hedge fund managers? Why does nobody discuss Rhee's 15% approval rating among DC African-American women? Am I missing something?

[SilentSolidarity]

08:14 PM on 09/20/2010

Just let students and parents choose the school they want. Competition will drive bad schools out of business while successful schools get more funding and expand.

[pesfb]

05:53 PM on 09/16/2010

What most are missing in the "debate" going on here are the students. They are not the most motivated or interested bunch either. Their responsibility for entering the educational system dumb and emerging from it dumber is just as great the other parties involved.

[MadAppraiser]

04:09 PM on 09/16/2010

Parental and instructor detachment fuels student disinterest leading to academic failure. You cannot test your way out of these pedagogical dilemmas. I remember a statement I often heard knowledgeable instructor's make, “The best athletes often make the worst coaches. They take too much for granted.” A sportsman one afternoon asked me the question, “Why don't teachers in school teach us the way you teach tennis? If they taught like you, we would want to go to school.” I replied to her, “You are instructed in the manner of an Eastern European Olympian.”

This is a very big loss for Washington, D.C. I know the heart of Mayor Adrian Fenty through his responses with emails concerning inner city issues. I never expected a response from Mayor Fenty. I do not know anything about the District of Columbia Board of Education inner city educational commitment. Mayor Fenty’s inner city direction, and commitment are not political issues.

[Imhotep40]

02:27 PM on 09/16/2010

For all of those championing Rhee's accomplishments regarding education reform in the DC School system, they need to dig a little deeper to see the results and impact that her reform has had on the School System overall.

Her redistribution of resources ignored and closed middle schools in poorer neighborhoods and built million dollar playgrounds in affluent neighborhoods. Classroom demographics eschewed trends and pushed under performing populations into privatized Charter School programs; which manufactured slightly higher score averages.

[StopMakingSense2]

01:48 PM on 09/16/2010

Americans talk big about excellence but when it's explained to them what it takes to get there mediocrity looks pretty good. Add some media spin, special interest money, shake, and the corporations and billionaires laugh all the way to the bank. America wants to know what went wrong. Find a mirror! We get the government we deserve. Evidently we have been very bad!

[pesfb]

02:04 PM on 09/16/2010

Americans talk big about a lot of things, but the only big they are really interested in is their material possessions and the size of their arses.

[cigi]

12:51 PM on 09/16/2010

My Daughter has an MBA and is also an English Teacher. She worked on Wall Street for a decade and left Goldman Sachs in early 2000 as she could no longer stomache the arrogance of the folks who have been screwing us ever since. She loves her job and her students. She is highly motivated and GROSSLEY underpaid for what she does. She is a "bargain" employee for the State of New Jersey for whom she works. She, like I am however, tired of rhetoric that espouses the only people who are guilty of failing children in schools are the teachers! They have no say over curriculum, they are asked to deal with all the socioeconomic and psychological challenges that come in the doors of classrooms everyday. They are asked to tolerate rude and irreverant behavior in the classroom and then have the administration fail to back them up when a ruffled parent does not want their little darling held accountable for their offenses. No, we do not need SEARCHES for $400K adminsitrators...who think they are CEOS rather than public servants. If the trend to punish teachers in this country continues, you will lose the few quality teachers still there and you will get what you deserve...the bottom of the barrell rejects to teach your children!

[paleoimage]

11:52 AM on 09/16/2010

All of the highly paid "political education gurus" combined can't do what one decent classroom teacher can do every day... As a progressive and a willing taxpayer, I'm simply tired of the bloated administrative excesses that are so prevalent in school districts and departments of education. We don't need to reinvent the wheel by spending millions on curriculum assessments every time somebody new takes office. We don't need head-hunting firms scouring the country for the next $250,000 - $400,000 "superstar" superintendent of schools. We don't need school administration conferences in Las Vegas or Hawaii, either.

[DnDCfromChi-town]

10:51 AM on 09/16/2010

As a soon to be first time parent, i don't believe an education should be valued by my childs ability to test well. We need more thinkers not test takers which in turn would create more leaders and not followers. Duncan and Rhee want our teachers to teach to an exam. If u value real education u would support educators who have been in the trenches WITHOUT the proper support of the community. When i was growing up educators were revered and respected throughout the communities in which they served. Education was once considered a joint effort however, now every problem lies within the classroom. Yet, every "solution" doesn't include those on the front lines. I don't get it!

[cigi]

12:53 PM on 09/16/2010

Teachers and schools are easy targets and Scapegoats.

[givemlharry]

01:42 PM on 09/16/2010

Let me give you the flip side of the argument. When I was in school back in the last millennium, I had a science teacher who was a sadist who would abuse students because their parents couldn't afford decent clothes for them and spent most of the year lecturing how great he was, and then spent the last couple of weeks of the term having the students go over past exams so that enough would pass the state tests . Because he had tenure, he couldn't be fired. I had other teachers who barely new their subjects and were to lazy to learn them, especially those who were tenured. I also had some great teachers who cared about their students and worked very hard to teach their students.

I have the greatest respect for the latter and the greatest contempt for the former.

If you can't get rid of the bad teachers you can never improve the schools or the students performance. Let the school boards make the decisions as which teachers are deadwood, fully knowing that once in a while their will be an injustice. That is the only way that a school improve over time.

[pesfb]

02:01 PM on 09/16/2010

The first sentence in your last paragraph SHOULD read, "If you can't get rid of the bad ADMINISTRATORS you can never improve the schools..."

As for the school boards deciding who is deadwood, most of those who are members would have to identify each other.

[flamenco]

09:32 AM on 09/16/2010

I am married to a teacher. I hear about what a fiasco education unions and administrations have become despite previous successes and good intentions. Fortunately, there are some great teachers here and there, and other small lights in the darkness.

Michelle is extremely blunt, and angers and hurts many people's feelings. But she happens to be right. Any activity that has little or no accountability will be some form of excrement sooner or later.

[jcwtts1]

10:04 AM on 09/16/2010

Listen. Talk to your teacher spouse. There are good teachers and bad teachers just like there are good and bad in every profession. But let's be clear about what a bad teacher is. It isn't someone who struggles with 40 kids in a class room no text books, or text books that were printed in the 80s. It isn't someone with, out of those 40 kids, 10 are non readers, 10 are reading above grade level and the rest are somewhere in between. It isn't a teacher who fails to raise test scores when 4 of the kids in their classroom are emotionally disturbed and the wrap around doesn't even exist for the poorer schools. It isn't a teacher who can't assign homework because no kid is allowed to take what few text books they have home, no kid has a workspace to actually do any homework, which reinforces classroom lessons by the way, and it isn't a teacher whose 40 kids come to school hungry, without the ability to focus because they had no breakfast, or who are to busy being tortured by the kids who can't or don't want to learn in the school. Before you talk about bad teachers define your term. Figure out what is actually happening in a school, in a class room, before you start saying who is good and who is bad.

[pesfb]

11:30 AM on 09/16/2010

Oh, boo hoo. Allow me to remind your wife that she is living off of the benefits of union "successes and good intentions" which she and you now so flippantly disregard and discard.

[Shawna Spaulding]

03:22 AM on 09/16/2010

SHE'S RIGHT AMERICA, RANK'S IN THE DOUBLE DIGIT'S AS WORLD LEADERS. STOP PLAYING POLITICS & DO SOMETHING...

[laborgrunt]

02:11 AM on 09/16/2010

Michelle Rhee is all hype. She stays in the media for doing these controversial things and she is praised for it. I still dont understand how closing down a school will help improve education.

Rhee is the biggest hack since Arne Duncan, the current Sec. of Ed. Duncan's so-called reforms as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools have been an unmitigated failure. His policies are still in place and no significant improvement in the educational output of Chicago's schools can be detected.

[CDRUSNret]

08:21 AM on 09/16/2010

She got results...that's why the union wants her gone.

[ladydragon]

08:39 AM on 09/16/2010

she may have gotten some results, there are some in at least 3 different wards that admired her work, then there are those that cite her sledgehammer tactics and tonedeafness, that along with Fenty's catering to his "base" and giving everyone else the middle finger is the reason he lost. Rhee hurt her own chances to serve in the next administration by blabbing to the press here in DC that if Fenty didn't win she was not sure that she would work for Vincent Grey, to make matters worse; she came to a campaign event for Fenty and made biased remarks on Fenty's behalf, that was seen as a big no no in politics. Rhee has no one to blame but herself, residents here in DC will not forget or forgive her for calling the police to the schools to tell tenured teachers that they were fired and led them out in front of the students...who does that?? I have a coworker from GA, she said her siblings are educators too, and in their state that's all they talk about is how Rhee handled things here in DC, and how they don't want her in their school system

[cigi]

01:07 PM on 09/16/2010

Oh, let's play "blame the union"....unions are merely associations of folks who work together for their representation. In the REAL WORLD OF WORK, I suppose you think they get a real fair measure from management for all they do??? It's a weak argument you present as life is not the "Hammer/Nail" your comment seems to imply. Unions 10-12% if you count both private and public sectors together. Sooooooo Michelle is making this all about unions????? Life requires at some time that people work together to produce positive results. Rhee's everything is a nail and she is the hammer philosophy is counterproductive to doing good things and making positve change for our school kids.

[dteg]

02:10 AM on 09/16/2010

Marion Barry is still one of the better Mayors Washington had. His personal life may have had problems but he did take the job of being Mayor seriously.

[dteg]

02:01 AM on 09/16/2010

Again the media is letting the repbulican dictate the agenda. Following something some teabagger in Minnesota said. The mayor is the reason the mayor lost not the head of the school system. No one knew what the mayor was doing and he did not communicate what he was doing when questioned. His own ward where he got started didn't even vote for him.

[Carnacamarna]

11:46 PM on 09/15/2010

I think Rhee and Fenty's biggest problem with education reform here in DC is their lack of collaboration and that the firing of teaches, restructuring of schools, etc did not only rid schools of the underperforming teachers but also of good educators and many a time tenured ones. I never agreed with the narrative that dismal education in dc is linked most often to dismal teachers. The problem is a lot bigger than that.

[henrypapillon]

12:20 AM on 09/16/2010

Fanned. Anytime that a parent complains to you about their kid's teacher, ask them which teacher(subject). Then ask them what Susy or Johnny is studying in that subject this week. You will then be able to understand the problems.

[DnDCfromChi-town]

10:57 AM on 09/16/2010

Well said, my friend is a big brother to a 13yr old little boy. Once they went out and purchased something and my friend asked how much change should he get back and the little boy did not know. My friend went to his mother really surprised and the mother stated, "those darn TEACHERS". When he shared this story with our group of friends we all had the reaction. How could she assign the blame to the educator and not HERSELF? I guess it's easier to blame someone else.

[Carnacamarna]

01:40 AM on 09/17/2010

Fanned back. Yes, all too often teachers are demonized when a child receives a bad education. Sometimes teachers should share the blame but a lot of the time it's parental involvement, textbooks (or lack thereof), and facilities that also share the blame. I think parental involvement is really what is lacking.

[cigi]

01:12 PM on 09/16/2010

Fanned...thanks for the "collective view" of collaboration, rather than Gestopo tactics used by Rhee. Fenty also caved to developers by giving them breaks beyond imagination which did nary a thing for low-income people when it came to affordable housing for all.

[Carnacamarna]

01:34 AM on 09/17/2010

Fanned back....it is so true about the affordable housing. All DC has seen is this gross expansion of condos everywhere -- most of which can't be bought so now you see "luxury apartments" which charge out the a s s for nothing. Affordable housing did not factor in really at all, and it's a shame.