DC Education Reformer Campaigns For National Change

by Carol Scott · 2011-01-10 14:20:00 UTC
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Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools leader who made powerful friends - and powerful enemies - with her brand of education reform is setting her sights a little higher: creating a national education movement.

Her new organization, Students First, is 140,000 strong and has raised $1.4 million. (Small potatoes, compared to her year-long goal: 1 million members, $1 billion dollars.) The group's mission? To transform public education, one school district at a time.

The group's newly-released policy agenda contains many of the same strategies Rhee fought for while head of DC schools: teacher pay based on merit; evaluating teachers based on student results; allowing parents to decide to "pull the trigger" on failing schools. Legislatively, Rhee's arguing for "governance structures that promote accountability" and "only spending money on policies that advance student achievement," among other tactics.

Rhee's quest to bring parents and community members on board is a reaction to what happened in DC, where she was portrayed as a maverick acting without community support. Rhee told the Associated Press that she did have support, but didn't mobilize those supporters to speak up for her flavor of reform. (Rhee's new approach has already gotten pushback: Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, slammed the policy in a press release today, calling it anti-teacher.)

Will Rhee be able to translate national policy reform to local school districts? Or will she fall into the same old "reformer-vs.-union" trap, just on a bigger scale? So often, the education debate focuses on salaries, money and power, not what goes on in the classroom. Lines are drawn in the sand, reformers are portrayed as patron saints or malicious demons, and teachers are seen as defensive and identically-minded.

In reality, reform takes time, work and money. (Just ask the parents of Bruce-Monroe). We're all going for the same thing here -- better education - and a hundred teachers have a hundred different opinions on how to do that. The best conversation on education will remember the diversity of the voices out there, recognize every community as different and keep the focus on what works. Will Students First live up to its pledge? Let's hope so.

Photo credit: aon via Flickr

Carol Scott is the Education Editor for Change.org.
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