The woman leading efforts to improve D.C. schools gets a three-page profile in the latest Newsweek. Michelle Rhee’s unwillingness to accept conventional wisdom about public education leads to passages such as this one:
Rhee does not seem interested in the rituals of political nicety, and, while she says she’s a Democrat, she can be very scornful of her own party. “It’s embarrassing to be a Democrat when you hear Democrats talk about education,” she says. “The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party that looks out for poor black kids, yet the kind of rhetoric they spew about ? [how the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind law is] ‘sucking the life out of our teachers’?come on. Get real. I believe that until the Democratic Party breaks ties with the teachers unions, we are not going to see the true reform in this country that we need.”
If a Republican had taken a similar shot at one of her party’s core constituencies, you can bet the article would have included the word “maverick” at least once.
It’s nice to know that Newsweek is willing to take more than one shot at the damage teachers’ unions cause to public education.
