The email from the president of the Wake teachers union association reminded me of Michelle Rhee’s comments to Newsweek last year while fighting with the teachers’ union in the D.C. Public Schools.
Rhee is the seventh person to run the D.C. schools in the past 10 years. Most of her predecessors were, according to Rhee, “smart and worked hard and wanted to do the right thing for kids,” but “they didn’t get a whole lot done.” The reason, she says, is that they “caved in” to the city’s educational establishment, whose talk of reform was just that.
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“We do not have a nation right now where every child has an equal chance in life, because poor black kids don’t have an equal shot in life, because they go to crappy schools, and the Democratic Party is not tackling this issue, which I think is one of the biggest problems that exist.”
The educational establishment talks about reform, but poor black kids still “go to crappy schools.” Rhee is glad to have competition with the schools she runs because she cares about the kids, not the educational empire. It is clear where Jennifer Lanane’s priorities are. Let us hope the new school board members remember where theirs are.
