Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Wowee Wednesday

Michelle Rhee
Michelle Rhee is the Chancellor of the District of Columbia school system. She is also a woman, Korean-American, an amateur in school administration, a Washington outsider, and cleaning up the school district that has produced a 36% math proficiency, and a 39% reading proficiency.

"The children of this city receive an education that every single citizen in this country should be embarrassed by."---Michelle Rhee
Since 2007 Michelle Rhee has dismissed 270 teachers and 36 principals from the DC school system. The dismissals are part of a plan to weed out a bloated tenure system where instructors embed themselves with little evidence of improvement in the classroom and no true measure of achievement.
Schools may be supported by the teachers it employs, but the actual buildings must be maintained and restored, so this fall, after frenzied renovations, all DC schools opened with air conditioning as well as improved food services.
Sweeping changes, confidence in your abilities to tackle the task before you, urgency and an unwavering focus on making the DC area schools and students excel caught my attention and admiration. She may not be the most well-liked person in DC, and to be exact, she is very polarizing, but she is actually doing something to address the education problem we have in this country and that will always get a 'wow' from me.

2 comments:

Revday said...

Polarizing huh? Probably she doesn't put up with BS from men. Go Baby Go!

Anonymous said...

You will always be an educator at heart! I love that she is your wowee. One more reason why you are my other pea in the pod.