CHICAGO — One of the biggest education stories in the United States in 2007 was the unexpected appointment of education reform leader Michelle Rhee as the chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools. Under a revamped school governance structure, Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed Rhee, formerly the president of the New Teacher Project, to transform the troubled school district into a high-performing system.
Given that Rhee, who took the job in June 2007, had no prior experience as a school superintendent, the appointment by Fenty proved controversial. In less than a year, however, Rhee has shown that she’s taking bold measures after leading an effort that will close 23 of 144 schools and reduce the school district central office administration from roughly 700 to 600 employees.
These days, Rhee is in high demand by the national media as well as by colleges and universities to report on the D.C. education reform she’s estimated will take years to complete. The day before delivering her scheduled commencement speech at the University of Michigan School of Education last week, Rhee visited with 200 education journalists at the National Education Writers Association annual conference in Chicago. Here’s some of what she had to say:
Q: Could you talk about what you have done to address serious concerns about school buildings and facilities?
A: When I came on board, we were having significant facilties issues, and, to be honest, we’re continuing to have those issues. When I came into the job I was reading report after report that talked about the number of health code violations, fire code violations, things that put children in imminent danger. And so one of the things I think that has been one of the smartest moves that the mayor made, in terms of how he structured the overall governance structure of DCPS, is that he pulled the responsibilities around facilities and put that under a man named Allen Y. Lew, who built the (Jacob) Javits Center in New York and the Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
It makes perfect sense. As an educator, my core competency is not in construction and modernization of buildings. That is what his core competency is, and he’s been able to accomplish more in the last 10 months than has been done in 10 years. So, we’ve made a lot of progress on that front. We are right now finalizing our mast facilities plan to put together a holistic look at how we’re going to modernize all of our school buildings over the next 10 years.
Q: How have you dealt with handling school closing decisions, especially when there is pushback from parents?
