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NOT Waiting for Superman: What Kind of Education Reform Model Is Rhee?

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LEIGH DINGERSON
Dingerson said today: “While [Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor] Michelle Rhee enjoys the media spotlight as ‘Waiting for Superman’ opens across the country, voters in the District of Columbia had a different message on her education reform agenda. On September 14, Rhee’s boss, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, was sent packing, after staking his re-election bid on his chancellor and her reform agenda. Rhee’s popularity in the District has plummeted over the last year, as her ‘reform agenda’ proved to consist of little more than teacher-bashing and firings. Parents and teachers know the difference between reform that supports schools and students, and reform that destabilizes schools, humiliates teachers and shuts parents out of the process.”

Proving Grounds: School ‘Rheeform’ in Washington, D.C.” is a piece Dingerson recently wrote for Rethinking Schools. It states: “There’s nothing remarkably visionary going on in Washington. The model of school reform that’s being implemented here is popping up around the country, heavily promoted by the same network of conservative think tanks and philanthropists like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton Family Foundation [of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart] that has been driving the school reform debate for the past decade. It is reform based on the corporate practices of Wall Street, not on education research or theory.”

Rethinking Schools initiated the web page NOTwaitingforsuperman.org

Dingerson is an education policy consultant and community organizer, and the mother of two D.C. public school students.

Also see: Valerie Strauss’s piece in the Washington Post titled “Is that so, Chancellor Rhee?

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167