Rhee Watch - July 24 - Check out PBS link

By Jim Stergios
July 24th, 2008

John Merrow of PBS did a follow-up last night on Michelle Rhee’s progress in the DC schools. In the report, Adrian Fenty, the DC Mayors says about Rhee:

We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make this school system excellent. And to the extent we can allow her to do that, as free from outside obstacles as humanly possible, the faster she will move.

Merrow notes that she has made some very controversial moves:

announc[ing] she would close the 23 chronically under-enrolled schools. Ongoing protests did not slow Rhee down. By the end of the school year, she had removed 36 principals, 22 assistant principals, and 121 employees in her central office.

She also revealed plans to overhaul 27 additional schools that had failed to meet federal standards for academic improvement.

Check it out, but also tonight on PBS, Merrow interview Paul Vallas who is pushing equally hard in New Orleans. As education leadership stalled out in Massachusetts, it is taking deep root elsewhere.