Reform

In her opinion, external factors simply underline the need for better educators. And while she pays lip service to the realities of urban poverty outside school walls, she dismisses the impact that poverty and violence might have on achievement. “As a teacher in this system, you have to be willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring your children are successful despite obstacles,” she told me. “You can’t say, ‘My students didn’t get any breakfast today,’ or ‘No one put them to bed last night,’ or ‘Their electricity got cut off in the house, so they couldn’t do their homework.’” This sort of moral certitude is exactly what turns off many veteran teachers in Washington. Even if Rhee is right, she seems to be asking for superhuman efforts, consistently, for decades to come. Making missionary zeal a job requirement is a tough way to build morale, not to mention support, among the teachers who have to confront the D.C. ghetto every day.

Rhee and her reform allies’ response is to call for better teachers, and they want to work through Teach for America and other alternative programs to find them. This is another sticking point. Traditionally, a good teacher was considered to be someone who had trained in education schools, been certified by state boards, enlisted in unions, and committed to a lifetime career—elements tightly interwoven with any district’s political structure. Reformers criticize all those elements. One of Rhee’s favorite anecdotes, which she has recounted in practically every speech I’ve seen her give, contrasts the hard work, creativity, and popularity of a newbie teacher named “Mr. Wallace”—who just happens to be part of Teach for America—with a hardened older teacher across the hall, who stands at the door flicking the light switch and saying “I’m waiting, I’m waiting” to get her students’ attention. “Well, they’re waiting too,” Rhee invariably says. “They’re waiting for her to teach them something.”

...

Listening to Rhee, it’s hard to disagree. But even if she speaks cavalierly about eschewing city politics, that doesn’t make city politics go away. Complaints are bubbling up to the city council. In one particularly testy exchange at an all-day meeting in April, Marion Barry, now the representative for the city’s poorest ward, lectured Rhee on the political realities of her job. “Whether or not you and the mayor want to take it out of the political arena, you cannot, because education all over America has political implications,” he told her. “Parents are also voters.”

Rhee would have none of it. “I think part of the problem of how the district has been run in the past is that decisions have been made for political reasons, and based on what was going to placate and satisfy adults instead of what was in the best interests of children.”