Leaders know that change isn’t easy—and it doesn’t come overnight. That’s why, for the past 18 years, Michelle Rhee has stayed the course with a single objective: to give children the needed skills to compete in a changing world. Rhee, who served with Teach for America, founded The New Teacher Project, equipping school districts to transform how they recruit and train qualified teachers. During her three years as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. Public Schools, students’ scores and graduation rates rose dramatically. Today, Rhee is CEO of StudentsFirst, a movement to transform public education. She holds firm to her conviction that teachers are the most powerful driving force behind student achievement.
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- Experts blame failing schools on failing neighborhoods.
- However, research is showing failing schools are leading to failing neighborhoods.
- Michelle loved her job in D.C… getting yelled at was just a part of my job.
- If you wanna yell at me have at it. But I can’t have this on my watch.
- What you have is because you were lucky enough to be born where you were.
- Being a public school teacher is really the hardest job you could possibly have.
- There’s no quick and easy way to do something.
- Instill a hard work ethic and hold extraordinarily high expectations.
- Missed opportunities and unintended consequences.
- There was a myth that there weren’t enough teachers to go into under-performing schools.
- When they ran an aggressive recruitment campaign they received thousands of resumes.
- The problem didn’t lie in people’s interest, it lied in the school district’s bureaucracy.
- Suburban schools have much less mobility; urban schools have a high turn over rate.
- She initially declined the offer for overseeing the Washington D.C. school district.
- It is hard to describe the situation she stepped into. Everything was broken.
- The core problems she felt she needed to address were the core issues related to staffing.
- Their theory of change and action was focused on human capital.
- They closed 23 of the schools, about 15%.
- Cut the administration in half.
- Removed 2/3 of principals and about 1,000 of the educators.
- I wanted to create a different culture in the school district where every child and family was treated like my own.
- If it wasn’t a policy I wouldn’t want my children subjected to I wouldn’t enforce it.
- You can walk into a classroom you can recognize a great teacher quickly.
- She wanted teachers who had valued-added.
- Valued-added means evaluating teachers on the basis of how students are growing.
- Performance evaluation of the adults vs the scores and development of students
- You have to put a system in place where educators are responsible for what sutdnets were learning.
- Value-added measures a group of children a teacher is assigned to at the beginning and end of the year and ensure there’s growth between the year.
- It makes the system fair for teachers.
- I would rather have a room full of people who disagree with me instead of dealing with people who are apathetic.
- I would rather deal with anger over change instead of apathy.
- Change is an essential part of leadership.
- Incremental change isn’t an option when drastic change is necessary.
- If you look at the education landscape in our country, the agenda has been driven by people who have outside interests.
- There were no advocates for children.
- Started StudentsFirst, a movement of everyday people who know our education system isn’t serving our children well.
- Your job is to represent all of your constituents.
- If all you do is give your attention to where the yelling is the loudest you’ll turn your back on what’s most important.
- Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.
