Paul Moore on Michelle Rhee

This Washington Post article...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/24/AR2009022403740_Comments.html

.....inspired this comment.

As her corporate masters have been forced to stand down by the
collapse of their global economy, of course Michelle Rhee's tune has
begun to change. It's out with the arrogant bluster of the bully and
in with the false humility of the abandoned and panic-stricken bureaucrat.

Rhee looked around the other day and her financial backers were gone.
Gates, and Broad, and Dell, and Robertson went to see about their own
survival. Rhee still longs to be a superstar in the dismantling of
public education. She will miss the Time magazine covers and the
mention of her name in presidential debates. And she still dreams of
smashing teachers seniority rights and thus their unions but that
whole project is being shutdown before you can say the Icelandic
banking system or credit default swaps.

When the history of Michelle Rhee's brief tenure in Washington, D.C.
is written it will go something like this. Lacking any discernible
qualifications, her shocking appointment as Chancellor of D.C. public
schools, can be understood only when you realize that Rhee was brought
in to inflict maximum damage on the district's public schools and its
children. And as a cultist (Teach For America, New Teacher Project)
and true believer she came at a bargain basement salary. Really
qualified superintendents were courted (Fenty visited Miami with
several members of the D.C. commission to interview Dr. Rudolph Crew)
but those candidates would have asked questions. They could not be
counted on to mindlessly take a club to D.C.'s public schools. The
havoc and chaos that Rhee caused was no accident. It was the plan!

But Michelle Rhee appeared on the scene because and when the "global
economy" was riding herd on this planet. Globalization is at the very
foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data
driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most
perversely of all, paying students to consume their version of
education. It was the reason the Business Roundtable and Bill Gates
were interested in public education at all. The CEO's wanted a profit
making private school system and Gates wanted visas for Indians and
Taiwanese who work for less.

Michelle Rhee got humble and then disappeared as the global economy
crashed and burned.

Paul A. Moore