Michelle Rhee: Education Revolutionary

Mario Carter

As someone who enthusiastically supported Vince Gray during his successful primary bid to unseat incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty this year, I can say that I joined many of my fellow Washingtonians in breathing a sigh of relief.

We would no longer have a Mayor who, when asked when the snow would be cleared from the streets earlier this year, gave the most tone-deaf answer imaginable by saying it would be gone when, " the temperature gets warm enough." A Mayor that when challenged by Gray to account for his failure in spending the $4.6 million authorized by the City Council to tackle D.C.'s 9.8 unemployment rate, lazily responded with, "the reality is, D.C. has always had higher unemployment rates than nationally." A Mayor that could not be bothered to attend a meeting on the city's lack of enforcement of its Living Wage Law. A Mayor that callously closed down homeless shelters and seemed intent on gentrifying the city to a point where D.C. would no longer look like D.C. We now have a Mayor that shows a genuine concern for the needs of the people especially its most vulnerable, as opposed to one that treats the common folk like plebeians for not recognizing what a brilliant Mayor they were so blessed to have. But the one decision that Fenty made during his four years in office of which I have come to now appreciate was his selection of Michelle Rhee as the Chancellor of D.C. schools.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 23, 2010 4:32 AM
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