Pop Quiz: Rhee & Weingarten

Bill Sternberg:

Two Cornellians on opposite sides of the education debate--controversial former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee '92 and teachers' union leader Randi Weingarten '80--sat down with CAM to talk about school reform. (But not together.)

They are the two strong-willed women at the heart of the nation's debate on school reform. Both were featured in last year's education documentary Waiting for Superman--one as a hero, the other as a heavy. They have offices seven blocks from each other in Washington, D.C., but are miles apart philosophically. And, yes, reform advocate Michelle Rhee '92 and union leader Randi Weingarten '80 are both Cornellians, a connection they've never discussed.

Rhee, forty-one, catapulted to national prominence--including appearances on Oprah and the covers of Time and Newsweek--as a result of her tumultuous three years as schools chancellor in the District of Columbia. Appointed in 2007 by Mayor Adrian Fenty to overhaul the troubled D.C. system, she fired hundreds of teachers and principals, closed schools, and reorganized the bureaucracy. Test scores rose and enrollment stabilized, but her steamroller style made enemies, not the least of them the Weingarten-led American Federation of Teachers. AFT poured money into the mayoral campaign of Vincent Gray, who defeated Fenty in last September's Democratic primary. Rhee, calling the outcome "devastating," resigned soon after. She has since started a new organization, Students First, to promote school reform. A native of Toledo and the divorced mother of two daughters, Rhee is engaged to former NBA star Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 16, 2011 3:40 AM
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