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CAT Tracks for July 1, 2010
DC DIVA ISSUES ULTIMATUM |
Visited my brother-in-law last month in DC. He suggested a walk in his neighborhood on a cool and cloudy Sunday morning. A brief shower prompted a detour into an "Open House" for a small two-story dwelling not too far removed from him. The price for the modest home...approximately $600,000. Being a fat-cat teacher, I jokingly told my brother-in-law that I thought that my pension would surely cover the cost...maybe the "closing cost".
After reading the article below, I'm tempted to revisit the issue!
I would definitely like to be a DC resident come November...come election day.
More and more, Michelle Rhee - the Diva...the Prima Donna - is proving that there is no black-and-white answer to the problems facing public education in Washington DC...
It's GRAY!
From The Washington Post...
The Answer Sheet
Why Rhee's mayoral comments are troubling
Let’s set aside the question about whether D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee should have taken sides in the city’s mayoral race. Even if she had said nothing, everybody would know she stands firmly with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, the man who hired her and who has given her free rein.
But her all-but-direct threat to quit if Fenty loses to D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray in September’s Democratic Party raises a question about her priorities, not to mention her reluctance to admit that she might not have all the answers to fixing D.C. schools.
My colleagues Bill Turque and Nikita Stewart wrote in a Post article that Rhee on Tuesday said in two separate interviews -- one with WAMU’s Kavitha Cardoza and one with The Post -- that she would not work for a mayor who did not share her education reform ideas, and then she made it clear that Gray doesn’t.
So Rhee is all but saying that if city residents don’t give her her way by reelecting Fenty, she is out of here.
Never mind that she really doesn’t know how Gray will approach their relationship. What political candidates say during a campaign is not always what they do if they win and take office. Considerations change.
What is more important, and of more concern, is that Rhee surely knows the importance of consistency in school leadership. She knows she was the seventh person to head the school system in a decade when she arrived in 2007, and that the constant turnover at the top was disastrous for the city’s schools.
Rhee states frequently that her concern is only for D.C. schoolchildren. If that is so, it seems odd that she would be so quick to suggest that she might abandon them without giving a new mayor a chance to do what she considers the right thing.
Her comments are hardly a great lesson for young people, who need more than ever to learn how to listen to other views and compromise.
Would it not be a far better message for Rhee to tell D.C. schoolchildren that she is here to stay and fight to improve their schools?
By Valerie Strauss
