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D.C. Schools Insider
By Bill Turque

Rhee: Election result 'devastating' for D.C. schoolchildren

Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee made it increasingly clear Wednesday evening that she has no long-term interest in serving as Vincent C. Gray's schools leader.

Speaking at the Newseum to an auditorium studded with Washington A-listers gathered for the red carpet premiere of the edu-documentary "Waiting for Superman," Rhee said she would not "mince words" about Tuesday's Democratic primary defeat of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

"Yesterday's election results were devastating, devastating," Rhee said. "Not for me, because I'll be fine, and not even for Fenty because he'll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C."

Rhee, part of a post-screening panel discussion that included Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Harlem Children's Zone founder Geoffrey Canada and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, said earlier Wednesday that she looked forward to sitting down with Gray to discuss the future.

She did not mention Gray by name or criticize him directly at the Newseum screening. But in a kind of Sarah Palin "don't-retreat-reload" moment, she said the takeaway from the D.C. election for education reformers was that it was time to become even more aggressive in the push for measures such as tougher teacher evaluations using test score data and performance-based pay.

"I would say that the biggest tragedy that could come from yesterday's [Tuesday's] election results is if the lesson people take from this is that we should pull back. That is not the lesson," Rhee said. "That is not doing right by what Adrian Fenty has put into this effort for the last three and half years, that is not the right lesson for this reform movement. We cannot retreat now. If anything, what the reform community needs to take out of yesterday's election is now is the time to lean forward and be more aggressive and more adamant."

"Waiting for Superman," a new documentary by Davis Guggenheim, the director of "An Inconvenient Truth," explores the failures of public education through the stories of several schoolchildren and reform figures such as Rhee. The film, completed way before the election, treats Rhee as a heroic figure. But her scenes, which include her surprise 2007 introduction by Fenty on the steps of the Wilson Building and footage of her marching down school hallways with laptop open, have a poignant tone given this week's election.

Rhee said she "absolutely" felt guilt over Fenty's loss and said her original prediction to the mayor when they first met -- that hiring her as chancellor could be his political undoing -- turned out to be accurate. But she scoffed at the suggestion by the moderator, New York Magazine's John Heilemann, that she might have been able to preserve Fenty's career and achieve her reform goals in a more politically deft manner.

"I think part of the problem in public education to date has been that we all have to feel good, let's not ruffle too many feathers," she said, noting that when she arrived in 2007, eight percent of the District's eighth graders were doing math at grade level.