Taking the Test
Michelle Rhee Strives to Shake Up the D.C. Schools, One Person and One Day at a Time

By Jo-Ann Armao
Sunday, December 16, 2007

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee started her Dec. 6 at 3:30 a.m. with the first of many calls over whether to shut schools because of snow. Her advisers nudged her to play it safe, this being her first time making the decision. A union official pushed for closing, arguing that it wouldn't be easy for teachers to get to work. Rhee overruled them all. D.C. schoolchildren already lag too far behind academically, she reasoned, and she wasn't about to deprive them of a day of instruction.

Playing it safe is just not in the playbook of the woman Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has turned to in his bid to reform education in the nation's capital. Indeed, playing it safe is why so many of Rhee's predecessors failed. Tinkering around the edges won't turn around a system where the achievement gap between black and white children is 70 percentage points.

So, this most improbable of superintendents -- she's never led a district and has no ambitions to head another -- is turning the city on its head with plans to remake the bureaucracy, consolidate schools and persuade the unions to sign on to needed reforms. Her work is focusing renewed attention on what ails urban education. Her success -- or failure -- will be seen by many, fairly or not, as proving whether poor black and brown children can learn and achieve on par with their white, better-off counterparts.

Consequently, Rhee is attracting educators from across the country who are inspired by her mission (her word) to transform urban education. Her management team is made up of education entrepreneurs, and she's waging an unprecedented nationwide search for others. Officials from a headhunting firm told her that highly paid executives in the private sector are interested because of what she's trying to do and because they know what she faces. To which Rhee wryly observed: "I'm pretty sure no one understands what I am dealing with." A day spent with the chancellor provides glimpses.

"We're not keeping that guy in that position. Period," Rhee tells top aides as they discuss next year's assignment of principals. "Someone teach me how to do it, and I'll do it," Rhee says when given excuses about the delay in posting the snow announcement online. "This is taking too long . . . What is the bottom line?" she asks during a department performance review. Data inform every decision. How come, the chancellor asks when looking at numbers flashed on a projection screen, one constituent services employee is generally able to close out complaints in two days when it takes others as long as 12 days? The discussion is about "deliverables," about meeting and then exceeding objectives. No session ends without a to-do list. Even then, the number of challenges seems insurmountable.

Hours later, she's en route to a meeting with the system's substitute teachers. It's the first time that a D.C. superintendent has met with the substitutes, who are key in a system that has some of the country's highest teacher absentee rates. That some teachers call in sick as many as 90 days a year and that some schools have as many as 15 teachers absent every day infuriates Rhee. It falls under the rubric of what she calls "us as adults doing wrong by children."

The substitutes are a tough crowd. Most are there to speak up for better pay and more respect. Soon, though, heads are nodding in agreement as Rhee talks passionately about how education is supposed to be the great equalizer. Here, she says, "we allow the color of children's skin and their Zip code to define and determine their educational outcomes."

Rhee has no doubt that she can succeed. Her confidence flows from the potential she sees in the children under her charge and in the power of even one good teacher. She tells of visiting a classroom where the fourth-graders were learning about mythology. The teacher engaged the students, and the children, motivated, offered up insightful answers. Across the hallway, another teacher delivered a rote lesson and got nothing back. "I'm waiting, I'm waiting," Rhee quoted the teacher as saying. Well, she says, the students were waiting for something, too. That two groups of children, same neighborhood, same crummy building, were getting completely different educations had nothing to do with their innate ability or whether they didn't have breakfast that morning -- but more to do with the teacher standing in front of them.

Her story resonates in one of her last stops that day, a visit to the after-school Higher Achievement Program operating out of Kelly Miller Middle School in Ward 7. Rhee is at her best with students, and she wants their ideas on how to make schools better. Aaron Garvin, 13, who dreams of going to Howard University and becoming a sports broadcaster, knows that not all kids are as motivated as he is. They need help and, he said, sad as it sounds, some teachers are not up to the task. And so he told Rhee: "Push and encourage." It's advice already taken to heart.

The writer is a member of the editorial page staff. Her e-mail address isarmaoj@washpost.com.