Rhee Sees 'Tide Turning' For Schools

After seven months as chancellor of the D.C. schools, Michelle A. Rhee talks about the importance of accountability and feedback from parents. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
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Are you confident that you will actually save $23 million, as you've previously stated? The original dollar figure that we came up with was $23 million for schools, and that was actually done in the fall, based on an analysis that we did where we anticipated potentially closing 30 schools. Now, that actually didn't include all costs. It included the administrative costs, the utilities and that sort of thing. When we put all of the costs in that sort of end analysis, I think we will save at least that much if not more.

How do you think the public should hold you accountable? What's your time frame for actually improving student achievement? Because you're doing a lot of things now. You're closing schools. You're putting together a restructuring plan. At what point will we start to see this reflected in the test scores?

I think that's a great question. I was talking to [Schools Chancellor] Joel Klein from New York about this the other day, and he said, 'Realistically you're not going to see significant gains until five years out.' I was thinking to myself, 'I can't wait five years.' I don't think that for [the 2008] test that we're going to see significant gains. I do think that starting from the '08-09 school year that we really should start to see us moving in the right direction.

Chancellor, you have two daughters in D.C. public schools. How do you feel you've been served as a parent in the system? Well, as a parent firsthand, I can see all of the things that drive other parents crazy. I mean, the fact that the after-care program in the schools didn't start until three weeks after school started. I mean, it was a pain in the butt for me. What am I supposed to do for three weeks? The registration process. I mean, to get our kids registered for school was a nightmare, and the fact that you have to do it every single year, was just, I was like, 'Why? Why can't we find a better way to do that?' So I think that, as a parent, I see things firsthand and I understand based on that why it drives other parents in the system batty.

Let's talk about race.

I did not take that into consideration at the front-end meeting. We wanted to choose criteria and apply criteria without thinking about ward. We just wanted to be able to explain to people this is what we did . . . so anybody could retrace the steps and come up with the exact same list that we did. If you look at any of the data, we should not be closing schools in [largely white] Ward 3 because Ward 3 has the fewest schools and they are the most heavily populated. I mean we're operating at about 145 square feet per kid in Ward 3, where in the rest of the District it's over 300. Someone said to me somewhere in this process that we have to close some school in Ward 3 as a symbolic gesture. I thought that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard.