Rhee's Framing of the Debate on Education
On the evening of February 7, Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of DC
public schools and the public face of the opaquely funded StudentsFirst,
addressed an audience of some four thousand people at the Paramount
theater in Oakland. This lecture was one of a number of lectures
purchased as a series, and did not imply any particular interest in Rhee
or in education by the older and relatively affluent crowd attending, the
sort of crowd one finds at similar series, whether theater, ballet, or
classical music.
As I have never heard Rhee speak before, I cannot say that she tailored
her talk to this particular audience, but given her consummate skills as
a public speaker, I would be very surprised if she had not.
The lecture was divided in three parts. First, Rhee introduced herself
and described her leadership of the DC public schools; next, she outlined
her fundamental principles about education; finally, she answered
questions from the audience.
In the first part, Rhee established her persona: a mix of unprepossessing
but feisty "Korean lady," finding herself unaccountably charged with the
management of DC public schools and concerned only for the good of the
children. Her narrative of her three years as DC chancellor, a position
for which she had no qualifications or experience, framed her dictatorial
and disruptive tenure as the story of a plain speaking firebrand who
sliced through every piece of red tape and obstruction to transform
institutional corruption into a working school system. Rich in anecdote
and short on facts, the main point of the story was to set up Rhee as a
concerned citizen who was out of patience with a dysfunctional system and
whose arbitrary and devastating actions (performed under the aegis of
Mayoral control) were not a violation of the democratic rights of parents
and teachers and children, but the necessary and heroic actions of a
woman more concerned with the good of the children than with the interest
of other "adults" involved in the educational system.
