D.C. Schools Chief Michelle Rhee Stepping Down; Move Seen as Blow to Education Reform

WOW this woman was indeed a warrior and a CHAMPION for public education. Her actions and tactics may have been severe and hasty but we NEED SEVERE AND WE NEED HASTY as our children lose out day by day and year by year. It is indeed that POLITICS rules the day and not the needs of children and public education. SUPERMAN lost this battle!

There are literally thousands of people who are able administrators and believe in the same kind of school reform that Rhee advocated. The school districts just need to have the courage to hire them.

By firing teachesrs the Oriental woman is unable to improve the system. If the performance of students is poor is necessarily the teachers fault. Both children and teachers may have to be re-trained, but firing is inhuman. I am sure all those teachers had families to support. I can assure most, if not all , the teachers are perfectly willing to develop learning skill s in their students. Firing teachers is not a solution to the problem of inability to learn. Is good to see this woman Rhee taking her angry frustrations out of the back of teachers, and students. Wirh an intelligent program the performance of teachers and students will go up to higher standards.

Watch the movie Waiting for Superman and you'll be even sadder to see that once again the teacher's unions have won by having Rhee quit. Take a look at the 'rubber rooms' where NYC warehouses teachers and pays them full salaries instead of firing them. The teacher's unions are the student's worst friends.

DC schools are in bad shape partly because bad parenting..Rhee is a fixer not a baby sitter of failed parents, teachers and students...She is better off leaving DC schools than stay and not been appreciated for her efforts to better education enviornment in DC...

ettu: My experience has been of conservative republicans who took the walmart idea and applied it to education. Shut down as many schools as possible, crammed the kids in and put ugly outbuildings on their playgrounds if they wont all fit in the buildings. I'm soooo angry at the millions of dollars spent on buses, their maintainance not to mention diesel for what looks like 20 acres of buses, and this is just Oklahoma City! All that wasted money and fuel while our State yaps abt getting away from foreign dependence on oil! And then theres the pollution added by all those buses, asthma is a big problem here. We were suckered into,'MAPS' a temporary extra tax 'for the children' yet the same year it expired, we had the worse conditions and lowest rankings ever. Then we passed the Lottery, 'for the children', same results, more loss of teachers and we are ranked 49th in the US. So lets STOP the political name calling, call it what it is, pure GREED! And greed knows no political affiliation.

Washington DC will ultimately receive the education system it deserves. This basket-case of education required severe measures. Unfortunately it will probably now revert back to where it started.

Good for DC.. Firing eveyone is not or never has been the answer. she left because instead of being fired she quit. Losers do that. The problem with educators like her is that the problem starts with the parents. When politicians understand that then an d only tjen will education inprove. sbc

Education may be the key to upward mobility but educational reform will only come to D.C. when parents embrace Chancellors such as Michelle Rhee. Her focus (and results) were on & for the kids. The parents of D.C. have no idea what they just lost. How can parents blithely disregard the futures of their own children?

Washington, D.C., schools would rather wallow in their mire than change for the better for the sake of its school children. What a sad example for this country. "Too hasty and too severe"? As a parent, if anything can be done to save my kids' future, nothing would be too soon or too strong. I would not want a tepid response intended to save the feelings (and $$$) of teachers.