Bill Turque of the Washington Post had a lengthy piece this weekend on Michelle Rhee, who has now been chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools for two years. Rhee has obvious similarities to two education leaders I recently profiled: Chicago Public Schools Ron Huberman and former CPS head and current Education Sec. Arne Duncan. Like Huberman, Rhee is just in her late-30’s and has developed a reputation as someone who "shakes up" entrenched bureaucracies. And like Duncan, Rhee focuses her policies on teacher quality: increasing teacher pay and training, but also holding teachers accountable for student test scores.

I suppose I’m blogging about Turque’s article to promote my own work on urban education. Because the piece is kind of strange. Apparently, Rhee’s biggest flaw is that she’s not polite to the Washington, D.C. city council and the "lesson" this educator has learned is to be nice to council leaders, particularly chairman Vincent Gray:

Skeptical of her enrollment projections, which showed public schools gaining several hundred new students this fall after years of steady decline, the council voted to sequester $27 million until the trends were more clear.

Rhee angered council members this month with an aggressive campaign to restore the funds. But Gray also noted that she did something he had never before seen: visit members in their offices.

"She never thought there was a need to do it," he said. "But there has been a need, from day one."

On June 2, the council voted to restore most of the funds it had pulled.

So wait: Did Rhee make the enrollment trends more clear? Or did she just meet with council members in their office? Also, judging from the article, Gray’s biggest problem with Rhee is that she posed for the cover of Time magazine with a broom. It seems the D.C. city council makes decisions on whether Rhee makes them feel important or not. The same with teachers: Teacher’s unions are not upset with the collective bargaining package the chancellor has proposed but speeches Rhee has gave that bash mediocre teachers.

So Rhee is mean, and the city council and teachers are a bit too sensitive and superficial. It’s an article that perhaps manages to be unfair to all sides.-MB

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