Michelle Rhee describes herself as a teacher at her core, though she taught for only three years in the Baltimore Public School System. There, she worked with second- and third-graders at Harlem Park Community School, driving their scores on national standardized tests from the 13th to the 90th percentile.
A student’s academic achievement, Rhee said, is directly tied to the educator and the quality of the classroom instruction. Her classroom techniques, according to her biography, were featured in The Wall Street Journal and other national and regional news outlets.
“People ask me a lot how we saw the results that we did,” Rhee said. “The bottom line was that there was no real silver bullet to this. We had extraordinarily high expectations for the students. We engaged the families and the communities in what we were doing. And we worked hard. It was a lot of sweat.”
Rhee comes to the District a decade after founding The New Teacher Project, a 120-employee nonprofit that has recruited more than 23,000 new teachers to work in underperforming urban schools. She is not tied to any jurisdiction’s best or worst practices, which Mayor Adrian Fenty considered a plus.
The nonprofit has worked with the D.C. Public Schools since 2000, administering the D.C. Teaching Fellows program and redesigning the city’s recruitment and hiring processes.
Rhee, who will earn $250,000 a year as chancellor, is the mother of two daughters who will enter the third grade and kindergarten in the fall.
“I would like them to be able to attend a DCPS traditional school,” she said.
Michelle Rhee
» Age: 37
» Born: Ann Arbor, Mich.
» Lives: Aurora, Colo.
» Professional: Joined Teach for America in 1992; serves on national advisory boards on teacher quality and alternative certifications
» Education: Earned undergraduate degree from Cornell University; master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
