Word: urbane
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...graduation rate, and only 21% of its students read at grade level. Rhodes is well aware of the miserable statistics, and when he first saw his new chancellor from afar, he thought she looked petite, foreign and underqualified. "I was like, She doesn't look ready for urban kids." But after they exchanged e-mails, he agreed to meet her downtown. He realized almost at once that he had underestimated her. "She actually sat with me," he says, "and talked eye to eye, like I was one of her co-workers." They decided to meet again, this time at Anacostia...
Rhee has promised to make Washington the highest-performing urban school district in the nation, a prospect that, if realized, could transform the way schools across the country are run. She is attempting to do this through a relentless focus on finding--and rewarding--strong teachers, purging incompetent ones and weakening the tenure system that keeps bad teachers in the classroom. This fall, Rhee was asked to meet with both presidential campaigns to discuss school reform. In the last debate, each candidate tried to claim her as his own, with Barack Obama calling her a "wonderful new superintendent...
Each week, Rhee gets e-mails from superintendents in other cities. They understand that if she succeeds, Rhee could do something no one has done before: she could prove that low-income urban kids can catch up with kids in the suburbs. The radicalism of this idea cannot be overstated. Now, without proof that cities can revolutionize their worst schools, there is always a fine excuse. Superintendents, parents and teachers in urban school districts lament systemic problems they cannot control: poverty, hunger, violence and negligent parents. They bicker over small improvements such as class size and curriculum, like diplomats touring...
...dream. He introduced a bill in the Senate to reward good teachers and rate effectiveness using, in part, a "statistical method to measure the influence of a teacher." It was opposed by the NEA. In his book The Audacity of Hope, he sounded as if he were channeling urban-school reformers like Rhee: "There's no reason why an experienced, highly qualified and effective teacher shouldn't earn $100,000," he wrote. "There's just one catch. In exchange for more money, teachers need to become more accountable for their performance--and school districts need to have greater ability...
Education has been a primary commitment of TIME's, and this is our eighth education cover in the past 2 1/2 years. Amanda Ripley's powerful portrait of Washington, D.C., public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee offers a blueprint for helping revive urban schools. It's a story that should be instructive not only to teachers and students but also to President-elect and Mrs. Obama, who have said they will take a personal interest in education and the Washington community. All of us should welcome their involvement...