NBC’s “Education Nation” kicked off on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning with what could be a preview of the future of the D.C. public schools.
Almost-certainly-exiting Chancellor Michelle Rhee was there, as was Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager of Detroit’s schools -- and someone who has been listed as a possible Rhee successor. Rounding out the discussion was Education Secretary Arne Duncan -- a Rhee fan -- and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.
Click here to read the full transcript of the interview.
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Rhee was, as DCist’s Martin Austermuhle put it, “surprisingly diplomatic.” She said her future in D.C. is “something that we still have to determine,” and said “education reform can continue in D.C., regardless of whether I’m there or not. It can continue as long as the leadership is willing to continue to make the incredibly tough decisions that we’ve made over the last three years.”
Rhee said, “If you talk about the mayor’s election, a lot of what you heard from citizens was, ‘Well, they fire teachers.’ And what you, unfortunately, didn’t hear about that was we didn’t fire teachers to be mean, because were callous or didn’t care. We wanted to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom simply because we think our children deserve better.”
Secretary Duncan had high praise for Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty, saying Fenty “can walk out with his head held high. When the story of D.C.’s school reform is written, a huge part is going to be around his courage and his leadership.” Could Fenty find a place in the federal Education Department after his term ends?
As for Bobb, the former D.C. city administrator, he hinted that he could build on Rhee’s work if he returns to the District to run the schools. He said in Detroit, “we have a new teacher contract. And this year, for the first time, we actually have a new teacher evaluation system that’s being put in place. We’re borrowing from what’s being done in D.C.”
The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy wasn’t impressed by Rhee’s performance. He said he “noticed a familiar refrain” in her comments -- she “readily accepts credit for success while always attributing failure to the shortcomings of others.” The “problem with owning up to a mistake,” Milloy writes, “is that it might cause the reformer’s superhuman facade to crumble, revealing some emotionally vulnerable, in-over-her-head inner child.”
Unfair? Well, Milloy notes “that shaken look on Rhee’s face” after she met with Vincent Gray last week. Milloy says Gray bent over backwards as Council chairman to interact with Rhee, but “as long as Fenty had her back, she reveled in her disrespect for Gray.”
The Washington Examiner’s Jonetta Rose Barras is having none of it. In her column, Barras says Gray “doesn’t need introductory meetings with Rhee. He knows her.” She says last week’s meeting, and promises of more inconclusive meetings to come, are “a stalling tactic. He wants to quiet residents’ concerns and give himself time to scout for an interim education leader.”
Barras says Gray’s “pending dismissal of the woman considered to be the standard-bearer of education reform” is due squarely to the fact that Weingarten’s union “spent $1 million to help Gray get elected. That money came with one clear expectation: Dump Rhee.”
Elsewhere in the DMV:
* Post columnist Colbert King suggests his colleague Milloy should take a deep breath after a pair of bitter columns on the D.C. election, writing, “It’s not all about the ‘racial divide,’ folks.” King points to the 63 percent citywide showing for At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, writing that even in “largely black wards,” the “same voters who turned thumbs down on Fenty went thumbs way up for the reelection bid of a white candidate.” A fair point, but all three candidates in that contest were white. Maybe King meant that a lot of voters thought candidate Michael D. Brown was black and voted against him anyway?
Urban revitalization expert Richard Layman writes that King is “right that it wasn't about race, and not wrong that it was about respect. But it was about respect as a subset of a commitment to social and redistributive justice as the primary political and social agenda guiding the city. If you're white and committed to that agenda, then you'll get the votes,” as Mendelson did. “If you're not committed to it, white or black, getting elected can be a problem. It was a problem for Mayor Fenty,” and, Layman writes, a reason why Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans has never made it citywide.
* In an editorial this morning, the Post says that while “it was ill-advised of the D.C. Council to try to enact emergency legislation involving election practices just weeks before the city’s mayoral primary,” but with the primary in the past, “the council is right to revisit the issue” by taking up Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh’s bill “aimed at prohibiting corrupt election practices, including vote-buying.”
* The Post’s Robert McCartney profiles the 2030 Group, a “new, high-powered business group” that “is ruffling feathers in the local establishment as it pushes the fragmented Washington region to cooperate more to deal with such issues as excessive traffic, inadequate education and imbalanced economic growth.”
* The Examiner has a “3-minute interview” with District political strategist Chuck Thies, who guided Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham to victory in a competitive primary this month.
* In Maryland, Bob Ehrlich is making a sales tax rollback a key issue in his gubernatorial comeback campaign. The Post says the one-percent hike under Gov. Martin O’Malley, part of $1.4 billion in tax increases passed in 2007, “reflects a broader attitude in Annapolis that needs to be checked.” But it would also “cost the Maryland treasury more than $600 million a year -- and Ehrlich has yet to say how he would pay for it.”
* Ehrlich and O’Malley “say they're eager to debate,” the Gazette reports, but negotiations are slow-going. Ehrlich picked up the support of the Maryland State Fraternal Order of Police last week (as he did in 2002 and 2006), while a coalition of business leaders endorsed O’Malley. The Gazette writes that the tight race could come down to whether voters who turned out for Barack Obama in 2008 will come out for O’Malley this November.
* The Examiner reports Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is telling county departments to get ready for budget cuts of up to 15 percent next year due to a projected shortfall of nearly a quarter-billion dollars.
* In Virginia, the Post offers some rare praise for a conservative Republican, saying in an editorial that “it took guts” for Gov. Bob McDonnell “to issue a blunt and humble apology for his ham-handed attempts last spring to minimize the importance of slavery in the history of Virginia and the Civil War.” The Post lauds McDonnell’s “eloquent speech at Norfolk State University, Virginia’s oldest public historically black college,” on Friday, in which he called his omission of slavery’s role in the war an “error of haste and not of heart” in his April declaration of Confederate History Month, and said that next year, he will declare “Civil War in Virginia Month” instead.
* The Examiner says Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli “is ratcheting up the rhetoric in his latest argument against the federal health care law while at the same time expanding his statewide political operations, adding fuel to speculation about his ambitions for higher office.”
* Fairfax County Republican Committee member Brian Schoeneman blogs about the county GOP’s efforts to attract blacks to the party: Black Tea Party activist Sonnie Johnson “reminded all of us that it was the Republican party that championed the creation of the historically black colleges,” and “that Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. and most other noted black leaders in history were Republicans.”
Follow P.J. Orvetti on Twitter at @PJOinDC
