(Chicago Tribune) — Like the menu at a potluck supper, Chicago Public Schoolshas a dizzying array of offerings, from classical, magnet, selective enrollment and gifted schools to charters and contract schools and career and military academies. The smorgasbord is a testament to Chicago’s myriad attempts to fix broken schools and keep middle-class parents from fleeing to the […]
(Washington Post) — The Columbia Heights couple planned to spend the holidays mulling over seating assignments and experimenting with apple pie recipes for the 80 guests invited to their spring wedding. Instead, William Neville and Daniel Rehbehn will head to the courthouse in the next few days to file their marriage papers, concerned that the […]
(Washington Examiner) — Kaya Henderson is tired of breaking china. The interim D.C. schools chancellor remembers a class she took in college: Cycles of Revolution, something like that. It explained that when something is broken, people reach a boiling point. There’s a bloody battle in the streets. And then people look up: They realize their […]
(Wall Street Journal) — Former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee launched a national advocacy group Monday to support political candidates and school districts that embrace substantial changes in public education. Through the group, StudentsFirst, Ms. Rhee hopes to raise $1 billion to dole out to political candidates who support her policies and to local […]
(Wall Street Journal) — The election of a tough-talking new teachers’ union head here could complicate efforts to turn around the capital’s struggling school system, just as the fragile national effort to overhaul public schools faces a change in educational leaders in this and two other big cities. Officials who took over in the wake […]
(AJC) — The three candidates vying for state school superintendent butted heads Sunday night over who is best qualified to raise student achievement and teacher morale in an era of government cost-cutting. All of them are longtime devotees to education, although only two — Republican John Barge and Libertarian Kira Willis — are career public […]
(Washington Post) — As Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee winds down a turbulent 31/2 years in the District, she leaves in her wake a question that will be largely Kaya Henderson’s to answer: Can school reform continue with the same velocity and ambition under a leadership that values consensus and collaboration over blunt force and broken crockery? Henderson’s […]
(Washington Post) — Presumptive mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray introduced Kaya Henderson on Wednesday as the interim chancellor of D.C. public schools and vowed that reforms launched under Michelle A. Rhee would continue when he takes office in January. “We cannot and will not return to the days of incrementalism,” said Gray, appearing at a news […]
(Washington Post) — D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee will announce Wednesday that she is resigning at the end of this month, bringing an abrupt end to a tenure that drew national acclaim but that also became a central issue in an election that sent her patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, to defeat. Rhee survived […]
(Washington Post) — Presumptive mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray, facing the most keenly anticipated personnel decision of his administration-in-waiting, is scheduled to sit down with Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee on Thursday for a conversation that is expected to address how long Rhee will remain on the job. Rhee, an appointee of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty […]