G.F. Brandenburg cannot understand the Washington Post editorial writer Jo-Anne Armao. When Michelle Rhee started her job as chancellor of the D.C. schools in 2007, Armao interviewed her and decided that she was the greatest educator ever. Nothing that has happened in the past dozen years has changed her views. To this day, she still writes lovingly, respectfully about the Miracle that was Michelle Rhee. All her initiatives have failed. A huge cheating scandal was covered up and forgotten. Charter scandals have come and gone. A high school boasted of its 100% graduation rate, but it was a fake.
No matter. The Washington Post editorial board has Rhee’s back, almost a decade after she left.
For a fun trip down memory lane, read the comments on the John Merrow post from 2013 that is included.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very disappointing to read that the Washington Post does not understand what a disaster Michelle Rhee was for DC schools. Despite her many claims of systemic reform, all she really did was ignore the biggest issues and create chaos. I’m sure Donald Trump would admire her….full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Jim,
It all makes sense—and Rhee was a “success”—if you recognize that the goal of “reform” is DISRUPTION. Rhee disrupted DC. She fired teachers and principals. She closed schools. She created chaos.
LOL. Exactly.
Trump doesn’t get credit for Rhee. That happened on Obama’s watch. Obama was a big admirer of Rhee. If we elect another Obama thinking s/he’s going to be better than Trump on education, we’re in for a rude awakening. So far Bernie is the only major candidate who has specifically repudiated Obama’s charter/rephorm-friendly policies.
AGREE, dienne77.
creating chaos: what the reformers and Trump have so clearly in common. Create chaos and then skim off the cash when no one can 1) see what you’re doing or 2) stop you even if they do see what you’re doing because the chaos ties their hands
From the Rheformish Lexicon:
Love. An arrangement entered into for pay
Usage note: Reformish, Rheformish, Rheeformish (Syn., Deformish) are variant spellings of the same term in this dialect of Goblish. The existence of such variations in Reformish, even in the name of the language, raises the question of why an Education Reformer would brook variation of any kind. It’s important to recognize that to the Ed Reformer, standardization is something to be done not to Reformers and their children but to the children of Proles.
One of my first comments on this blog was about how Armao re-wrote an article by Rhee critic and Post writer Bill Turque. Mind you, she didn’t pull the article, or cut sentences and paragraphs from the article … SHE RE-WROTE THE WORDING OF SENTENCES, AND ADDED ENTIRELY NEW SENTENCES TO SOFTEN THE CRITICISMS OF RHEE, giving the impression that Turque wrote stuff that he never wrote. She did so in the middle of the night, and without his input, or even informing Turque that she was doing so.
(NOTE: Because of his critical writing, then-Chancellor Rhee cut off all contact with Turque, and ordered her staff to do likewise.)
It made a huge blow-up outside of the Post itself, about journalistic integrity, and the role of an editor, and all that.
Here’s the 2013 post from Dr. Ravitch on that comment (which garnered Comment of the Week, btw):
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/04/15/best-comment-of-the-week-the-washington-post-and-rhee/
The newspaper that once took down a corrupt presidency has turned into such a joke.
Jack, I would add nuance — the Washington Post does a lot of great journalism and deserves its respected status, but its editorial positions on education are ridiculous and insupportable, and its education reporting has been all over the map.
Meanwhile, wouldn’t we all like to know where Michelle Rhee is now? I’ll recap from what I know. She launched her operation StudentsFirst with huge brouhaha on Oprah (is Oprah the official launching pad for massively hyped education con jobs?) and set some enormous fundraising goal. StudentsFirst won enormous hype for a while, and it certainly must have reaped some money. StudentsFirst moved its world headquarters to Sacramento when Rhee married then-Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.
In September 2015 I was in Sacramento and went to find the StudentsFirst world headquarters, just as a lark. I found it in a dusty downtown commercial neighborhood called Alkali Flat, above a T-Mobile store, with just a tiny name on the door buzzer for ID. Not that I would endorse big spending on a splashy headquarters, but you could tell there wasn’t much going on.
At some point, StudentsFirst was effectively disbanded, absorbed into some other obscure (if, of course, wealthy) “reform” operation. Meanwhile, Kevin Johnson was credibly accused of sexually harassing women, including underage, and decided not to run again for Sacramento mayor. He and Rhee have quietly faded from sight, presumably living in the style to which they’ve become accustomed on the money StudentsFirst collected amid all the hype.
Why do you think so many people who do great journalism where certain issues are concerned can be so ill-begotten when the subject of public Ed is concerned?
Roy, that’s a great question, and since I work with some of those people (editorial board members who are utterly taken in by education “reform” hype, eager to gush about it and attack its critics) I actually don’t believe they’re paid off. I think there’s a simplistic mindset, an eagerness to find easy-peasy solutions in quest of policies to promote in editorials, and a tendency to dig in and never, ever, ever admit to being wrong.
Carolinesf wrote:
“I think there’s a simplistic mindset, an eagerness to find easy-peasy solutions in quest of policies to promote in editorials, and a tendency to dig in and never, ever, ever admit to being wrong.”
I think that since many in the press corp are supposedly “liberals” they have a modernized version of “White Man’s Burden” spinning around in their heads.
Nah, the media are hard-boiled about politicians but are vulnerable to every pie-in-the-sky charter claim.
The charter sector framed itself so effectively as disrupting the status quo, and so few people pay attention to education that it didn’t get questioned. At least that’s my take. (Well, I guess the charter sector WAS/IS disrupting the status quo, but from the billionaire-funded right, so that’s what the press often misses.)
Last time I checked, Michelle Rhee was on the board of Miracle Gro (Ohio-based). The rich look after their minions. The more damage done to labor, the happier the wealthy are.
One more product NOT to purchase. That’s okay, I found a better fertilizer.
Always vote with your money and your time in addition to voting on the ballot.
She has disappeared from the board of Miracle-Gro too. https://scottsmiraclegro.gcs-web.com/corporate-governance/leadership-team-and-directors
Thanks, Caroline, for the update.
Can’t stand Oprah.
Dear friends, be careful calling out Michelle Rhee for Erasergate and other destructive aspects of her sociopathic approach to education, like closing people’s schools and relishing firing people on national television; be careful. She will tape your mouth shut. She will do it. She said she did it to dozens of seven year-olds, and she will do it again. She will beat you with her broom, tape your mouth shut, and force you to watch her eat bees. Worse, she’s been working with manure instead of tape and erasers ever since she left education. Watch out.