NBC is devoting a full week to educational reform in this country. This follows with the grand opening of the much talked about education movie, Waiting for Superman.
The most interesting character in the movie is Washington, D.C., education chancellor, Michelle Rhee. Her “take no prisoners” approach to education reform may have cost current D.C. mayor, Adrian Fenty, his job in the last election.
After the Sunday screening of the movie, I had the privilege to be part of a panel discussion on education reform. I sat next to former Milwaukee Superintendent Howard Fuller. When the issue of Rhee came up as a final question, I was really interested in Fuller’s answer. After all, Fuller was an outspoken supporter of mayoral control in Milwaukee, and the citizens of Washington had just voted out their mayor who had brought in Rhee as D.C.’s chancellor.
Fuller stated that he did not believe that Rhee was the reason why Fenty had lost the election, which I found to be a little odd, because no one else seems to have a similar position. Even Rhee believes that she cost Fenty the election.
Fuller’s position is understandable. He can’t accept that the public was rejecting mayoral control, only Fenty. The facts around the nation appear to say otherwise. By an overwhelming majority, Milwaukee citizens in polls also rejected mayoral control. Nor is Fenty the first mayor to be voted out over the issue of mayoral control. Last November in Harrisburg, Penn., 20-year mayor, Stephen Reed, went down in defeat to Linda Thompson, who made the centerpiece of her campaign her opposition to mayoral control of the Harrisburg schools.
What Fuller thought caused Fenty’s election loss was his arrogance, not listening to the citizens of Washington. Nor did Fuller defend Rhee’s management style because she operated in the same arrogant manner.
The difference I have with Fuller is that I see these arrogant attitudes flow from the attitude of why some people say we need mayoral control, namely that the public can’t be trusted to elect effective school board representatives.
These losses also dispel the myth that mayors can use their powers to make educational reforms that school boards are unwilling or unable to make. If anything, mayoral control can cost a mayor an election, so fewer big city mayors are likely to want to advocate for one-man rule, and if they get it, they are more likely to be timid in reform.
Even Newark’s Mayor Corey Booker is talking a lot more about collaboration as his city schools accept the $100 million challenge grant from the founder of Facebook. Nor is it likely that Michelle Rhee will leave D.C. to head the Newark Public Schools, no matter what Oprah Winfrey says.
In Waiting for Superman, Harlem Children’s Zone Founder Geoffrey Canada tells how he was devastated as a child when he found out there was no Superman who could come and save us. The irony of the movie is that Michelle Rhee was held up as some kind of Wonder Woman who could save the DC school system. There are no Supermen; there are no Wonder Women. As I said at the forum, everyone “is part of the problem and part of the solution.”
