Radical

by Michelle Rhee

  Abby Smith met me at the door. Abby was a TFA alum I knew who was now working with Victor and Eric Lerum, Victor’s chief of staff. On the way up to the mayor’s office, I was joking around. They wore game faces. It became clear that for them this was a big meeting. Abby had sung my praises to the mayor. If I bombed, her credibility was on the line.

  “Hmmm,” I thought. “It might be harder to get out of this than I figured.”

  I entered the conference room of the Bullpen, Fenty’s take on Bloomberg’s open-office model. There were no walls in the office, just a large open space with everyone sitting at desks. Fenty believed it would lead to transparency and good energy.

  I sat down. Fenty wasn’t there, but the interviews commenced. Dan Tangherlini, the mayor’s city administrator, grilled me for a half hour. No introductions, no niceties; he just started pitching questions.

  “Where would you send your kids to school?”

  “What would you do in your first hundred days?”

  “What’s your assessment of what’s wrong?”

  I answered his questions matter-of-factly. In my mind, I wasn’t interviewing for the job. I still had no intention of being a school superintendent, but he caught me off guard, and I just reacted.

  Then Mayor Adrian Fenty abruptly walked into the room, introduced himself, and started asking questions. After we exchanged pleasantries, he started in with some questions of his own.

  “Tell me what you’re like as a manager.”

  I told him I was good at sniffing out talent. My staff jokes that I have a “seven-minute interview”—that after seven minutes I can tell whether someone is good or not. I said I try to hire people who are a lot smarter than I am.

  “I see my job as manager as knocking down the barriers that stand between my staff and their doing their jobs well,” I said. “I try to create the environment where the people I hire can be successful.”

  “That sounds great,” Fenty said. I wasn’t sure he had paid much attention. “Is this job something you’d consider?”

  “Actually, Mayor, I agreed to this meeting not to interview for the job but to tell you about The New Teacher Project. I live in Denver, have two kids and a tough personal situation. I’m not really certain that I could even honestly consider this job.”

  “Well,” he said, “I think it’s a great opportunity, and I really think you should consider it.”

  And with that, Mayor Fenty left the room.

  I picked up my things, and Abby walked me out of the building. I went back to my hotel room and called Klein.

  “Well?” Joel asked excitedly.

  “Eh,” I said. “He didn’t knock my socks off. I don’t think I can take this on, and I don’t know that I even want to. In the back of my head I sort of wanted him to inspire the heck out of me. If I was ever really to consider taking on a job like this, I would want to be working for someone who is really exciting.”

  “Can I be honest?” Klein asked. “You’re an adult now. You don’t need your boss to inspire you. You can be the inspiring leader. What you really need in this situation is a mayor who will back you up one hundred percent. You’re focused on the absolute wrong thing.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The bottom line is I don’t think we really connected. I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing ends here.”

  “Well, get some rest. Sleep on it,” Klein said. “We’ll see.”

  I woke up at four the next morning so I could catch a flight to Denver to get back in time to attend my daughter Olivia’s pre-K graduation ceremony. When I landed, I turned on my phone and checked my messages. The first one was from Klein.

  “Joel Klein. Call me as soon as possible,” it said.

  I called.

  “Well, he didn’t knock your socks off, but you knocked his socks off. Fenty called me first thing this morning. He wants you to be the first chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools.”

  “Holy crap” was the only thing I could get out of my mouth.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME, it dawned on me that the possibility of running the D.C. schools was real. Despite my genuine efforts to downplay my desire and capacity for the job, Klein had advocated for me, and Fenty was ready to offer up the position.

  And for the first time, I started to imagine myself as chancellor. True, it would put stress on my daughters and Kevin. We would have to pull up stakes again and move to D.C. I was reluctant to add strain to an already shaky situation.

  But if I were at the helm of a public school system, I could put into practice many of the recommendations TNTP had proposed to other school districts. Perhaps I could bring along some of my best staff from TNTP. Perhaps we could put in place a process to evaluate teachers. We could gather data to measure student achievement. Maybe we could streamline the way the system terminated incompetent teachers. We could reward the best teachers. We would start making students—rather than adults—the top priority.

  It was definitely intriguing. The first conversation I had was with Kevin. Though we were essentially separated, we were still living in the same house. And while our marriage was on the rocks, we talked constantly and trusted one another. I told him what was happening.

  “Wow! What a story,” he said. “This is unbelievable!” As an education reformer himself, Kevin understood the challenges and the opportunity. He was incredibly excited by the prospects. We talked for a couple of hours.

  “Look,” he said, “the bottom line for me is that I think this is a nearly impossible job. But if anyone can do it, you can. I think you should do it. I would be willing to move across the country so you can take it.”

  That conversation made the prospect a reality for me for the first time. It allayed my greatest fear. If Kevin was willing to move back to Washington, D.C., with me and our daughters, maybe I could actually make this work.

  NEXT I MET WITH Kati Haycock and Jan Somerville from the Education Trust, an organization that had supported TNTP. They were two of my most trusted confidants.

  “No freaking way!” said Kati, voicing her disbelief and her disapproval at the same time. “You know this city and its school district are on a completely different level of dysfunction. Don’t do it.”

  “Come on,” I pleaded. “We always sit around lamenting about what superintendents aren’t doing. This is a chance for us to put our money where our mouths are. We could walk the walk!”

  “She’s right, Kati,” said Jan. “It would be pretty spectacular!”

  “Absolutely not,” said Kati. “You’ll get slaughtered by the racial politics. It won’t even matter that you’re smart and capable with all of the right ideas. The racial politics will do you in, and I care about you and your career way too much to let that happen.”

  Her thoughts definitely gave me pause. I thanked them both and hugged them as I left the dinner, even more confused than before. As I turned to leave, Jan gave me a half, knowing smile. I think she sensed I was inclined to do it, and she was already wishing me luck.

  Then I called Kaya Henderson. Kaya was one of my favorite people in the world. Her mom, Kathleen, was an educator in their hometown of Mount Vernon, New York, and became a school principal at thirty. Kaya excelled at Mount Vernon High, got a degree in international relations from Georgetown University, and later got a master’s in leadership there. Education was her passion. She taught middle school Spanish in the South Bronx, where she became enraged by the raw deal that poor kids were getting in public schools. She joined Teach For America, where we met and became kindred spirits. I brought Kaya into The New Teacher Project. She rose to become vice president of strategic partnerships and ran Teaching Fellows programs, including the one in Washington, D.C. Kaya knew D.C., the schools, the unions.

  “You are never going to believe this,” I told her.

  “What?” she asked excitedly. She knew I wasn’t one to exaggerate.

  “They want me to become the chancellor of the D.C. schools,” I said.

  “Shut up and sto
p messing with me,” Kaya retorted.

  “No, I’m serious!” I said.

  “Okay, that’s crazy! This is crazy! Oh my dear sweet Jesus!” She was yelling.

  When she calmed down she asked, “Are you going to do it?”

  “That depends on one thing,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You have to come with me. I won’t do it without you. You have to bite off your pinkie.”

  At TNTP I’d told the senior staff an old Korean story about a group of rebels who’d gone off to fight during the Japanese occupation. In order to prove their loyalty, they each bit off the top of their pinkie and wrote their name in blood on a banner. When TNTP was entering into a new three-year strategic plan I told the senior management team they all had to bite off their pinkies and sign up for three years.

  Kaya knew what I was talking about.

  “Lord help us, this is so nuts,” she said.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m in, mama! Let’s go!” she said.

  MY LAST MEETING WAS with John Deasy. He was the head of the Prince George’s County, Maryland, public schools and one of my favorite superintendents. He was unapologetic about his focus on closing the achievement gap, so I felt a kinship with him. We met for dinner on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks from the White House.

  “Do it!” he said. “You have to.”

  “Ugh, I don’t know,” I lamented.

  “What’s not to know? This is what you’ve been waiting for your whole life.”

  “I don’t know this guy, the mayor. I mean, it would be one thing if we knew each other and I trusted him, but I don’t know him from Adam. What if he turns out to be a flake?”

  “Let me tell you one thing. I’ve been watching this whole scenario unfold, being right across the border. This guy, Fenty, he is putting his entire political life on the line to take over the schools. And he wants you to be his chancellor. And you’re asking whether or not you can trust him? He’s putting his political life in your hands, for God’s sake! Have a sense of perspective!”

  IN OUR FIRST MEETING, I had not connected with Adrian Fenty. He seemed distant and cold. With Joel Klein’s and John Deasy’s encouraging words and Kaya’s commitment to join me in mind, I returned to D.C. to meet with Fenty one-on-one. I needed to look him in the eyes, measure his words as he asked me to be his chancellor. And I needed to ask him a few essential questions.

  This time Fenty ushered me into the cavernous mayoral suite, in the top floor of the John Wilson Building, on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill. This time he was dressed in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, and polished black cap-toe shoes. His head shone. His eyes burned.

  “You don’t want me to take this job,” I said.

  “Yes, I do,” he responded. “I am certain that you are the right person to help our children. We need you.”

  “Your job, as a politician, is to keep the noise levels to a minimum. There is no change without pushback. In order to really fix this system, we’d have to do really radical things that would undoubtedly cause you a lot of headaches.”

  “As long as what you do is in the best interests of the kids, I don’t mind the noise.”

  “Why me?” I asked. “In any world, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’m looking for someone who has a passion for educating children and will work long and hard to improve achievement. I’ve been living in D.C. my entire life. I know that we will never be a great city until we have a great public school district for all of our kids.”

  “What,” I asked, “would you risk for a chance to turn this system around? Because I can’t make any guarantees. . . .”

  He considered the question. He paused. His eyes relaxed.

  “Everything,” he replied.

  I believe he smiled. He had me at “everything.”

  5

  Breaking Barriers

  In taking the D.C. job, I had my sights set on breaking through barriers in a school system that had resisted reform for decades. Reporters presented a more immediate hurdle: could I open schools on time? The questions cascaded the day we discovered a warehouse where books and supplies had been languishing—for years.

  “Mayor Fenty!”

  “Chancellor! Chancellor!”

  “Chancellor Rhee! Can you answer a few questions?”

  The mayor and I were touring the warehouse jammed with boxes upon boxes of unopened textbooks, notebooks, and unused classroom furniture. I looked at the mayor out of the corner of my eye, but neither of us broke stride. He signaled to me that we should stop. We both pivoted and grounded ourselves for what we knew would be an onslaught of questions.

  “Is this what you thought it would be, Chancellor?”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Are you going to be able to open schools on time?”

  “We need to know if schools will be opening on time, Chancellor!”

  I had been on the job for two months, with most of that time spent trying to get ready for school opening. Every day and everywhere I went, reporters and parents asked whether schools would open on time. I didn’t understand it. Schools were slated to open on August 27. That was the first day of school. Why was there so much confusion about that?

  As it turned out, for years in Washington, D.C., judges had ruled that because of violations to health and fire code standards, the schools could not be opened. Whenever that happened, city officials would scramble to meet a minimum threshold of acceptability. It often resulted in school opening being delayed two to three weeks.

  “I guarantee you,” the mayor said with authority, “that schools will be opening on time this year.”

  “How, Mayor? Are all the books delivered? Are all the buildings ready? How can you be sure?” they asked.

  “I’ll let the chancellor answer your specific questions,” the mayor said.

  “Yes,” I wondered to myself. “How indeed?” And then I stepped in front of the cameras.

  ON THE MORNING OF Tuesday, June 12, 2007, Mayor Fenty asked me to meet him before eight o’clock in his private office in the John Wilson Building, D.C.’s city hall, around the corner and down the street from the White House. I dressed in a cream-colored jacket, black and cream skirt, and black heels. Fenty’s people had set a press conference for nine thirty to introduce me as the first chancellor of D.C. schools.

  “Let’s go down and meet the city council members,” he said.

  Every Tuesday the city’s thirteen council members gathered for an informal breakfast near their grand, ornate chambers in the Wilson Building. What a lovely way to meet the legislators, I thought, right? Wrong.

  My official introduction to the city was unorthodox at best. It had begun two days before, when I arrived in the city on Sunday morning with my two daughters and my parents. As we walked off the plane, we passed a newspaper stand. The front page of the Washington Post asked, “Can D.C. Schools Be Fixed?”

  “Oh, Lordy,” I thought.

  Starr, my eldest daughter, was right behind me reading the same headline.

  “Yes!” she shouted. “My mommy’s going to do it!”

  I clamped my hand over her mouth and shuffled us to baggage claim.

  Once settled in the hotel, I got a call from Mayor Fenty.

  “Hey,” he said, “how was the trip?”

  “Fine, sir,” I answered.

  “The kids and your parents settled in?”

  “Yes, we’re great, thanks,” I said.

  “Okay, okay, good,” he continued. “I’m thinking about meeting with an editorial board writer tonight. Not sure if I should have you come or not. What do you think?”

  My mind was racing. I’d never been in this kind of situation before.

  “Well, it might be better if you laid the groundwork without me. But if you think I should attend I’m willing,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, mostly to himself. “I’ll get back to you.” And he hung up.

&n
bsp; A short while later I got another call. This was from Victor Reinoso, the deputy mayor for education.

  “The mayor wants you to come to the meeting. Carrie Brooks will be at the hotel in fifteen minutes to pick you up,” he said.

  “Victor!” I said. “We haven’t even prepped or discussed what he wants me to say! Shouldn’t we be a little more prepared before my first major interview?”

  “It’ll be fine,” Victor said. “You’ll do great!”

  He was about to hang up.

  “Wait, Victor!” I shouted into the phone.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Who’s Carrie?”

  I ARRIVED AT CITY HALL early that Sunday afternoon and sat in the mayor’s waiting room for a few minutes. Then I was motioned to come back in the room where the mayor had been meeting with the Washington Post writers.

  Fenty was sitting at the head of the table. Jo-Ann Armao and Dave Nakamura were sitting in the two seats to his right. Armao wrote most of the Post’s editorials on local matters; Nakamura covered D.C. politics. I filled the seat to his left and started talking.

  “In my core, I’m a teacher. That’s why I’m so excited about this opportunity. I realize that I’m a bit of an unconventional choice, but I know schools and I know school districts.”

  Armao and Nakamura were looking at me as if I were purple.

  “Why don’t you back up,” the mayor said, “and tell them who you are and why you’re here.”

  Are you kidding me? I figured the mayor had been prepping them, teeing up the conversation and explaining why they were sitting there on a Sunday afternoon. The announcement of the new chancellor was the biggest scoop in the city. But apparently the mayor had just been engaged in small talk. They had no idea who I was.

  “Of course,” I said. “I apologize. My name is Michelle Rhee. I am the new chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools.”

  Jo-Ann Armao’s jaw dropped.

  David Nakamura smiled. He knew he had a scoop.

  LATE MONDAY NIGHT, THE day before the scheduled announcement, the mayor called Clifford Janey, the sitting superintendent, to tell him he was fired. Then he called District of Columbia Council chairman Vincent Gray to ask for a meeting. It was at 11 p.m.