Radical

by Michelle Rhee

  Bradley Tusk hosted us in his conference room, high in an office building on Broadway. For the better part of the day, we barely left the room.

  On the high-concept level, we had to decide how the new organization would present itself: as one that was somewhat faceless, defined by an idea rather than a person? Or would it be stronger if it were associated with one person?

  “That’s an easy one,” Joel Klein said. “Michelle is the face of StudentsFirst. She will help define it, get press, convince governors and state legislators to back our reforms. It’s got to be led by her, at least initially. That’s what makes it noteworthy. Otherwise, it’s nothing.”

  “Let’s be honest,” KMJ said. “We’re creating an organization to build out your vision. You’re our biggest asset. So what is your vision?”

  I explained the basic premise. KMJ listened and looked around the room.

  “There’s no diversity in this room,” he said. “We can’t make all these decisions from the thirtieth floor of an office building in New York City.

  “What did we learn in D.C.?” KMJ asked. “We can’t make the same mistakes. Why are we here? To build a group that appeals only to white, male Republicans? Is that what we’re doing?”

  Silence. There was no easy answer.

  What we all knew was that money alone would not be the solution. KMJ knew best that we had to build a real and sustainable grassroots organization that was demanding change from the bottom up.

  KMJ had put down a marker and set a goal to build a real movement. As it turned out, he would be instrumental in getting us there.

  We ended the meeting with more definition behind the concept. We knew that I would need to build a strong staff to execute our plans. We knew we could expect to have the funds necessary to hire staff and rent space. We already knew there was demand for our reforms in a number of states, but we needed everyday people to drive those changes. And we still needed a name.

  For a few weeks we batted names back and forth in emails and texts. I pitched “Save Our Schools.” Then “Fix Our Schools.” Among the comments were “Too bland,” and “There’s one in every city, including D.C.,” and “Way too generic.”

  I was a minority of one.

  We tossed around more names. Nothing worked.

  “It has to be about kids,” Dmitri Mehlhorn argued. “I think we should go with StudentsFirst.”

  I ran it by KMJ.

  “Name says it all,” he said. “I like it.”

  I did, too. StudentsFirst it would be.

  EVEN BEFORE I WAS officially finished in D.C. at the end of October, politicians at the state level started to call. I had declined Florida governor Rick Scott’s offer to move to Florida, but I had agreed to serve on his transition team. Governors and legislators from both parties in states like Nevada, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Ohio had said they would welcome our reforms. Governor Paul LePage asked me if I’d consider coming to Maine.

  “I’m not going to work in just one state,” I responded. “I’m thinking about something broader. But I promise that with this new idea, we are going to be able to help you.”

  Were a name, a promise of funding, a concept, and invitations from a number of states enough to launch StudentsFirst on Oprah? It would have to suffice. The show was two weeks away. We designed a logo. We created a website and prepared to go live.

  Oprah’s audience tuning in on December 6 saw me in a serious tweed dress. Oprah wore pink. I described StudentsFirst and said we were launching today.

  “I love that title,” Oprah said, and added that I hoped to attract a million members.

  “We have ten million people watching today,” she said. “Will one million of y’all please go sign up?”

  The address Studentsfirst.org flashed on the screen.

  I quickly laid out our goals: highly effective teachers in every classroom, excellent options for parents, taking money from the bureaucracy to the classroom. Oprah said she had been using her show as a platform for fixing education; now was the chance.

  “Somebody needs to fix it!” she said. “You can do it! I am behind you! We are behind you!”

  She turned to the camera.

  “This is an urgent call to action,” she said. “America, hear me now. This is a seminal moment for us.”

  She said students in the United States ranked very low among thirty industrialized nations in reading and math.

  “We’re either going to fall further behind or move forward,” she said. “It’s in our hands. Get yourself fired up! Stop complaining. Log in and sign up!”

  She wrapped me in a big, pink hug.

  The StudentsFirst website went live. By the end of the day we had more than one hundred thousand members, on our way to a million—and more.

  I ALREADY HAD A small office and staff in Washington, but that didn’t feel right as a permanent home. Kevin Huffman, my ex-husband, had been offered the job of commissioner of education for the state of Tennessee. He would be moving to Nashville. KMJ pointed out that Kevin had agreed to move to D.C. so I could take the chancellor’s job. It was our turn to return the favor. I started making plans to set up a house in Nashville with my parents, and I would be there half-time, but it wasn’t the right place for StudentsFirst. KMJ and I had postponed our wedding, but it was inevitable that I would marry the mayor of Sacramento. Would his hometown make a good base for StudentsFirst?

  “You have to come to the belly of the beast,” he said.

  California was the most populous state, and its teachers union was arguably the strongest in the nation. Its legislature, run by Democrats, was in the union’s thrall. It would be the hardest state to reform.

  A few days later I knew for sure: Sacramento would be our home base.

  My first hire was Shawn Branch, the native Baltimorean who had run my schedule and my life in D.C. He was integral to my sanity and agreed to pull up stakes and make the move to Sacramento in January. My second hire was an eighteen-year-old named Julian Nagler, who had interned for KMJ the summer before. He was taking a gap year before college and handled every problem, small or large. He was a great utility player when I needed one.

  In addition to fielding calls from governors, we spent December writing a business plan and a policy agenda. Bain and Company, under the leadership of senior partner Chris Bierly, helped with the business side of the plan. Dmitri Mehlhorn came on as COO. Kathleen deLaski, an executive who had worked at places as varied as the Pentagon and AOL, agreed to manage all facets of the political operation. I was able to convince Eric Lerum, who was essential to reforming the D.C. schools in the deputy mayor’s office, and his fiancée, Rebecca Sibilia, to move to Sacramento, too.

  I swept up as many Fenty administration folks as I could. Kate Gottfredson, Ximena Hartsock, Mafara Hobson, and Bridget Davis rounded out our original team.

  We pounded out a twenty-five-page policy agenda. It would serve as a road map that states could follow, including specific laws that they would need to adopt if they wanted to match our reforms in D.C.

  Our blueprint suggested that states establish teacher evaluation systems based on student achievement and classroom observations. “State law should give districts the autonomy to develop teacher evaluation systems apart from the collective bargaining process,” we wrote. We also recommended that states evaluate principals on their success with student achievement and their ability to manage their schools.

  One of the most promising developments in public education that I witnessed, from our years at The New Teacher Project through the time in D.C., was that professionals were willing to make midlife career changes to become teachers. However, the process was often cumbersome.

  To address that, we wrote: “States must reduce legal barriers to entry in the teaching profession.” We suggested that states break down complicated credentialing and certification schemes. As in D.C., states should be able to reward excellent teachers with individual performance pay, and they should take tenure off the table. We
recommended that states adopt mutual consent and end “last in, first out” policies.

  We also wanted to empower parents. Our first recommendation sounded simple and easy: state laws should “ensure that parents receive meaningful information about their schools and teachers.” In most states and districts, parents have to demand and dig for basic information on the quality of teaching and teachers. Teachers’ track records on student achievement should be disclosed to parents, and parents should have access to alternative, more effective classrooms.

  Why not grade the schools? We suggested a law for that.

  I have always believed that students should be able to attend the best schools, whether public schools, charters, or private schools. Our policy paper recommended that states remove arbitrary caps on charter schools. Many charters, which are supported with public funds but managed independently of the public schools, have been enormously successful in raising achievement for students in rough circumstances. Students in charters in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., have excelled, which supports my contention that great teachers at focused schools can improve achievement.

  We also recommended that states create a mechanism to close low-performing schools. Parents should not have to see their children stuck at bad schools. If parents join together and come to the conclusion that their local school is not helping their kids learn, they should be able to employ a trigger petition to force fundamental changes: from removing the principal and teachers to turning it into a charter school. State legislators could pass laws to give them that power.

  On the finance and governance side, we recommended that states move toward leaner and more efficient ways of running schools. That meant that we supported mayoral control of city schools. And if school districts were failing to provide a quality education, we were in favor of the state taking over the schools.

  Parents often struggle to get information about not only their individual schools and teachers but also system-wide budgets. Our recommendation: “A school district’s budget should give an average member of the public a clear sense of where the money goes and what the district’s priorities are.”

  Why not?

  And why not make sure that central offices serve the direct interests of students? I found in D.C. and school districts nationwide that school bureaucracies existed in part to perpetuate themselves rather than to promote learning in the classroom. Our recommendation: “Bloated central offices should be pared down to eliminate redundancies in a way that connects every member of the central team with a goal of driving student outcomes.”

  WE CIRCULATED OUR POLICY agenda to a number of trusted veteran education reform leaders. It received mixed reviews.

  Many colleagues argued that our goals were not broad enough. If we wanted to put students first, why not address curricula? What about nutrition? Why not recommend that states offer a variety of social services within the public schools?

  I could see why reformers would suggest that we cover all aspects of public education. But I wanted to stay on the ground, focused very tightly on teaching and teacher quality, all directed to improving student outcomes. Curricula and nutrition are certainly important, but neither would be our focus nor our strength.

  At the same time, we heard from political leaders in many states who wanted to translate and transplant everything we did in D.C. to their systems. They welcomed us into their states. We wanted to create an aggressive approach to making these reforms happen.

  We completed our policy statement by Christmas, just in time to work with state legislatures that began meeting in January. On January 2, 2011, we fanned out and started hitting state capitals.

  EARLY IN JANUARY I flew to Tallahassee, Florida, to meet with newly elected governor Rick Scott and state legislators in the first days of the legislative session.

  Florida was friendly territory for our reforms. Former governor Jeb Bush had paved the way. He started overhauling the state’s public education system as soon as he took office in 1999. He passed laws to grade each school. He pushed through laws to increase student testing and demand accountability. He ended social promotion, where schools allow students to move up a grade with their peers, even if they have not mastered the material required for promotion. He favored vouchers. And as a result, the state was leading the way in improvements nationwide.

  Governor Scott was eager to bring D.C.’s reforms to his state. Republicans had a two-thirds majority in the Florida House and Senate, so support for his agenda was there. I had high hopes.

  Before I arrived in Tallahassee, legislators were invited to see a screening of Waiting for “Superman.” By the time I showed up to speak at a luncheon for all, they were beyond excited to see me and hear what I had to say.

  In a short speech, I waved a copy of our policy agenda in the air and said, “If you want to do what we did in D.C., pass this agenda.” It’s safe to say that legislators and their aides mobbed me after lunch.

  That afternoon Governor Scott took me on a tour of schools, starting with one that was under renovation. He stopped to chat with every construction worker on the site. More than one thanked him for keeping his focus on school reform.

  Scott and I had met at the Republican Governors Association meeting in November 2010. My sense was that Scott didn’t care whether he was well liked or would be reelected. He wanted to do what he believed was right, especially in focusing Florida schools on students. Frankly, he reminded me of Adrian Fenty.

  We had the support of Scott and many legislators, but passing our agenda was far from assured. The legislature had passed Senate Bill 6 the year before. It was a vibrant reform package that embraced many of our goals, including merit pay and a curtailing of tenure. Then-governor Charlie Crist vetoed the bill in exchange for support from the teachers unions for his run for the U.S. Senate. Crist lost, but legislators remembered the union’s clout. Teachers called in sick. The union rallied outside the Florida Capitol and vilified pro-reform legislators.

  So I was not surprised when many Florida House and Senate members were on the fence in the days and weeks after Governor Scott introduced his reform package. The union was working them hard.

  What to do?

  Even by January 2011, little more than a month after we had launched StudentsFirst, we already had thousands of members in Florida. Many were teachers. When committees held hearings on the education bill, we brought in teachers to testify in favor of the reforms. There were more teachers from StudentsFirst than from the unions. Our members testified in simple terms: the reform package was good for teachers, good for kids, good for schools.

  We took the wind out of the unions’ sails.

  Governor Scott and the state legislature passed virtually every piece of the educator quality strand of our policy agenda. It was a big win for StudentsFirst, the students of Florida—and the teachers. I figured it would take ten years to accomplish that level of reform in California.

  AMONG THE MANY CALLS and invitations we fielded in our first few months, some of the most persistent came from Michigan.

  “You have to go to Lansing,” Kathleen deLaski told me. She had been working in education reform for decades and knew the national landscape. We had met in D.C. when she was working as senior program director on education for the Walton Foundation. I trusted Kathleen.

  But I was not eager. Michigan had a reputation for being one of the worst states for education reform. Teach For America had pulled out of Detroit. When I was running The New Teacher Project, I had met with Detroit school officials. I came away so discouraged that I declined to get involved.

  “Things have changed,” deLaski said. “The governor and legislators want you to come in.”

  Governor Rick Snyder had taken office and promised education reform.

  I relented and flew to Lansing.

  State representative Paul Scott greeted me there. Scott was a young legislator from the suburbs of Flint. He was appointed chair of the House Education Committee, with the goal of movin
g quickly to adopt the basic elements of our policy agenda. He set up meetings with the Speaker of the House, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, and Governor Snyder’s political director.

  I wanted to make sure these Michigan leaders understood the stakes and the obstacles. Were they ready for the battle?

  “This is our first year, and we have only limited resources to work with in our partner states this year,” I explained. “When we commit, we go all in and support you across the board.

  “But I know what you are up against in Michigan,” I said. “As soon as you introduce the reforms we’re talking about, the unions will strike back. They will call you evil, say you hate kids and are against teachers.”

  They looked at one another and nodded.

  “What we do is give you air cover,” I said. “We will go on the offensive in the media. Instead of waiting for you to get attacked, we’ll talk about the importance of the reforms and your courage in leading the way if you choose to take on the fight.”

  The legislators huddled for a few minutes. I took a break and returned.