Can Rhee Succeed?

New York Times’ liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof writes about what may be the Stalingrad of education reform battles within the Obama administration—Michelle Rhee’s effort to improve the District of Columbia’s wretched school system. Rhee, 39, has fired 1/3 of District principals, and, Kristof says,

created untold enemies, improved test scores, and — more than almost anyone else — dared to talk openly about the need to replace ineffective teachers. “It’s sort of a taboo topic that nobody wants to talk about,” she acknowledged . . . “I used to say ‘fire people.’ And they said you can’t say that.”

According to Kristof, Rhee is driven by research suggesting that great teachers are far more important to student learning than class size, school resources or anything else. One study suggests that if black kids could get teachers from the profession’s most effective quartile for four years in a row, the achievement gap would disappear.

Rhee herself notes that if she succeeds, “we will take away from all the other school districts and schools across the country the excuse that because the kids are poor, minority, whatever it might be, that they can’t achieve at the same high levels.”

In an understatement, given the importance of Rhee’s effort in the overall battle to improve urban, largely-black schools, Kristof concludes, “It would help if President Obama firmly backed Ms. Rhee.”