Michelle Rhee’s agenda: Fix “broken” education system, a “bureaucracy about adults”

From the Orlando Sentinel on Jan. 10:

Michelle Rhee, now an education adviser to Gov. Rick Scott, today released her new organization’s agenda for fixing America’s “broken” education system.

Rhee, the former chancellor for Washington, D.C. schools, launched the group StudentsFirst last month to push for her brand of education reform.

Her plans, not surprisingly, mesh with many of Scott’s ideas. The two, as we noted last week, toured a charter school in Miami on Friday and announced a partnership. Rhee said other governors, including those in Indiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico and Tennessee are in discussions with her group as well.

Her agenda takes aim at an education system she thinks “has become, bit by bit, a bureaucracy about adults.”

Not surprisingly it quickly drew criticism from the country’s two big teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. The AFT said Rhee presented a “false choice” while the NEA said her agenda “lacks facts and research” and ignores the collaboration already underway in places like Florida.

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