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Jay Mathews On Michelle Rhee: Didn’t I Just Say That?

By Alexander Russo — June 18, 2007 1 min read
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One of the challenges of blogging all the time is that you end up thinking -- true or not -- that you already thought and said nearly everything you later read. Take today’s Jay Mathews piece in the Washington Post (Maverick Teachers’ Key D.C. Moment), in which he fleshes out the significance of fresh-faced Michelle Rhee being given the top spot over the DC public schools, describing her as “the first of their generation of educational innovators named to head a major school system and a symbol of their efforts to help inner-city children.” Hmm. Good point. However, in one of my best posts from last week (as well as in a WAMU segment), I described her thus: “Young, female, and a minority, Rhee is...the first of her school reform cohort to take step into a big, real-world education job, and as such is the focus of the expectations and hopes of whole slew of TFA-type educationistas who hope to follow Rhee into superintendencies and more.” But oh well, it’s a blog, and I’m sure I’m not as original a thinker as I think I am. Plus which, I’ve got some other issues with the piece -- mainly that it reads like a big wet kiss to TFA, and by extension KIPP, which Mathews might want to recuse himself from writing about in news pieces at this point.

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