Conventional wisdom is that Michelle Rhee in DC needs, well, whatever she wants, in order to get the DC schools turned around. Power to fire folks? Sure. Shifting district staff to state (?) offices? Why not. But Marc Dean Millot (pictured), now an EdWeek blogger, says that some of this just isn’t necessary: “There’s no “state of emergency,” no need for dictatorial authority, and no relationship between the real predicament and the requested powers.” I’m not sure the comparisons to the war in Iraq work, but he makes a good point: just cuz Rhee says she wants it doesn’t mean she should get it, or needs it. Says Millot: “The list of failures cited were not fundamentally ones of the bureaucracy’s failure to execute policy, but of the political leadership’s decisions about policy.”