The Bee Interviews Michelle Rhee (MR)

Excerpts from the Transcript of Michelle Rhee's Interview by The Bee

The following conversation is not real, but it is fully based on Rhee's own words (sometimes quoted), policies and attitudes. 

THE BEE:  Buzz!  Hello, Michelle.  How are you?

MR:  Busy.

THE BEE:  Busy as a bee, I bet.  You have your proboscis in many things these days.  I read your piece in the Daily News the other day.   You were disappointed with the NYC teacher contract, as many teachers, but for entirely different reasons.  Whereas some teachers do not see their raises keeping pace with inflation, you said they were "sizable."  Whereas teachers would like their long-delayed raises without a much longer delay, you feel they've got too much.

MR:  Yes, that's right.  There were "no premium sharing of health-care costs, no higher co-pays, no guaranteed dismissals for ineffective teachers who don't even teach full time, no changes to the rigid seniority-based salary schedule, nothing" (Daily News).

THE BEE:  You referred to "1,200 ineffective teachers currently in the absent teacher reserve (ATRs)."  I'm guessing you want these 1,200 dismissed.  Most are not ineffective though.  They are victims of Bloomberg's school closure movement used to pave the way for privatization and profit.  The older ones are also victims of their age and experience which make them more expensive to hire.

MR:  They are ineffective.

The Bee:  Can you tell us how effective you were during your three-year run with TFA in Harlem Park, Baltimore?  It is here that you began molding yourself into a Queen Bee of education, isn't it?

MR:  Sure.  Harlem Park was one of the lowest-performing elementary schools in one of the roughest Baltimore neighborhoods with poverty, prostitution, drug infestation and violence.  Kids came from shattered homes.  If you have a great teacher like myself all those barriers can be overcome.

THE BEE:  How did you do manage it, Michelle?  One of your teaching interns said of your classroom, "things were kind of chaotic.  The kids were having a field day.  They were running around the room.  A couple of kids went on rampages, throwing chairs across the room.  Some were blatantly rude.  If one person acted up, there was a domino effect and everyone started acting up" (Richard Whitmore, The Bee Eater, p. 44).  Some persons came from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, to evaluate you.  They had their antennae up.  You said, "These mentor ladies pulled me aside and said, 'We believe your classroom is a dangerous place for children and we think you should reconsider this as a career.'"  Is that when you decided to tape your students' mouths shut (see also "Michelle Rhee's Greatest Hits" by Valerie Strauss, including Rhee's derisive mocking of her African-American students' speech on a near-disaster field trip to  Baltimore's Inner Harbor)  or change it all by eating the bee?  (Richard Whitmore, The Bee Eater, p.41).

MR:  If you heard the bee story, you would know not to mess with me.  One day, I was desperately trying to win the attention of my students and then the bee flew in the window.  Come to think of it, he looked a bit like you.  The kids were "going nuts....  And they're literally jumping on top of the chairs and the desks and running around, wreaking havoc.  And I had my lesson plan, and the bee lands, and I smacked it.  And I'm not sure what, but something in me just sort of made me flick it into my hand and eat it"  (Frontline, "The Education of Michelle Rhee").

THE BEE:  That doesn't seem like a rational reaction to a problem.  We, bees, usually don't think of a Rhee as a common predator.  Without your help, my brothers and sisters who are valuable pollinators are becoming increasingly threatened.  Just like public-school teachers, our habitats are being invaded and poisoned.  

MR:  When I swallowed that bee, and again I'm sorry if he was any relation of yours, Bee, it changed everything.  My kids then looked at me with complete respect.  I could now teach to the test in relative peace.  "Over a two-year period, we moved a group of students who were on average performing at the 13th percentile, and when they left me at the end of two years, they were--90 percent of them were scoring at the 90th percentile or above."  At least that's what my principal told me.

THE BEE:  And you swallowed it whole like the bee.  Is there any data to prove it?  And didn't you also have other teachers with you for the following two years?  How can you separate your own effectiveness that of your teaching team the following years? 

MR:  Well, the data's disappeared.  But I put it on my resume.  I was accountable when it counted. 

THE BEE:  I heard you had some pretty innovative ideas in the classroom and managed to overcome the outbreak of hives, not my kind, you reported in the beginning months.  You respected your students' ability to learn and you had some interesting  ideas.  You cut up pizzas with pepperoni to help teach fractions.  Over one summer, instead of working for pay, you photocopied books to help with "calendar math" and teaching in general.  Whitmore relates in Bee Eater that you had "a bunch of aunts visiting from Korea."  As you tell it in your book, "I put them to work cutting out shapes for my students.  It was a little sweatshop of Korean ladies" (p. 45).  I'm supposing, you were thinking, all the better they don't have a union. 

MR:  Unions are no good.  They protect "a 'step and lane' system that awards salary increases for years spent on the job and graduate degrees earned, even though research clearly shows that degrees have no impact on outcomes for children."  All of this is nonsense!  Only "performance and qualifications" should matter (Daily News).   

THE BEE:  Is performance in your opinion largely student test scores--which are traditionally linked to parental income?

MR:  In D.C., we dangled bonus pay before school personnel to help raise test scores.  We gave the principals a $10,000 bonus.  Administrators got $9,000 and teachers got $8,000.  We saw amazing gains.

THE BEE:  Your words sting.  Teachers should be rewarded for staying on the job and gaining valuable experience, not for teaching to a test like Stanley Kaplan.  It seems you left before you had much experience.  Since you link merit pay with student test scores, perhaps we might discuss the erasure scandal when you were chancellor in D.C. (also:  When Standardized Test Scores Soared in D.C.).   You handed out great merit-pay bonuses and seemed to panic when the scandal surfaced.  I'm betting you had a lot to do with defining the very narrow parameters of the investigation.   

MR:  There was no proof of anything.  There are honest, highly effective teachers other than myself and we need to reward them.  There are many in the T.F.A., including a Mr. Wallace.  He told me how he comes to work early and leaves late even though he is not paid for that time.  The older teachers resent him which only goes to prove they must feel highly threatened by his "highly effectiveness."  He treats his students to McDonalds' food after school as long as they'll stay to learn a little math.

THE BEE:  I guess that's highly effective, but it's also against the protocol in most public schools.  Teachers are asked not to have relations of any sort with students outside of the classroom.  In the old days, this might have landed him in the rubber room.  Today, many would probably want to just fire him without due process if he wasn't part of the T.F.A.    

MR:  Did you know that if all students could have three great teachers in a row, say three Mr. Wallaces, we could effectively end poverty in the U.S.? 

THE BEE:  And at the same time greatly increase the profits of McDonalds.  I just hope for Bloomberg's sake, none of those students had over-sized sodas.  And, I shiver to think of the long-term health costs of all those shakes.  Maybe they had the salads.

MR:  Mr. Wallace spent a lot of his own money to treat the students.  The "guy's spending half of his 40,000 dollar salary on hamburgers every night at McDonalds"  (Michelle Rhee on Charlie Rose, Transcript).

THE BEE:  I hope Mr. Wallace is not planning on becoming a career teacher because then when he grows up and has a family of his own, he might begin to see that his pedagogical paycheck doesn't make ends meet.  He won't be able to bring home the honey, if you know what I mean.  But I imagine he'll quit after three years as a good T.F.A. member and go onto a much higher paying job.  He won't have to live with his teacher salary.

MR:  If it wasn't for the entrenched unions we could give Mr. Wallace the type of salary that his "highly effectiveness" demands.  He could prep towards the tests and secure merit pay.

THE BEE:  That would surely help offset the cost of all those burgers, shakes and fries.  In your book, you describe a trip to Washington D.C. in seventh grade.  I bet you had no idea you would become chancellor at that time.  Back then, you tried to force some kids you call "nerds" off the "cool bus."  You said, "Once I realized the confrontational approach was not going to work, I decided to try a softer one" (p. 20).

MR:  If I've set a goal for myself, I'll get it one way or the other.

THE BEE:  You tried to manipulate them with words.  That failed.  Next, you relate, "Looking dead in the eye of the King of the Nerds I said, 'I'll give you twenty dollars for your seat....'  Within minutes I was brokering seats for all of my friends, with money exchanging hands at a frenetic pace."  Then, the head of the middle school busted your operation.  No one gave over your name as the instigator.  So, you got away with it.  Seems like you're used to getting away with things.  You said,  "This kind of maneuvering became commonplace for me.  I would use my reputation as the good girl to my advantage."   

MR:  I guess you're used to getting your way and using money as necessary.  You once said of your rule in D.C, "It's not a democracy."

MR:  It's not.

THE BEE:  You became the leader of Students First and headlined it on Oprah.  You made it very clear how important it is for you to raise exorbitant amounts for Students First.  Will you use the money like you did on your seventh-grade school bus? 

MR:  "It's not a democracy."  Teachers in N.Y. should be happy for their "sizable" raises even though they won't see them for awhile and they may not keep pace with inflation.  Scraps should be enough until they can raise generations of expert test takers across all socio-economic classes. 

THE BEE:  I think I heard the buzzer, Michelle.  Thank you for your time.  I've got to fly.