Mackinac Policy Conference 2013 (Thursday Keynote: Michelle Rhee Video)

Education reformer puts focus on teachers, bipartisan collaboration, rising above mediocrity

By Crain's Detroit Business

Education reformer Michelle Rhee told the Mackinac Policy Conference on Thursday to focus on three issues to improve education in the United States.

Rhee came to national attention as chancellor of public schools in Washington, D.C. Today, she runsStudentsFirst, a nonprofit that pushes policies to promote education reform at the state level.

The first issue: Honor the teaching profession. Michigan has adopted some measures, but needs to enact merit pay statutes for teachers, she said.

Second, recapture the American competitive spirit. The U.S. spends millions on education, but the country ranks 14^th, 17^th and 25^th internationally in reading, science and math.

Too much time is spent on activities to build self-esteem. She urged an end to "celebrating mere mediocrity and participation." That is not what they celebrate in Korea, she said.

When people criticize such things as federally dictated "common core standards," she says the focus is on the wrong thing. "We should be upset that China is kicking our butt" and our kids are not competing.

Finally, education has to be a bipartisan issue. Education has become polarizing. "I am a lifelong Democrat," she said. "I was raised to be supportive of unions."

Rhee said she had opposed vouchers in education for years. But Washington had a voucher program for low-income children, and it was up for renewal. She met with parents, mostly single mothers, who were desperate to get their children in a high-performing school but the "out-of-boundary" lottery was swamped by applications. So the alternative was a voucher to attend high-performing private schools.

So she endorsed the voucher renewal, earning the enmity of the Democratic Party and teachers union.

Too many opponents of school reform would never accept inferior teachers or schools for their own families, she said. "They want to create policies for other people's children that they would never accept for their own."

Mackinac notebook

Compiled from reports by Kathleen Gray and Matt Helms

   U.S. is facing an education crisis, reformer Rhee says

   MACKINAC ISLAND — At a time when the nation is spending a record amount of money on public education, the results in student achievement are disappointing at best, education reformer Michelle Rhee said Thursday at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference.

   “We are facing a crisis as a nation,” she said. “The children who are in school today will be the first generation who are less well educated than their parents.”

   Rhee, who was chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools and now heads the StudentsFirst group in California, calls herself a lifelong Democrat; but she’s been a controversial figure in education circles, especially among teachers because of her support for vouchers and the Educational Achievement Authority.

   “We have to begin to see education as a bipartisan issue — one that we can all come together on,” she said. “The politics of education have become more polarized than anything else.”

   Three things are needed to help boost public education and student achievement, she said: valuing teachers for their performance, not their seniority; developing education policy with children, rather than politics, in mind, and giving children realistic goals instead of rewarding them just for showing up.

   “We spend more time trying to make our children feel good about themselves, that we’ve lost sight of actually making them good at anything,” Rhee said.

   Michigan has become a leader in education reform, she said, ranging from a recent bill that would base teacher salaries on performance, to turning failing schools over to the state-run Education Achievement Authority.

   “As we look across the nation, Michigan has been one of the most aggressive states on education reform,” Rhee said.

Mackinaw Policy Conference 2013 (Thursday Conference Keynote: Michelle Rhee)